“I thoroughly enjoyed transcribing these iconic compositions by ear, programming them on the PC-8801SR, and writing the. “I had a strong affinity for popular arcade game music, including well-known titles like Space Harrier, The Tower of Druaga, and Gladius,” he explains, when I ask what tracks made it to his own, personal tapes. Sorcerian, one of Koshiro’s earliest soundtracks. “However, each game had its own distinct electronic sound that set them apart, creating an immersive atmosphere in the arcade halls.” Koshiro – and many other Japanese game music enthusiasts of the era, he says – would go to a game centre with a tape recorder in hand, so he could thumb the cassette into a player at home and listen to the music whenever he wanted. “When I was a teenager, spending time at amusement arcades, game developers would only release a few video game titles in a year,” he explains. In so many ways, and across so many disciplines, Koshiro has always been ahead of his time.Īnd it all began with him secretly recording the music from his favourite games in arcades. His foresight allowed him to retain the rights to his own music, in an industry that’s often keen on prising the art from the artist. His engineering wizardry helped establish video game music as a force to be reckoned with, alongside its cinematic and televisual siblings. For Jurassic Park lovers and retro enthusiasts, this is a really nice way to relive a lost world of gaming.From the urban warzones of Shinobi and Streets of Rage to the high fantasy realms of Ys and Etrian Odyssey, Japanese composer Yuzo Koshiro has seen (and heard) it all. You could buy an original console and a copy of the games on eBay, but then that will work out much more expensive and unreliable. The same old arguments apply to this release as to all retro compilations: you can find these games online then run them on an open source emulator for free, though you won’t get the modern save features. They could almost be modern indie titles. Weirdly, although I love the fact that the Mega Drive versions allow you to play as either Dr Grant or a velociraptor, it’s the Game Boy versions that prove most accessible and compelling now, with their simple controls and easily recognisable platforming conventions. The graphical flourishes of the Mega Drive era, including weird digitised recreations of the T rex, and the modest attempts to recreate images and moments from the films – the opening gates, the crashed jeeps, the computer interfaces, the spitting dilophosaurus – speak a lot about how game designers had to really work to conjure the feel of TV and movie material. Limited Run provided a booklet with the physical copies of the release but those have all sold out.Īs someone who played most of these games first time round, re-encountering them now out of their contemporary context is a sweet nostalgic experience. My only major disappointment is that there is no museum section providing information about the original games and perhaps images of the packaging, print adverts, etc. Limited Run has even added new on-screen maps for spoilt millennials who don’t like getting lost in a vast dinosaur enclosure. There are also options to go full screen or stick with the original display ratio, and to add a platform-specific filter – CRT scanlines for the console titles and a dot matrix style overlay for the Game Boy adaptations. It includes the ability to save your position wherever you are in the games and also to rewind time, so that you don’t have to go right back to the beginning of every level over and over again due to one comically sadistic pixel-perfect jump challenge. However, Limited Run has done an excellent job of curating and updating these digital fossils for modern players and fans of the movie franchise who missed out on them first time round. Meanwhile, the Mega Drive titles were platforming adventures heavily influenced by titles such as Flashback and Another World sporting similarly smooth character animation and filmic narrative style. Jurassic Park: The Chaos Continues is a decent run-and-gun platform shooter with some nice cinematic sequences, but it arrived at a time when seemingly every game was a run-and-gun platform shooter. There are some recognisable moments from the movie, but it’s basically a pretty version of the influential 1985 arcade hit Commando. The original NES Jurassic Park is a top-down viewed shooter where you collect ID cards and eggs while blasting prehistoric creatures and attempting to escape the island. Let’s be honest here: none of the games were considered amazing at the time. Jurassic Park Classic Games Collection Photograph: Limited Run Games
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