Episode 454: Jurassic Park Games
Added 2022-05-06 07:01:01 +0000 UTCIt's time for a podcast 65 million years in the making! Or maybe two months—who can say? We've already covered Steven Spielberg's 1993 blockbuster, but unfortunately didn't have enough time to talk about the many games loosely based on it. So, for the sake of being thorough, this week we're devoting 90 minutes to a series of adaptations that mostly turn reluctant hero Dr. Alan Grant into a stone-cold murderer that recently emerged from the killbot factory. On this episode, join Bob Mackey, Jeremy Parish, and Stuart Gipp as the crew explores a series of games rockier than Isla Nublar itself.
Comments
To be fair, none of us did! - Bob
Retronauts
2022-05-16 17:13:08 +0000 UTCBob doesn't like a Genesis game? Shocker!
David G
2022-05-11 14:51:45 +0000 UTCI remember liking Alien 3 on snes… I love the premise of being a vulnerable ordinary human in an infested space station / island / prison planet where all the regular life support systems have failed and you need to restore them to affect some sort of escape. So this involves backtracking across hostile terrain to repair fuse boxes or rescue people across a sizable map. Except Alien3’s level design is just platforms and ladders with no rhyme or reason. Shame because the graphics and music are cool. Jurassic Park the movie is also in this vein - here’s all this automation and control that has collapsed because Nedry has sabotaged it and a decent part of the movie is restoring power to get the radios working to send a distress signal. Except the SNES game has you collecting thirty or so dinosaur eggs that are scattered across the island and Megadrive is a side scrolling action platformer with light puzzle elements. Yawn. Then again, Nintendo spent three or so years on Zelda LTTP to make a game that’s full of things which is NOT a luxury licensed games had. Sorry if this is ranty but the games I seem to be playing today (stardew valley, Tunic, Elden Ring) have all had gestation periods longer than the service life of the SNES. Lots of these 8-16 bit era map designs are "well we got a character running around on the screen and shooting stuff ... scatter some tokens around the map and call it done".
John Simon
2022-05-09 07:15:27 +0000 UTC
