The Lost World: Jurassic Park (Game Gear)
Before saving your game became standard in almost every genre of video game, there were plenty of cases of games increasing their longevity through game overs. While technically these games would take about a half an hour to an hour to complete when played well, the difficulty or amount of lives would lead to the player retrying the whole adventure and thus they wouldn’t finish it too quickly. The Lost World: Jurassic Park was released at the end of the Game Gear console’s lifespan, almost being the last game ever officially released for it if not for an odd situation surrounding Super Battletank’s release four years later. The Lost World: Jurassic Park is very much the kind of game that could be completed in a half hour despite being a level-based action platformer, and surprisingly, a fairly forgiving approach to death means you aren’t kept from finishing it too quickly. Undeniably short, it would rather make that time interesting and diverse rather than simply making you have to push through every stage again and again to get to an end.
Perhaps unsurprisingly though, The Lost World: Jurassic Park on Game Gear doesn’t spend much time establishing its story, both assuming some familiarity with the film franchise and not having much it needs to explain. While the original dinosaur theme park gone awry was on Isla Nublar, a neighboring island called Isla Sorna has its own population of revived dinosaurs now running wild. With hunters heading to the island to capture them and cause trouble, you are deployed to pacify the creatures and then make your escape. You are not a recognizable character from the film the game is named after though, this unspecified character only bringing a tranquilizer rifle and somehow becoming quick friends with a tiny Compsognathus he nicknames Compy. Traveling to seven unique levels, the player free to pick the order of the first three, you’ll end up facing many different dinosaur species both in the wild and the remains of the failed containment facilities on the island.
Seven stages certainly sounds paltry, but The Lost World: Jurassic Park has a surprisingly broad set of ideas for how to design them. Across most of them you will be playing as the rifle wielding protagonist, his tranquilizer rifle strong enough to instantly put most dinosaurs in his path to sleep. For the most part though dinosaurs exist to challenge his navigation. While scaling the mountainside little flying creatures pester you in ways that make them hard to hit until you realize their movement patterns. The treetop climb has dinosaurs hiding in the ample brush, popping out to surprise you at first but making you cautious about your movement forward afterward. Some water needs to be crossed by hopping across the heads of aquatic creatures, but you need to make sure they’re not reared to attack. The different levels where you are on foot and mostly just fighting your way to the exit all do something a little different, and while there are a few blind jumps to unseen ground they are also ones with little immediate risk in taking them. More importantly, each level has its own unique batch of dinosaur enemies with behaviors you quickly learn and then use to clear the rest of the stage, then moving onto a boss encounter with the main dinosaur of the area.
Where this game starts to show its forgiving side though is in how it handles deaths and damage. When entering a level your character wears a green vest and any time you take damage it changes color. At full health you’ll be able to take a whopping five hits before perishing in levels that aren’t often too long and usually include a health pick-up along the way. Dying will bring up the Game Over screen, but continuing will immediately put you back at the start of the level or boss fight you were in, some small progress lost but you’ll never have to repeat any stages you’ve completed. While it probably could have gotten away with not having any health pick-ups at all with this design, this does mean those moments where a new dinosaur surprises you with how it attacks are less likely to upset you, the game a little less scared to box you in with a big dino or have a swift little threat because you can take hits and keep moving after.
Were it just these normal levels focused on jumping and shooting dinosaurs it would be decent already, but there’s a surprising level of differentiation between the small set of stages. One level breaks away from platforming at your own pace as you now need to outrun a charging Triceratops, responding properly to the obstructions and hazards in your way to avoid damage from them or the dinosaur that’s always nipping at your heels. Another level instead has you as the fairly fragile Compy, the tiny dinosaur facing much smaller threats while also now dying in only one hit. Again, the game not being too harsh benefits it as Compy’s quick deaths can be easily recovered from, making his level about climbing walls to reach new areas both a unique break away to a new design and one with some danger to it. Compy’s wall climb is a little finicky in terms of when he’ll cling or how he jumps off the wall, but you aren’t usually going to get hurt if it isn’t being totally cooperative.
Perhaps the most surprisingly strong stage is one that does have you on foot as the regular human but structures itself more for its mood than its dangers. Near the end of the adventure you’ll find yourself entering a maze-like facility, the way forward pretty linear but with small dead ends you can split off into and the doors you enter throwing off your sense of space. With little traps to drop you down it becomes even more unclear how much level is left, and what’s more, Velociraptors are fairly abundant and can get in a good hit if you move ahead too quickly. Cautiously fighting your way to an elevator that seems to take you out, you begin to hear the thunderous sounds of something far more dangerous, and already somewhat worn down, you worry that crumbling ceiling above might signal an unfortunate end for you. Then the T-Rex rams her head through the roof, trying to grab a quick bite before pulling back to try again. Her aim is surprisingly good and like many dinosaurs you will need to figure out your simple but important means of responding to the attack to survive, but even once you finally get out you arrive at the game’s longest boss fight. Not only does she take far more tranquilizer darts than anything else in the game to put down, but you are made to constantly move to avoid her and the dangers in her boss stage, your shots important to clearing away hazards and keeping her from striking at inopportune times.
The fact it can nail the looming danger of the most intimidating dinosaur while also keeping such a zippy pace shows again how The Lost World: Jurassic Park on Game Gear makes the most of its time, the other bosses not quite as well established but still again economical but entertaining to fight. The hard-headed Pachycephalosaurus charges back and forth in its positively tiny forest boss arena and the game doesn’t tell you how to hurt it, but the limited options means you eventually discover the means to success but still must get down the lightly challenging execution to ensure victory. Admittedly the Carnotaurus fight crumbles once you understand what its gimmick is, but others can provide quick challenges focused on figuring out the fight that make them a bit less simple than just another dinosaur to shoot at. The game’s true finale even introduces an entirely new gameplay type where you need to quickly come to grips with it to survive, there being some moments of challenge despite The Lost World: Jurassic park being an overall easy and fairly kind experience.
THE VERDICT: While certainly too short for its own good if you were thinking of it solely as a product to buy, The Lost World: Jurassic Park devotes its energy to making its brief runtime enjoyably diverse. The health and Game Over system make it easy to bounce back from anything so the game isn’t afraid to have enemies and bosses where you might take some hits learning their behavior to overcome them, and since level sizes are small, retrying them on a death doesn’t sting. Careful but quick progress through areas that all feel unique keeps the player excited for what dinosaurs and dangers might lie ahead, and with levels that change the format considerably, it manages to explore its simple ideas effectively and focus on including more of them rather than relying on rehashes.
And so, I give The Lost World: Jurassic Park for Game Gear…
A GOOD rating. In a bit of cruel irony, The Lost World: Jurassic Park on Game Gear is fairly rare and thus a pricey purchase now. It manages to be an entertaining ride for the short while it lasts, the game never settling into any idea too long but still able to realize them well enough that each stage stands out as a different experience. Climbing the tree tops feels more exploratory and slow than the shifting grounds and flying foes of the mountainside level, the stage as Compy emphasizes vulnerability in a game that otherwise was perhaps too lenient but also benefits from the Game Overs being only a slap on the wrist, and boss battles keep up the game’s general idea of adapting on the fly and figuring out what the best way to succeed is going to be. You won’t really settle into pressing forward automatically because new dangers frequently lie ahead and even after establishing an idea like running from the Triceratops for a full stage you’ll then start to be tested by needing to actually get close to the beast to get it to bash through a barricade or avoid running into something before you can even see it. The build-up to the T-Rex’s arrival is surprisingly well done in a game that has little space to do so and it provides a suitable challenge to match that emphasis but the stages before it still entertain with familiar and less expected dinosaur foes as well that each have their own ways of being a danger.
At times a case of simplicity going far when well cultivated and others showing the benefit of constant variation and fresh concepts even in a small span of time, The Lost World: Jurassic Park does a remarkable job partly because it didn’t decide to restrict the player with the kind of unforgiving difficulty that could have made this the kind of game that you’d need to play again and again to have a hope of beating. In fact, its length actually makes it the kind of game you can replay in full just because its condensed package offers enough to be interesting throughout. Compy’s climbing and things like health pick-ups spacing could have been adjusted a touch, but this game is still a quick but quality experience that would have been a perfect highlight of a Game Gear game bargain bin if its late release hadn’t lead to price hikes. If price were no issue though, you’d have yourself a dinosaur game that easily entertains because it wasted none of its short runtime.