Whereas Jurassic Park Part 2: The Chaos Continues for the Game Boy was fairly standard as far as platformers of the day go, Ocean Software displayed a bit more ambition when creating a sequel to Jurassic Park for the Super Nintendo Entertainment System. This is especially apparent in the game’s opening moments:

While not especially impressive by today’s standards, one must bear in mind that this animated and voiced opening cutscene came from a standard Super NES game cartridge — a rare feat not often attempted.

The story differs from that of its Game Boy counterpart, introducing the rival to John Hammond’s InGen corporation, BioSyn, as the chief antagonistic force. Hammond had hoped to regain control of the island, but after his forces had been overrun by dinosaurs, BioSyn’s decided to move in. This led to Hammond recruiting Dr. Alan Grant to help him once more, due to his familiarity with the island and its prehistoric inhabitants. Joining him in 2-player mode is Tactical Sergeant Michael Wolfskin, and together, they try to stop BioSyn from stealing all of InGen’s research data.

The game is a run ‘n gun affair, not entirely unlike Contra, with the players fighting to take out dinosaurs and BioSyn agents alike. Unlike most entries in the aforementioned series, however, you’re equipped with multiple weapons at the start, and not all of them feature unlimited ammo. What’s more, not all weapons are lethal — you wouldn’t want to needlessly harm Hammond’s expensive investments, would you? However, more dangerous elements such as the tyrannosaurus and velociraptors are fair game, due to how “unsafe” and “financially unfeasible” they are to be kept on the island.

The game also differs in featuring more exploratory elements, with players looking for passages through the background that weave them through the jungle. You’ll also notice a health meter, further differing it from the one hit = one kill style of Konami’s classic. But even so, Jurassic Park Part 2: The Chaos Continues remains quite a challenging game, even with its different difficulty levels to choose from.

Collectively, it seems that these Jurassic Park games we’ve looked at in this series aren’t altogether unfeasible as far as a possibility of re-release is concerned. All parties involved are still around in some form or another today; the question is more a matter of if the parties involved have any real interest in doing so.

Universal Pictures and Amblin Entertainment are, of course, still the steward for the movies and the franchise at large, with the latest in the series, Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom, arriving in U.S. theaters on Friday, June 22nd. Meanwhile, Ocean Software would be acquired by Infogrames in the year following this release, and following various other mergers, renamings, and acquisitions, seems to now be a part of the company known as Atari, SA.

The Jurassic Park license has since bounced around quite a few times over the years, though one could argue it was never particularly stable in terms of video game publishing to begin with — SEGA handled titles for their own platforms of the day, while Universal Interactive created 3DO and online games, for example, and that’s just with regards to games preceding The Lost World: Jurassic Park‘s release.

With newer movies and newer technology advancing both sides of the coin all the time, along with stories such as Jurassic Park Part 2: The Chaos Continues being stricken from the official canon, the question seemingly becomes more about whether they see any profitable side to re-releasing these titles, or any relevance to fans in today’s market.

In other words, from the standpoint of those controlling the IP and the software, it becomes less a question of whether they could and more a matter of if they should.