If it's not Jurassic Park, it's Extinct!
A Pinball Adventure 65 Million Years in the Making.
Jurassic Park is a 1993 pinball machine by Data East and John Borg, based on the hit film of the same name.
It follows the movie rather closely, showing the park's opening and its subsequent fall to the dinosaurs, with several separate modes recreating specific scenes, before the Wizard Mode, "System Failure", recreates the most famous moment of all: the park's power failing and the dinosaurs escaping and wreaking havoc.
The game's main attraction is a toy T-Rex head that follows the ball, and if it lands in its designated saucer the T-Rex bends down to snatch it in its mouth, accompanied by a sound clip of a man panicking and screaming "No!"
It had a sequel, The Lost World: Jurassic Park, released in 1997 by Sega Pinball (which had acquired Data East's pinball assets). In addition, Stern released another pinball machine based on the original film in 2019.
This pinball demonstrate the following tropes:
- Alternate Company Equivalent: It's hard to see how the two sheds on the left function and start modes, complete with the Pat Lawlor-esque bumpers/loop between them, without thinking of Whirlwind.
- The control room and its CRTs are reminiscent of the mansion and its rooms in The Addams Family.
- Anti-Frustration Feature:
- The Raptor shot propels the ball directly back at the flippers at high speed. If the ball drains immediately, a replacement is given to you.
- Some of the dinosaur targets necessary to light Tri-Ball are automatically collected when you lose balls.
- Big Door: The front gates of Jurassic Park.
- Cue the Rain: At the beginning of T-Rex Triball, to give you a heads-up that things are gonna get serious.
- Egg MacGuffin: Shoot the captive ball to tap the dinosaur egg; after a number of taps, a baby dinosaur will emerge and an award will be given.
- Golden Snitch: The jackpots in Chaos 6-ball multiball. Granted,
it's not easy, but done perfectly, this can net 1.2 billion points. Done poorly (but still done, per se), 200-400 million. Both with the opportunity to restart it and collect the bonus again. This comes after a 3-ball multiball with a 15 million progressive jackpot (can be doubled), 10 million per letter of "CHAOS", and another 50 million with a shot to T-Rex. The 3-ball multiball is guaranteed to be lit at least once by your third ball. All this on a table where the wizard mode generally weighs in at around 150-300 million. There's reasons restarting tri-ball is generally far more important than actually playing through the game modes. - Gotta Catch Them All: The player must collect all six dinosaur species to complete the map and enable T-Rex Tri-ball.
- Have You Tried Rebooting?: The "System Boot" mode, which requires the player to shoot Hammond's Bunker, Control Room, and the Power Shed to reboot the park's computer systems.C:\PARK> SYS. BOOT
- Mercy Mode: Tri-Ball will always be lit on ball 3. The Smart Missile can even be used to immediately start it.
- Mind Screw: When the "System Failure" Wizard Mode starts, the pinball machine itself briefly goes haywire before the mode starts, just like the lab computers in the movie.
- Off-the-Shelf FX: Anybody who's ever been to a museum gift shop will recognize the plastic pteranodons from the Carnegie Collection line of dinosaur toys.
- Ominous Multiple Screens: The Control Room.
- Progressive Jackpot: The T-Rex Bounty, which increases when the T-Rex is hit, up to 99.9 million points.
- The Scream: Done in the soundclip that plays when the T-Rex eats a ball.
- Shock and Awe: In "Electric Fence" mode, Timmy will become electrocuted if the player fails to hit the bumpers enough times to shut them off.
- Skill Shot: A dot-matrix-based one: waiting until the Velociraptor lines up with your crosshairs before shooting the ball.
- Smart Bomb: The Smart Missile button. Once a game, you can fire the Smart Missile to collect any currently lit shots.
- Spelling Bonus: T-R-E-X starts the T-Rex Triball, and C-H-A-O-S starts a 6-ball multiball.
- Super Spit: "Spitter Attack" has Nedry attacked by a Spitter dinosaur.
- Terrifying Tyrannosaur: The T. rex is depicted as more fearsome than many other dinosaurs: its multiball mode starts with dramatic rain appearing on the display before it attacks, and its toy on the playfield eats the ball while sound clips of a scared man crying "No!" play.
- Video Mode: At random times during the game, a dinosaur will walk across the screen. Fire the launcher gun rapidly to stun the dinosaur for 3 million points.
- Wizard Mode: "System Failure" - you've got six balls and every target is worth one million points.
- X-Ray Sparks: Fail to hit the bumpers enough on the "Electric Fence" mode, and Tim's electrocution will be shown this way.
- Hammond: "How about another tour of the park?"
