Jurassic Park Arcade (Arcade)

The Jurassic Park series has lent itself well to arcade light gun games over the years, the enormous and fearsome dinosaurs an excellent fit for a fast-paced shooter. The film franchise had gone dormant for quite a long time after 2001’s Jurassic Park III though and for a while arcades made do with the old cabinets, the three Jurassic Park arcade games still an exciting fixture wherever they could be found. With the movies starting back up again in 2015 with Jurassic World though, a new arcade game was commissioned and one with an interesting twist over the usual dinosaur blasting action. While in most Jurassic Park games you were humans fighting the dinosaurs to escape danger, Jurassic Park Arcade instead has the humans trying to help the dinosaurs.

An active volcano threatens to wipe out the dinosaur life that has been left to run rampant after the failed dinosaur theme park on Isla Nubar was shut down, and rather than leaving them to their fate, a team of professionals is sent out to try and rescue what dinosaurs they can before it’s too late. There are three main targets they’re attempting to capture and relocate, the Triceratops, Tyrannosaurus Rex, and Spinosaurus your quarries with each of them having three levels leading up to their capture for a total of nine unique missions that you can either play separately or in order for a full run. Despite this focus on saving the dinosaurs though, you’ll still be using gun props attached to the cabinet to shoot down quite a lot of creatures, the game assuring you that the rounds are non-lethal even though they tear apart the giant bugs you encounter and many of the dinosaurs you do “knock out” can be sent falling off a cliff or end up caught in an explosion. Many of the human characters in the game often meet what are quite clearly lethal ends, the price of capturing three big dinosaurs surprisingly high but the game going for flashy and exciting scenes over trying to maintain the idea this is a rescue operation.

Playing either alone or with another player you’ll find yourself moving automatically around different areas of the island firing a machine gun that has no limits on its ammunition or need to reload. You do have a few limited use grenades that can help you if creatures are getting in too close or you want to clear a group quickly, but your rapid fire weapon can hold its own against most foes so long as you aim it well. You do need to watch out for where you’re aiming though as other human characters are working with you, a shot landed on them dealing heavy damage to the player as punishment. The game does have a few moments where it tries to make you land a hit on a friend by mistake by whipping the camera around quickly or having them run in quickly in the same way the game’s incredibly speedy dinosaurs often do, this tactic a bit cheap but not so much of a concern it ruins the otherwise thrilling level concepts on offer.

In Jurassic Park Arcade you’ll find your work to save the three main targets takes you all around an island filled with interesting and unique dangers. One level might find you exploring old abandoned facilities reclaimed by the wildlife after the park’s abandonment, little Compsognathuses scurrying between old machines while the poison spitting Dilophosauruses hide in the dark corners. Another can have you traveling through a canyon absolutely filled with aggressive pterosaurs or traveling through caves filled with eggs for giant spiders, the player at one point even having to parachute off a cliffside only to be caught by one of the flying creatures for a wild and dangerous ride. The destroyed museum from the first film’s iconic ending makes a reappearance and you’ll find yourself weaving through large roaming packs of dinosaurs at a few points, balancing your battles with the current targets as well as any large creatures irritated by the conflict coming so close to them. The speed with which the game moves remains high throughout but it can slow down for a bit, often switching between high pressure chases where you need to gun down everything after you before coming to a stop to start repelling whatever might be in the area. The game doesn’t linger long on any one scene though so Jurassic Park Arcade keeps you constantly engaged and reacting to some new danger, the speed of the action meaning the game can be dangerous even though the threats can be managed if you keep a cool head and focus fire properly.

You aren’t just dependent on your machine gun and its few grenades either. In the background of the action there are tokens you can shoot, some providing health refills or Amber Bonuses that contribute to your score. The more interesting tokens though are ones that allow you to briefly acquire a new weapon type, a diverse set of temporary improvements to your damage output making grabbing almost any of them satisfying. The Titan 2000 is admittedly the least exciting upgrade in that it just lets you fire even faster than the default weapon, although considering how often the game will throw huge swarms of insects at you where the challenge is to shoot them all rather than wearing down a single target’s health, having this during those segments can make them much easier to clear. The Triple Threat fires three shots in a spread that can hit multiple targets at once for heavy damage and the Shockbolt Cannon’s electrical strikes deal heavy damage great for keeping incoming raptors at bay, but the most interesting weapon alternative is probably the Frostbite Cannon. The Frostbite Cannon will freeze any enemy it hits with its beam, this great for cooperative play as you can incapacitate all of the dinosaurs as the second player sweeps up with standard shots on frozen foes. These all have limited ammo but you can spend it as you like, and while the quick action will require you to use them rather actively to avoid being attacked, you can try to squeeze out a bit more strategy from ones like the Triple Threat by considering the extra effects it has compared to the usual plan of pointing and shooting at whatever is nearest.

The enemy variety in Jurassic Park Arcade is both fairly broad but rather limited in a way. The game likes to fill most of its normal moments with facing off against Velociraptors and Pteranodons primarily, and while they come in different colors and some employ different tactics to move around the area, they can sometimes feel like the cannon fodder meant to connect more interesting encounters. Giant insects and the small Compsognathuses appear rarely enough that their numbers over strength approach injects a brief change in how you target foes. The Archaeopteryx is an interesting inclusion and these bird-like beasts come with a more shooting gallery oriented fight since they don’t move too quickly in a game where most foes are filled with energy. For most of the larger creatures the focus isn’t on sustaining fire on them to wear them down but instead targeting rings that appear when they are vulnerable, the player needing to shoot all of the indicated areas in the allotted time or else they’ll suffer some damage. A big dinosaur’s attack often gives you a good idea where to be aiming even before the rings appear; an open mouth is going to have you target around the inside of it as time slows down, if a creature raises a limb you’ll need to hit along its length, and an incoming flying dinosaur will need its wings targeted so you can keep your distance.

Sometimes a creature like a Brachiosaurus briefly gets ornery and must be repelled, but the ring target system is mostly used for the three rescue targets. All three of them will be doing a lot of running around before they slow down for an attack but the game does manage to keep these chases conceptually varied, especially when the T-Rex starts jostling with another T-Rex beside your vehicle and you’re not sure which one might turn its attention towards you. The Triceratops is certainly the least intimidating conceptually of the three focused creatures but it puts those horns to good use and hurls plenty of things at you that you need to shoot down before they crush you. The Spinosaurus doesn’t make much use of its aquatic associations unfortunately and almost feels more like a mix between how the T-Rex and Triceratops fight you, but the levels associated with it are still different enough so its more an issue of the Spinosaurus not standing out compared to stronger competition from the other two.

THE VERDICT: Jurassic Park Arcade is a fast-paced thrill ride through an abandoned dinosaur theme park absolutely teeming with interesting creatures to “save” with your rapid fire machine guns. While the game does get a little cheeky trying to get you to accidentally shoot your allies, most of the action is an exciting stream of different creative scenarios. It does use the raptors and pterosaurs a little too much compared to other creatures, but the bombastic battles with the larger beasts and the way it can vary up encounters with smaller creatures gives the game a nice variety of fight types helped even more by the occasional opportunities to whip out one of the satisfying special weapons.

And so, I give Jurassic Park Arcade for arcade machines…

A GOOD rating. Jurassic Park Arcade whips you around on a wild ride that keeps the action intense while making sure your gun use never becomes too basic. The routine incursion of some larger foe or danger that requires aiming at the ring targets focuses your attention while large groups of basic enemies lets you embrace the special weapons or wild shooting briefly. While the game does try to trick you into shooting allies a little too often, their presence also means you don’t slip into mindless blasting as there is always that small risk you’ll spin around and suddenly be firing on a friend, although there are also clear delineations between tackling one threat and starting to fire on another that usually mean you have a good point to briefly release the trigger and assess what the next task is. While there was definitely a bit more room to be imaginative with creatures like the Spinosaurus you still get to revisit plenty of recognizable Jurassic Park areas and creatures while also getting roped into interesting scenarios like the moment your parachute is pulled along by an angry pterosaur. The dinosaur saving story line is a little silly at times as the body count of humans and creatures seems to skyrocket even if you try to be charitable and say all the weapons, even the grenades, are nonlethal, but it also makes facing down the three big ticket dinosaurs a bit different than if you just had to kill them to escape to safety.

Jurassic Park Arcade is able to tap into the excitement of facing the long-extinct creatures that captivate our society still today while also making for a thrilling non-stop action experience. The confrontations with the dinosaurs are quick and dangerous but still manageable with even the basic weapon, but you have a few limited use tools if you need the help. There’s a decent rise and fall even as the game keeps surging forward to new situations as you often go from swarms to stationary shooting segments to the ring target system of fights with the titanic creatures of the past, Jurassic Park Arcade providing what most people would want to see if they sit down in a cabinet with plastic guns and dinosaurs on screen. The premise behind why you’re shooting the dinosaurs this time is a little odd, but Jurassic Park Arcade adds yet another quality action-packed shooter to the arcade for anyone who might have gotten tired of three other Jurassic shooters that had been lurking around for so long.