Developed by Sega for the Sega Master System and Game Gear in 1993, this Action Game is one of the various video game adaptations of Jurassic Park (1993).
Sometime prior to the opening of Jurassic Park the security systems fail, causing dinosaurs to break through the electric fences containing them and feast on the park's staff. Dr. Alan Grant, here a full Action Hero instead of an Action Survivor paleontologist, is called to Nublar Island to handle the main dinosaur threats in four damaged areas so that the park can be safely opened to the public as scheduled.
The game has 4 levels that can be played in any order. Each one begins with a rail shooter section while Grant drives to them. Once that's done with, in the action sections Grant is armed with three weapons to take down dinos coming from ahead, above and below. Upon clearing all four levels, the final one featuring the T. Rex becomes available if the player got there without using continues.
A sequel, The Lost World: Jurassic Park, based on the titular second film in the series, was released in 1997 as the last Sega-released game for the Game Gear.
Tropes featured in this game include:
- 1-Up: Miniatures of Grant that can be found in both phases of a stage.
- Adaptational Badass: In this game Grant isn't trying to escape the island. He's called to fight and capture the dinosaurs. Eventually he brings order to the park and it is allowed to open as planned. Notably, he gets a change of costume in the Game Gear port to make him look more of a soldier, though it also gives him a rather girly running animation...
- Adaptational Villainy: The Brachiosaurus in this game are not the Gentle Giant Sauropods as they were in the film.
- Advancing Boss of Doom: The bosses of the rail shooter levels.
- Boss-Arena Idiocy: The only way to damage the T. Rex is to shoot rockets at the boxes at the top of the screen so they fall on her. Watch out for when the dino stomps the ground to drop them on you, though.
- Bullfight Boss: The Triceratops. Either use the ceiling to get over it and attack from behind or simply stand on a tree branch, jump when the dinosaur rams it, then carefully throw a grenade on its weak point just before it leaves.
- Ceiling Cling: Dr. Alan Grant, the paleontologist ninja, can cling on any ceiling you can find.
- Chekhov's Gun: The Visitor Center is the first thing you see in the map. Naturally, it becomes the final level of the game.
- Continuing is Painful: Losing a continue before the 5th level punishes you with the bad ending.
- Convection, Schmonvection: Those waving rivers of lava near the power station only take 1 HP if they hit Grant. On that note, while driving there we see that the entire north of the island is an infernal landscape. Sound familiar?
- Cowardly Boss: The Velociraptor boss retreats into one of the four doors in the arena whenever it's hit and then comes out again to attack.
- Crate Expectations: An endless amount of boxes sitting on the ceiling of a room in the Visitor Center are used as weapons by both Grant and the T. rex during their fight.
- Credits Gag: The credits for the Bad Ending feature the names of various dinosaurs instead of the game's developers, to drive home the point that the T. rex and its kind have taken over the park.
- Crosshair Aware: Your aim in the rail shooter levels. In those levels, a crosshair also highlights the weakness of the boss enemy once it appears.
- Death from Above: Often dealed by various kinds of pterosaurs through a large portion of the game.
- Degraded Boss: The Visitor Center has raptors coming out of doors like the boss version did, but they're much simpler to deal with.
- Die, Chair, Die!: The rocks in the driving levels
are a nuisance. They also happen to drop a potion when shot. - Emergency Energy Tank: The medkit items can be used to restore all health when in trouble.
- End-Game Results Screen: It shows the player's final score.
- Fake Difficulty: Is pretty much impossible to not take damage in the rail shooter levels due to how a rock comes up every now and then and trips the crosshair up. No, you can't shoot it out of the way. To compensate for that, every hit enemy drops a healing potion, including the rock itself.
- Final Boss: The T. rex is the boss of the Visitor Center. Notable in that this goes against several other adaptations of the first Jurasic Park film inclusing the Sega Genesis one, where said dinosaur is a hazard that the player can only flee from.
- Floating Platforms: Most of the moving platforms are attached to mechanisms, but a few are just floating around.
- Game-Over Man: Grant and a small dino facing each other on a blank grey screen. Who chases who depends on whether you decide to continue.
- Gameplay and Story Segregation: The short cutscene between the rail shooter and action sections of a level always shows the back of the jeep a little smashed by a single hit, even if during gameplay it was looking like a convertible due to damage or took no hits at all.
- Gotta Catch 'Em All: Averted; there is a misconception that collecting the Jurassic Park icons found in certain spots and dropped by some enemies is required to access the final stage, but all they're good for is to add 10000 points to your score.
- Heart Container: The two fuel tanks in the rail shooter levels must be collected to start each stage with 5 health.
- Herbivores Are Friendly: No, they all want to ram you down. The Brachiosaur and the Triceratops in particular are bosses.
- Inconveniently-Placed Conveyor Belt: Seen as part of what's presumably the Visitor Center's security system, complete with a corridor featuring a row of laser turrets over the conveyor belt.
- Interface Screw: In the first area of the Brachiosaur level the river conceals the health meter, presumably due to hardware limitations.
- It's a Wonderful Failure: Lost a continue during the first four levels? Then the T. rex remains on the loose
, forcing the opening of the park to be "postponed." The ending cutscene fades to an ominous red and dinosaurs take over the staff credits. - The Maze: The Visitor Center. At the very end it even has you choose between a large set of doors to get to fight the T. rex, setting you back in the level if you pick the wrong one. The last door is the correct one.
- Menu Time Lockout: You can change weapons and restore health in the pause menu. The Master System had the pause button on the console itself, which made repeated healing during boss fights an awkward process.
- Multiple Endings: A bad and a good one, depending on whether the player lost a continue in the first four stages.
- No Ending: In stark contrast to how lazy the endings of Jurassic Park games tend to be, this game has a rewarding ending about the park being open to great success. They even went through the trouble of making an alternate bad ending too.
- Non-Lethal K.O.: All of Grant's weapons have a tranquilizing effect, so enemies either flee or fall asleep.
- Outside-the-Box Tactic: The Triceratops quickly kicks rubble back at a low arc to keep you from repeatedly hitting it from behind, but you can still crawl under the rubble without getting hurt and stunlock it to sleep.
- Platform Battle: The fight against the Pteranodon takes place on high endlessly-scrolling trees.
- Poison Mushroom: It takes 10 C icons to earn a continue. Those red icons some enemies drop in the final level? Each one subtracts a continue! This is particularly cruel, given how you have to play without losing any continues in the first place to even get there.
- Raptor Attack: The Velociraptor is the boss of the power station. In a nod to the intelligence it displays in the movie, it comes out of one of the various doors on its arena, attacks and then retreats to start the process over.
- Read the Freaking Manual: The manual for the game explains how the final stage is accessed. Most people, however, are mislead by a certain 2005 text walkthrough that claims the JP logo items are what enables it.
- Shows Damage: The jeep in the rail shooter levels. Avoiding having it look like a wreck by the time Grant reaches the main stages is almost always impossible thanks to the rocky condition of the road.
- Slasher Smile: The Brachiosaurs seen right before you fight the main one flash a large grin as they try to headbutt Grant.
- Spikes of Doom: Seen in the Pteranodon stage.
- Super Drowning Skills: The water bodies in the Brachiosaur and Pteranodon levels.
- Temporary Platform: Some pieces of the broken bridges in the power station are this.
- Unexpected Gameplay Change: Each level starts with a rail shooter section as Grant drives to the main area. You should collect the gas tanks dropped by enemies to have five HP instead of the default three. In case you fail this phase the jeep races away anyway but Grant will start the action stage as an One-Hit-Point Wonder.
- Warm-Up Boss: The Brachiosaur. It simply raises its head above the lake, then lowers itself in the direction you were sometime before it rose.
