In this iteration, we’re tentatively venturing back through the cloying sands of time to an era when garishly-hued leisurewear was cool (allegedly), humongous Walkmans were utilised in lieu of iPods (these behemoths had the twofold utility of playing music and being a potent offensive weapon with which to righteously smite the delicate man-parts of any potential home-burglar) and Will Smith was still the Fresh Prince of Bel Air. 1994, in summation, the epoch in which Jurassic Park: Rampage Edition was unleashed on Sega’s Megadrive/Genesis.
An action/platformer hybrid, Rampage Edition finds us assuming the role of either legendary quip-dispensing paleontologist Dr Alan Grant or a Velociraptor. (It’s a Spielburgian check my massive dino-genitalia out Raptor, naturellement, bereft with scientific inaccuracy. Because, presumably, a pitiful chase scene with our heroes beset by diminutive feathery chicken-things would not evoke the ball-bruising blockbuster nature the movies reveled in. Artistic license would be the term to employ; as would utter, unadulterated BS-ery and lies.) Because, developer BlueSky Software allege, the choice betwixt playing as a vicious, crotch-chewing dinosaur and a pixel-mess middle-aged doctor is a difficult one.
It is incumbent upon you, as man or beast alike, to escape the stricken Isla Nublar. The Costa Rican military, it transpires, have mixed feelings about the prospect of rampant dinosaurs having prehistoric sexy-sex, multiplying and eating everybody’s faces right off, just for the sake of an elderly Scottish gentleman with an awful beard and his amusement park. As such, they have concluded that the most efficacious means to curtail this threat is to bomb the island to buggery and back. Twice. Formidable, resilient and deadly as dinosaurs may be, they don’t appreciate numerous ballistic missiles in their delicate eyeballs (and nor, having crash-landed back on the infernal island you were just fleeing as Grant, do you). Your problems are further exacerbated by nefarious InGen agents, who have freshly arrived into this humongous crapstorm in an attempt to accrue dinosaur DNA before its destruction.
It’s a fleeting action platformer, then, with an emphasis upon gun/big ol’ claws combat. Your foes constitute dino-beasts, tiny blurry green guys and… tiny blurry blue guys (soldiers and InGen agents respectively). It’s as aesthetically uninspiring as you’d expect from its decrepit age -Rampage Edition is an incontinent, screeching, senile pensioner in video game years- but retains some novel appeal for its toon-tinged violence and the obviously anomalous locales.
“Ice world, fire world, all those usual platforming tropes? Those suck monkey nuts. We’re going to traverse a pterodactyl-beset aviary, Raptor Rapids on a piteous little terror-urine stained raft, ride a Triceratops and other such wonderment,” proclaimed Jurassic Park: Rampage Edition. A sentient, chunky video game cartridge is quite a remarkable sight, as I’m sure you’ll attest. So, too, is shooting an encroaching pack of Velociraptors with a flamethrower/electricity gun of some sort and watching the resultant burning to ashes/familiar skeleton-fying electrocution effect. Indubitably one of my favorite digital dalliances of the era.
Image(s) source: www.gamefaqs.com
