Jurassic Park Classic Games Collection Reviews
While the title included might have been good in the 90s, the Jurassic Park Classic Games Collection doesn't quite hold up today. You do get a decent amount of games, some are pretty similar, and other than the SNES version, few are as fun to play as they were back then.
Jurassic Park Classic Games Collection is really rather sad. It looks and feels cheap, the drought of available options is stark, and the fact they couldn’t even include save states or rewind options without being extremely frugal about it is audacious at the very least. To top it off, all six games - masquerading as seven - are garbage. Pure, utter garbage. Yes, even the ones you remember.
Much like the movies, the Jurassic Park Classic Games Collection takes a couple good ideas and stretches them way out. If you’re a diehard fan, you might have a great time diving into each iteration of Alan Grant’s murder safari. For me, these games were mostly penance. My childhood fixation was used as leverage, cracking open the door to let in this hodgepodge of mediocre slurry. Unless you’re an absolute freak for the Jurassic Park franchise, I can’t in good conscience recommend this collection of games.
The Jurassic Park: Classic Games Collection serves up seven slices of old-school dino action in a package that suffers from its focus on the 8- and 16-bit eras. Yes, it's great to have these old games all gathered up and available to play with some quality-of-life additions, you can't knock them too hard for being clunky by today's standards, and nostalgia may add a few points to the overall score below if you're an Isla Nublar mega-fan, but there's no avoiding the fact that the experiences here haven't aged particularly well.
Jurassic Park Classic Games Collection is a bare-bones collection featuring the early days of Jurassic Park games. While there are some minimal quality-of-life enhancements added to the overall product, it's the same we expect from all retro collections these days and does nothing to stand out like other offerings have. Jurassic Park Classic Games Collection is good for people who don't have the time or money to track down the consoles and games themselves and just want to play the games on modern hardware.
While Jurassic Park Classic Games Collection is a lovely bit of games preservation, the lack of behind the scenes material or any other extras make for a fairly perfunctory package. Not quite one big pile of, y'know, but evidently, some expense has been spared here.
The Jurassic Park Classic Games Collection is a celebration of thirty years of Jurassic Park that offers almost all the direct adaptations of the first film in a single package.
Review in Italian | Read full review
The best and most notable Jurassic Park games tend to be management sims since they lean heavily on the core ideas of films and novels. Adapting the movie as generic action platformers was limiting since there was no shortage of them in the 90s. Gamers who are interested in more enjoyable dinosaur-themed retro action games would be better off with Dino Crisis or the Turok titles.
Unfortunately, you can only work with what the era of Pogs and Blockbusters gave you and the Jurassic Park Classic Games Collection is a collection of titles mostly for novelty and nostalgia value. There is fun to be had if you are the type of person with a hankering for some raptor spankering, but likely, this will leave most newcomers feeling a little lost and underwhelmed by the difficulty and lack of features to make all on offer here more accessible.
Jurassic Park Classic Games Collection is a bit of a disappointment on all fronts. The games themselves just aren’t all that fun to play any more. And even if you do manage to eke some entertainment out of them, the package overall is very basic, with no museum-like content or extras to make the games more appealing to return to. Unless you’re an ardent Jurassic Park fan hellbent on having access to these games on modern formats, you’d be wise to think twice before parting with your hard-earned money.
Ultimately Jurassic Park Classic Games Collection is a collection that will appeal to fans. Newcomers who want to try out some of these classic games should rather wait for a sale because paying full price for this collection of games will leave a sour taste in their mouths. Especially since this is a very barebones package with barely any additional features. Some concept artwork or developer commentary would have been nice to have or even some more options to change the screen size and level of CRT filter applied would have been appreciated. Grab the Jurassic Park Classic Games Collection only if you’re a diehard fan or you want to experience the two Sega titles.
As far as how well these Jurassic Park titles stand the test of time, you could argue that they kind of don’t.
With Jurassic Park: Classic Games Collection, Limited Run Games resurrects a solid batch of 30-year-old 2D action-platformers and top-down action games, most of which are still fun to play. The quality-of-life improvements do make the gameplay experience more accessible to modern gamers (and to those who never finished them back then), but some curious omissions and ancient design decisions hamper it. Even so, these games did capture a small part of the cultural zeitgeist and are worth checking out, even today. So welcome back to Jurassic Park.
If the intention of this collection was to preserve the (mixed-at-best) legacy of the original Jurassic Park‘s tie-in releases, then I feel more worked should had been put into it. As it stands, this is not a terrible first attempt from Limited Run Games in terms of remastering and emulating games, but they do need to improve upon the amount of extras and title variety included in their compilations.
A collection of obscure Jurassic Park games that adds a unique bug and is lacking options may not sound very appealing, but it does allow for personal re-examination through an overall successful preservation.
Jurassic Park Classic Games Collection is a very interesting compilation for Jurassic Park fans. It recovers the first games that accompanied Steven Spielberg's film and its fictional sequels, forming a compilation of 8 and 16-bit games in which a couple more games are missing. The quality of life improvements are appreciated and are great for some of the games. If you like what surrounds the Jurassic Park phenomenon, and you want to know the first titles with which the franchise started in the world of video games, don't miss it.
Review in Spanish | Read full review
At the end of it all, I had fun with the Jurassic Park Classic Games Collection. The games are an unusual mixture of difficult yet intriguing experiences; some hit the mark while others certainly didn’t. Little has been done to make the games more accessible outside of save states and a rewind button. With that, it makes it hard to recommend for everyone. If you utterly love Jurassic Park or want an affordable way to play some obscure retro games without going to the expense of finding the original cart or hardware, then this Jurassic Park Classic Games Collection is worth the price of entry. My inner child was certainly happy I got to experience the games.
The Jurassic Park Classic Games Collection is a decent way to play seven old games but doesn't do anything to celebrate the titles or franchise they come from.