The only real small flaws are that there’s a few too many sequences where a swarm of bugs flies at you and that it’s sometimes confusing as to when friendly fire is and isn’t enabled.Īlso, as a longtime Jurassic Park fan, I’m a bit miffed that Spinosaurus gets top billing as the final boss. I also enjoy the little touches of personality, especially the bit when a Stegosaurus whomps a bunch of portaloos, sending toilets flying through the air that you must blast in time.Īs an arcade game there’s a few minor credit chomping difficult spikes but by and large it’s fair – if you really practised I’m sure you could one-credit the game. The dinosaurs are a bit sexed up for the game, with the big predators having noticeably larger teeth and inexplicably glowing eyes. Along the way you blast a tonne of Velociraptors, and have run-ins with Dilophosaurs, Archaeopteryx and Brachiosaurs (among many others). The game is set on Isla Nublar where you’re tasked with capturing three dinosaurs: Triceratops, Tyrannosaurus and Spinosaurus. A fixed gun shooter, it clearly takes heavy inspiration from Sega’s The Lost World, combining rapid Raptor attacks with chase sequences in which you must blast areas (usually the mouths) of large dinosaurs as they attack. On top of that, their other cabinet I have the most experience with is Terminator Salvation, and I’m not a fan.īut Raw Thrills knocked it out of the park with Jurassic Park Arcade. When it comes to light gun games I’m a Sega purist, having grown up with Virtua Cop and The House of the Dead. I’ve got to admit, I was a little wary of developer Raw Thrills at first. I played most of it in the Namco Funscape down on the South Bank of the Thames, but polished off its final stages in a Taito Game Station in Shinjuku, Tokyo. This is a fairly common machine to see in arcades and, thanks to its user-friendly stage and sequence select options, I’ve been picking away at a few levels every time I see it. That all changed in 2015, when arcade specialists Raw Thrills released Jurassic Park Arcade. Also I don't know what InGen put in that frog DNA, bit it's almost comical how literally the entire fauna you come across is hellbent on killing you, I know it seems like a stupid thing to say considering this a shooting-gallery and well, the things you shoot have to attack, but it rather than dinos they feel like the aliens from Space Invaders, except I believe even those would have a bit more of self-preservation.With Sega unwilling to re-license their classic 1997 light gun shooter The Lost World for any kind of home release, there’s been slim pickings for anyone desperate to blast rampaging dinosaurs in a rail shooter. Even the little quick time events or moments where you have to shoot a specific part of a dino feel like a chore rather than an interesting challenge. There is some enemy variety here and there, but almost every encounters consists of the pesky raptors attacking you, and with one or two exceptions, the rest of enemy tipes also act the same way, and many of them only appear for one levels only! Even if the context of the shooting or where it happening changes, it doesn’t change the fact that it just feels too samey and unoriginal. While as I said, the set pieces and encounters are pretty damn original, they are always a variation of the same thing: shoot at velociraptors that are charging at you. The game is a true spectacle, and while yeah, it has a ton of flash, it forgot the substance at home. The game doesn't take the original movie's plot to heart, and rather it does a kind of parallel story, which grants it A TON more of creative liberty and leads to some actually fun and creative moments, still clearly based around The Lost World, but did that movie had a part where a bunch of velociraptors where going after a dude in a motorbike and the main characters had to shoot them down? Yeah, that's what I though! Boss fights were also a highlight for me, overall some can even drag a bit, but once again the encounters and set pieces are incredible, shout-outs to the Carnosaurus boss fight, loved that big son of a bitch. It still has some pretty damn good meat on its fossil tho: visually it holds up surprisingly well, they are not the most impressing arcade graphics ever, but they do have some charm and aside from some ugly graphic tiles on some floors, is actually pretty cool and visually distinct tho this last point is expected, seeing how it has a surprising amount of different set pieces of locations. While I'm extremely happy to say that yeah, it's a pretty good rail-shooter based on a pre-existing property, I can't really call it amazing, especially because as it goes on, it keeps losing steam.
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