That sound brought me right back to the first time I saw Jurassic Park in 1993. It's one of the few movies I've gone back to see in the theater more than once. I fell in love with it and the subsequent years would see me consume anything and everything JP-related. I read the novel by Michael Crichton—more than once. And then after the movie finally left theaters and became available on video, I received a VCR and Jurassic Park video cassette for Christmas. But that still wasn't enough to satiate my cravings. Fortunately, Jurassic Park for the Super Nintendo wasn't far behind.
I found the game revolutionary at the time, but that could very well just be my ten-year-old goggles talking. The game consists of a main hub which spans the island. The gameplay is adventure-style, and you have to acquire items to access new locations and progress the story. You play as Dr. Alan Grant attempting to secure and then flee the island. All of the locales from the movie are present, including the visitor center and raptor pen.
One of the innovative aspects of the game is that though the main hub is played from an overhead view, when you enter one of the many buildings that dot the island, the perspective changes to a Wolfenstein-esque first-person mode. It really adds a level of immersion to the game and, to be honest, made my experiences entering buildings downright scary. The dinos in these sequences, particulary the velociraptors, are deadly. Their hungry growls would echo in the darks and give me chills down my spine, not unlike that I felt when I mistook my cat's snoring. Halfway through the game you acquire night-vision goggles that allow you to enter the pitch-black rooms to acquire additional items and key cards. This game did jump-out-of-your-seat scares years before games like Resident Evil ever existed. Thinking about entering the raptor nest still gives me chills today.
As you might surmise, I've completed the game more than once. This despite it not having a save system. If you know where you're going, it only takes a few hours to complete. There was a point in my life where I had every sequence in the game memorized—every dino, every key card, and every egg.
All of this reminiscing reminds me that my cravings for Jurassic Park have stuck around. I'll probably have to wait until 2014 for my next fix, when the newest movie, Jurassic Park IV, is set to release. In the meantime, I'll just have to appease myself by giving my kitty a catnip overdose, tying some string to my feet, turning out the lights, and letting the chase begin.