Presumably, dinosaurs have fascinated people since the first massive bones were dug up. They were more or mostly less successfully depicted in movies as early as 1914, 1933’s King Kong being one of the more memorable and impressive depictions. For whatever reason, the early 90s were the time to revisit this theme, and some cartoons that one might find charming were they growing up at the time, the most obvious and most lasting impact was certainly done by 1993’s Jurassic Park. Naturally, the burgeoning industry of video games, was not going to sit it out on the sidelines. The 16-bit era was in full swing, and Sega’s Genesis catered exactly to the crowd that would be greatful for it.

Both the regular, and the Rampage Edition of the Genesis games are currently listed as abandonware, and can be downloaded to play on an emulator of your choice. As would be tradition of the time, the game is naturally a sidescrolling shooter with a Jurassic coat of paint. This is an interesting showcase of what we would within a few years consider a game expansion pack, given that the majority of the work was already done in the first game. It makes great use of the Genesis’ colour palette to deliver a very gritty look to the game, even though the synthesizer chip, can’t quite give you the John Williams backdrop you might expect.

Neither the movie, nor this game made as much of an impact, neither at the cinema, nor on the console market. But, given the shared universe, themes, and some actors, it’s a good way to see how a different developer approaches the problem of depicting them in their game.

Tresspasser is perhaps the most famous failure of the Jurassic Park franchise in general (not mentioning the misguided movie sequels). Steven Spielberg was very active in trying to expand into other media, and supported various projects, some of which stood the test of time in animation, as well as in video games, but sadly, Tresspasser wasn’t one of them. While we may joke about the misguided diagetic healthbar (if you know, you know), the game itself was a bridge too far of far reaching ideas that wouldn’t come to fruition until many years later, only in different games.

Arguably, this game doesn’t push any boundaries. It is set in the world of a franchise that’s been producing subjectively decreasingly entertaining, and objectively decreasingly impactful movies since the first one. While you can (very successfully, admittedly) argue, that review scores aren’t of much use today, you can’t deny that the review for this sequel are probably, justifiably, better than certain other AAA games that came out last week, and very likely feature a better sandbox mode.

Nicolas Cage returns stolen Mongolian dinosaur skull he bought at gallery