


Along the way, you’ll have each of the movie’s characters appear in an advisory role. You can adjust the prices for the main gate, food stands, souvenirs, individual attractions, and even charge a fee for the toilets if you’re a fucking monster. Your ultimate goal is to create a five-star park, with each half-star bringing in more and more guests. Game months last about five minutes, and each quarter, you’ll get reports from the corporate board on your progress. You’ll plant a welcome center for arriving visitors, use electrified fencing to draw out some dino pens, and then set about satisfying everyone’s needs to maximize your cash flow. You’re given two passive herbivores and $60k in starting funds. You start with terrain sliders that generate an empty island for you to build upon. The game has four total modes, with three as bonus variants of the central sandbox simulator. You may not be able to do absolutely everything you’d like, but you’re pretty much free to build your own, authentic-feeling version of Hammond’s titular attraction. Which is a shame, because they really have created a solid simulation here, with plenty of micromanagement nuances to hook in fans of the genre, and plenty of awesome dinosaurs to sweeten the deal. The collective shrug given when this was released is why I’m going to assume you don’t know much about the game today. Is John Williams’ score playing in your head yet? It is now? You’re welcome! But, it would be the one thing the 2003 release isn’t – relevant. The systems might not be as refined, without plenty of previous tycoon games to use as models. Sure, if this was made in 1994 then it wouldn’t be 3D.

While that’s not to imply I didn’t enjoy many of its action or exploration based titles, the tycoon genre fits the source material perfectly. Operation Genesis is the Jurassic Park game they should have made from the beginning.
