The Other, Better, Jurassic Park 2
Jurassic Park might have been the closest cinematic experience that my peers and I got to Star Wars. The combination of special effects, action sequences, and memorable characters blew our minds and made us rethink what was possible in a movie.
But unlike Star Wars, the Jurassic franchise started to sour with its first sequel. Despite director Steven Spielberg adapting another Michael Crichton novel, this time with a cast that included a returning Jeff Goldblum and talented additions like Vince Vaughn and Julianne Moore, 1997’s The Lost World: Jurassic Park is thoroughly underwhelming. It’s a nonsensical mess strung together by an insulting plot and a central cast that isn’t as likable as the dinosaurs threatening to eat them.
Admittedly, I still enjoy the very, very stupid sequence in which a T-Rex somehow steers a boat onto the San Diego shore, escapes, and runs wild through the streets, but it’s impossible to defend. Among other things, how does the giant lizard manage to pull the boat into the dock all by himself? My stepdad’s into boats, and I’ve seen them go into docks. You need like two or three guys.
Even if you put that insane third act aside, the movie sucks in many ways that are less exciting than a T-Rex playing Godzilla for a minute. For one, very few characters make it back from the original. At one point, we see Ian Malcom’s stepdaughter doing gymnastics at a raptor and saving the day. And there’s, no shit, a part where John William’s iconic theme is used to score John Hammond crossing a room in his pajamas.
I only just recently gave some attention to 1995’s The Chaos Continues, the Jurassic Park sequel in the form of a video game that came out two years earlier than The Lost World. It’s no masterpiece, but it is a hell of a better follow-up to the original JP.
The best and worst thing about the SNES version of this game might be how good the opening cinematic is. The scene tells of BioSyn, a rival company to InGen that gets their own bright idea to go in guns blazing and steal stuff from Jurassic Park before their plan all goes to shit. One of the greatest cinematics I’ve seen on the system, it feels like a snapshot of some long-forgotten Jurassic Park Saturday morning cartoon we never got. It’s colorful and expressive like my childhood favorites G.I. Joe and Batman: The Animated Series.
It looks incredible, and once the dust settles the game is a pretty competent and challenging mid-90s run and gun platformer, completely on par with contemporaries like Alien3, Contra 3, and others that don’t have a 3 in their title.
JP2: TheCC figured you would read the manual for this game, which was a fair enough assumption in 1995. Sadly, I played it on my Steam Deck in 2024, so I missed a whole chunk of the plot. When I looked it up online, the book explained that John Hammond, possibly in his pajamas, dispatched Dr. Alan Grant and a man named Michael Wolfskin (seriously) to the island to deal with the BioSyn asses.
Without that information, and since the Alan Grant sprite looks nothing like Alan Grant, I genuinely played this game for a long time thinking I was some asshole that was just rolling up on Jurassic Park and shooting dinosaurs. It turns out I was Alan Grant shooting a bunch of dinosaurs. And that, reader, has made all the difference.
It really is worth harping on the Grant sprite for a minute, though. I’m not expecting a photorealistic depiction on the Super Nintendo, but jet-black hair ain’t it, dudes. Grant looks more like Malcom, Gennaro, or Nedry. Odd choice.
The levels are a varied affair of SNES action stuff—jumping, shooting, figuring out where you’re supposed to be going, repeat. But there are some real highlights throughout. The chase scene in the second half of the T-Rex level is a capital S Set Piece, and probably the coolest thing I’ve seen in any Jurassic Park video game.
In addition to dinosaurs, Grant (who successfully got Timmy and Lexi through the park and back to safety in Jurassic Park) also kills a lot of guys in this game! Men with machine guns and flamethrowers, but no doubt spouses and children as well. Are we really so different from the Tyrannosaurus? I don’t know! I prefer to think that there’s a time for digging and a time for shooting. Dr. Grant just knows the difference is all.
Overall, the SNES version of The Chaos Continues is a solid game that’s too hard for a baby like me. But the plot of Alan Grant and The Man They Call Wolfskin defending the park from human intruders is engaging and runs circles around the story of The Lost World.
Jurassic Park 2: The Chaos Continues’ Game Boy edition, meanwhile, is about Alan Grant being left behind on Jurassic Park for some reason. This premise is a little wonky and underdeveloped, but it continues the trend of besting the films by being a much more convincing Alan Grant nightmare than the time he dreamt a raptor was talking to him. It’s still not as ridiculous as the time Ian Malcom’s stepdaughter does gymnastics to a velociraptor. Seriously. What the hell was that, man?
The handheld version of this game is a delightful shooter/platformer. You explore each level and search for enough keycards to open the gate at the end. The levels land somewhere between a straightforward Super Mario Bros. platformer and a sprawling Metroidvania. It’s simplistic in a lot of ways, but I think it suits this version of the game quite well.
Remember in the original Jurassic Park, when one of the first things that happens once we start seeing dinosaurs is Grant and Ellie tending to a sick triceratops? Remember how it establishes Ellie’s expertise, and Grant lays on the belly of the sick beast, showing both the awe and respect he has for the creatures? Well, forget that, because in Jurassic Park 2 for the Game Boy, it’s on-sight with the triceratops, raptors, and anything else. Sorry, guys. It's only because you’re healthy and running towards me. I’ll lay on your corpse’s bellies and pray for you.
The level where the T-Rex chases you on foot is inspired, and a lot more exciting than most levels found in Game Boy games. It suffers from that god damned zoomed-in Game Boy screen, however, as it becomes too tricky to tell which path you’re supposed to take as the prick chases you. Other levels have you in the jungle, underwater, and inside of buildings. The game gets a lot of mileage out of the system’s four shades of green when it comes to bringing all of these locations to life.
Unsurprisingly, the Game Boy version is a little lighter on the narrative. It all boils down to some kind of ATM-type screen giving you your missions and providing the backstory. I never figured out who it was. John Hammond? Someone from InGen? Or was it just a self-aware machine, like the one that insults Stephen King at the beginning of Maximum Overdrive?
Truth be told, both versions of Jurassic Park 2: The Chaos Continues are probably just as stupid as Jurassic Park: The Lost World, but I find their brand of stupidity to be grounded and appropriate. No heroic gymnastics, no grandiose pajama walks, and no T-Rex’s steering ships across the Pacific. Just classic platforming, shooting, and a body count that puts the rest of the franchise to shame.