The Lost World: Jurassic Park is a 1997 side-scrolling platformer action-adventure Jurassic Park game developed by DreamWorks Interactive for the Sony PlayStation and Appaloosa Interactive for the Sega Saturn, adapted from the film of the same name. In 1998, a modified special edition was released that added bonus content. The soundtrack is notable not only for being one of the earliest video game soundtracks to feature recorded orchestral instruments instead of MIDI or other synthetic music files, but also one of the first composed by Michael Giacchino, who would later return to the franchise with Jurassic World.
There are five playable characters: the Compsognathus, Dieter Stark (Human Hunter), the Velociraptor, the T. rex, and Sarah Harding (Human Prey). Players face off against a wide range of environmental obstacles, other dinosaurs, and humans in a fairly non-linear storyline.
Also released by Appaloosa Interactive in 1997 was a 16-bit version for the Sega Genesis. This game, completely different from the 32-bit version, featured a birdseye point of view, and gameplay-wise was not unlike the Jurassic Park game for the Super Nintendo Entertainment System.
This game provides examples of:
- Abandoned Area: The Ingen facilities in the Human Hunter and Raptor stages, combined with No OSHA Compliance.
- Adaptational Badass: Sarah Harding, who goes from being an animal behavioralist to something of a one-woman army, mowing down Velociraptors while running from the Rex and even taking down two T. rexes on the ship.
- Advancing Boss of Doom: Sarah cannot kill the Rexes on her first two levels thus must distract them with flares and knock them back with grenades while she flees.
- And Now for Someone Completely Different: The Human Hunter section begins where the Compy section ends, the Raptor section begins where the Human Hunter section ends, the Rex section begins where the Raptor section ends, and Sarah Harding's section begins where the Rex's section ends.
- Ascended Extra: Combined with Spared by the Adaptation. Dieter Stark, whose main purpose in the film was to be a dumb Jerkass, get lost, and end up Compy chow, gets an entire playable level here where he battles his way past not only compies, but prehistoric crocodiles and Baryonyx, in addition to being the boss character on the compy's level.
- Battle Amongst the Flames: The Raptor's levels "The Burn Zone", "Into The Fire", and especially its boss level "Eye Of Chaos" — where it fights a Euoplocephalus — all take place during a forest fire. The first two Rex levels, "Aftermath" and "Force Of Nature", take place in the fire's aftermath, but there are patches of cinders that can literally burn through your health.
- Beating A Dead Player: Enemies will continue to attack you after you've been killed.
- Beneath the Earth: Many of the levels take place in caves, caverns, and mines.
- The Berserker: During the dinosaur stages, the game rewards this with an "Instinct Gauge" in the shape of an eye. Killing every enemy you come across in rapid succession will cause the eye to go from green with a round pupil to red with a slitted pupil and increase the damage done by your attacks. However, if you stop fighting then the gauge will gradually decrease and the eye will go back to green.
- Bullying a Dragon: The Carnotaurus level begins with the Compy attacking it and waking it up.
- Calling Your Attacks: When the hunters fire grenades at the Tyrannosaurus, they will often shout out it.
- Cannibalism Superpower: The dinosaurs regain health by eating their enemies. The T. rex can even swallow smaller prey whole.
- Canon Immigrant: Nearly 3 decades before their Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom motion picture debut, Allosaurus, Carnotaurus, and Baryonyx were all featured together in this game.
- Completion Mockery: Get every DNA item, and you get a cutscene of Jeff Goldblum telling you to turn off the game and do something else with your life.
- Counter-Attack: Human Hunters during the Rex levels will wait until you're lunging at them before shooting you in the mouth with a grenade launcher.
- Crouch and Prone: Crouching with the Compy will change its attacks, causing it to slither across the ground and snap upwards with its jaws, lunge forward snapping its jaws, or... roll in place while squeaking.
- Cycle of Hurting:
- Some of the toxic plants in the Compy levels are positioned so that if you land between them you'll get bounced back and forth by recoil damage until you die.
- In the first Raptor level some of the Human Hunters come equipped with nerve gas, which stun-locks you and deals massive damage. The hunters have a habit of waiting until you're stuck in a pit or have fallen through a collapsing balcony before firing multiple canisters at you.
- The platforming sections in the Human Hunter and Raptor levels have stalagmites that do the same thing as the Compy's plants.
- Deadly Lunge:
- One of the Compy's attacks lets it lunge forward while slashing with its claws, letting it simultaneously move forward quickly while also rapidly attacking any enemies in its path.
- The Raptor can pounce on enemies. If it does so from behind, it will knock them over and pin them.
- Defeat Means Playable: The final boss of the Compy level is Dieter Stark, who becomes the next player-controlled character.
- Dem Bones: The game over screen displays the skeleton of the player character. Each character's opening briefing also ends on camera footage of a skeleton of each species.
- Die, Chair, Die!: You can smash through boxes and whatnot, though they're just as likely to contain bombs as power ups.
- Disturbing Statistic: The Raptor intro video has a "victim census", which lists the total death toll that the InGen hunters have presumably observed to have been caused by the Velociraptor population so far… and it's not only terrifyingly massive (grand total of 1,786 fatalities over what is implied to be far less than a single day), it includes several genera that are fellow predators, much larger than any Velociraptor, or both. In descending order:
- Orodromeus: 891.
- Compsognathus: 224.
- Baryonyx: 178.
- Dimetrodon: 102.
- Parasuchus* : 89.note
- Deinonychus: 81.note
- Dimorphodon: 71.
- Triceratops: 52.
- Stegosaurus: 24.
- Humans: 23.note
- Carnotaurus: 18.
- Allosaurus: 11.
- Euplocephalus: 10.
- Brachiosaurus* : 9.
- Tyrannosaurus rex* : 2.
- Mollysaurus* : 1.
- Do Not Drop Your Weapon: Dieter and Sarah will not drop their guns no matter what.
- Eating the Enemy: The Compy, Raptor, and Rex can regain health by devouring enemies.
- Everything Is Trying to Kill You: Dinosaurs, poisonous plants, crumbling rocks, forest fires... all aiming to take your life.
- Fanfare: Sarah Harding has one.
- Freeze-Frame Bonus: The introductory cutscenes have loads of text that can only be seen if you pause at the right time.
- The Compsognathus intro in particular includes foreshadowing for the Brachiosaurus level and a Breaking the Fourth Wall joke.
- The Human Hunter's intro's scanning of InGen's employee database has the job descriptions get ridiculous, with "Brown, M." being listed as "Lord of the Dance", "Savage, Doc" being listed as "Mighty Adventurer", and "Piaseckyj P." being listed as a possible BioSyn spy.
- Giant Foot of Stomping: The Brachiosaurus migration level consists of the Compy trying to avoid getting stepped on.
- Harmless Villain: Orodromeus, which appears in the first two Compy levels, are completely harmless. The only way they can injure the player is if they bump you into poison plants.
- 100% Completion: Collecting all of the DNA will unlock a video from Ian Malcolm, who congratulates the player by telling them to get a life before being chased off by a dinosaur.
- Infinite Supplies: Dieter Stark and Sarah Harding have a limitless supply of tranq darts.
- In the Back: The Raptor will knock down humans and dinosaurs of a comparable size if it pounces on them from behind.
- Just Eat Him: The Rex's lunge grabs smaller prey in its mouth, where it can either be tossed, slammed to the ground, or swallowed whole to regain health.
- Killer Rabbit: The Compy is tiny and cute but deadly nevertheless, as are several of the enemies it faces.
- Lightning Bruiser: The Raptor is fast, acrobatic, strong, and has a variety of attacks that let it quickly take down enemies.
- Lethal Lava Land: Most of the Raptor's levels and the first of the Rex's take place during a forest fire, with patches of superheated coals that rapidly burn through your health.
- Logo Joke: In the DreamWorks Interactive opening, the kid on the moon feels a tug on his fishing rod, excitedly says "I got something!"... and is promptly yanked headfirst off the moon as a Velociraptor shrieks. This is referenced during the end-game cutscene, where the camera pans over a pair of raptors before panning up to show the boy on the moon.
- Mighty Roar: The dinosaurs can be made to.... well, the Compy doesn't really do anything but squeak cutely and the Raptor can be made to caw, but the Rex... now that's a roar!
- Mirror Match: The Deinonychus enemies are simply weaker pallet swaps of the Velociraptor.
- Monstrous Cannibalism: While Deinonychus are the enemies of the second and third Raptor levels, the fourth Raptor level pits you against other Velociraptors, which you can eat to regain health.
- Mook Horror Show: The introductory cinematic for the Raptor ends with a first-person display of a terrified hunter running for his life while being pursued by a pack of raptors, an Aliens-style motion detector/radar screen indicating just how screwed he is.
- Mythology Gag:
- One of the employees that flashes past in the Human Hunter's intro is listed as a "Possible BioSyn Spy". BioSyn was InGen's rival in the first film, and was responsible for Nedry's sabotage, by bribing him to disable the park security and take the DNA of each dinosaur off-island, and were the major antagonists in the The Lost World's novel, instead of InGen's hunter team.
- One excised level for the Rex had it swimming underwater, with the concept art for this showing it preparing to attack a raft. This mirrors a scene from the first novel.
- The map of Isla Sorna more closely resembles the one
◊ from the novel than the one◊ from the film (namely, by having a more square outline and steep sides from being a dormant volcano crater instead of the more jagged border from the film version). - Much like in the first film, the T. rex is easily distracted by flares.
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Nintendo Hard: The Updated Re-release may help mitigate some issues, but this is a game that does not play nice at all if you're not careful.- Notoriously, the original PS1 release didn't have a save feature, which made it impossible to keep your place unless you took note of the level cheat codes at the beginning of each stage.
- Not the Fall That Kills You…: Fall damage is merciless and can easily one-shot characters who misjudge a leap.
- No Plot? No Problem!: There is only the vaguest storyline for Dieter Stark and Sarah Harding.
- One-Hit Kill:
- If the Carnotaurus catches the Compy, it will stomp on it, then toss it into the air and eat it. Getting stomped by a Brachiosaur is also an instant kill.
- Pouncing on an opponent from behind as the Raptor will knock enemies of a similar size to the ground and pin them, enabling the Raptor to gut them with its talons or rip their throats out with its fangs. Both attacks are instant-kills.
- Oxygenated Underwater Bubbles: Air pockets will be a godsend in the underwater Compy levels.
- Press X to Die: While fighting a T-rex on the second boss level, you have to hit your vehicle on it while it is stunned to send the dinosaur into an electric fence. Try to bump into the dino without stunning it and you'll get eaten.
- Scenery Porn: While the game's graphics are nothing to write home about now, the sheer number of set pieces is breathtaking.
- Shout-Out: Doc Savage works for InGen!
- Signature Roar: The Raptor has its iconic caw, and the Rex has its signature bellow.
- Spared by the Adaptation: Dieter's chapter does not end in death-by-Compy.
- Stalactite Spite: Several of the cavern levels have these.
- Stance System: The Compy's attacks will change depending on whether it is crouched, standing normally, or standing upright.
- Take That, Audience!: Beating the game 100% unlocks a video from Jeff Goldblum in-character as Ian Malcolm... telling the player to stop wasting their life, go outside, and do something more productive with their time and is promptly chased off by a dinosaur.
- A Taste of Power: The Special Edition's first level has you playing as Rexy the Tyrannosaurus during the Isla Nublar Incident before plunking you down as the Compy.
- Taunt Button: When playing as the Raptor, one of the buttons will cause it to caw. When playing as the Rex, that same button will cause it to roar.
- Took a Shortcut: There are several levels where you can take a side path, and it's necessary to get 100% completion, though this can veer into Ridiculously Difficult Route.
- 2½D: The game is mostly side-scrolling with 3D environments and character models.
- Under the Sea: The second-last of the Compy's levels, "Beneath the Surface", take place in a swamp, where there is constant danger of running out of air or getting nommed on by Parasuchus.
- Updated Re-release: The Special Edition, which added a bonus Rex level set during the events of Jurassic Park (1993), gave the characters more health, and added checkpoints.
- Walking Armory: Dieter Stark and Sarah Harding can acquire a range of weapons, including tranquilizers, nerve gas canisters, timed explosives, flamethrower napalm, a grenade launcher, high caliber full auto rounds, and flares.
- Writing Around Trademarks: Dieter Stark is never identified by name and his appearance is derived from his action figure as opposed to his film actor.
- Your Size May Vary: Dimorphodon appears the same size in proportion to the Compy as it does to the later characters, even though the Compy is smaller than the rest of the cast. This is in contrast to other recurring enemies like Staurikosaurus, which tower over you as a compy but are shrimps compared to the raptor.
