In the early to mid-90s, Jurassic Park was big business, and every company who had a piece of the license was understandably fully intent on capitalizing on it to the fullest.
However, there was something of a problem with that: Once they’d adapted the 1993 movie, where do you go from there? The Lost World, author Michael Crichton’s official sequel to the original novel, wouldn’t be published until the later part of 1995, and the motion picture version wouldn’t arrive for another two years after that. So naturally, everyone from toy manufacturers to comic book publishers would create their own continuations of the story, and the video game business was no different.
Whereas SEGA would opt to revamp their original game with new content taken from the original novel, Ocean went full-bore into sequel territory, complete with a “2” in the title of their Game Boy and Super Nintendo Entertainment System releases (though this was simply “Part 2” in the North American releases). In a departure from where Crichton would go in his follow-up with Dr. Ian Malcolm, players would once again take on the role of Dr. Alan Grant, who for reasons not made particularly clear in the Game Boy version, is back in Jurassic Park one year after the events of the first movie.
“You won the battle, get ready for the war” reads the back of the box, as Grant seems to be less about surviving the island and more about ensuring nothing else does. Jurassic Park Part 2: The Chaos Continues seems to take some cues from the SEGA versions of the game by forgoing its predecessor’s top-down view in favor of side-scrolling shooting and platforming action, pitting the player against the usual gang of dino-suspects, from the triceratops to the tyrannosaurus rex, and various pests in between throughout four zones.
Interestingly, the story and action for this version of the title varies considerably more from its Super NES counterpart than the original trinity of games we saw last week. Next week, we’ll delve more into how.
