This is a speedrun of Jurassic Park 3: Island Attack. The game is based on the movie Jurassic Park 3. The premise is of a guy on an island with dinosaurs. He has to run to the island’s port. His only weapon is a flare gun, which he uses to shoot conveniently placed boxes full of explosives. Every level has some sort of boss, in either the form of a large, difficult enemy, multiple small enemies, or a puzzle that must be solved. One feature of the game is that things are accessed by rapidly pressing B, which makes ready fodder for 30 hertz button pressing.
Emulator options: up+down, left+right not allowed. No frameskip.
Any % run, takes damage to save time. Collects minimal amount of items.
Stage 1
Unfortunately, this stage has a lot of dialog. There is almost no action in the first minute or so. Note the jumping to get away from the Spinosaurus (The giant one with a sail). This is a movement glitch of sorts which lets you move further during the cut scene. Later, note the way he barely misses those dinosaurs that run past him. Normally, you have to stop to miss those. But not this time!
Finally, there’s some box-opening. Normally it takes several seconds of tapping B to open one of those. But with TAS, the bar just zooms. As for the Velociraptor, it is faster to shoot it before the box because otherwise you have to lure it away to hit the box first. So it’s fastest to hit the raptor first. Note the jump on the gunpowder box just after, which is important for shifting over slightly to the side without wasting time.
It’s tricky to get past the raptors in a way that lets you access the door. Even at super-high B button speeds, you can’t just run between the dinosaurs and through the door.
The boss is interesting. I deliberately made the character walk around nonchalantly because it looks more interesting to my eye than random running. The position where you are when you shoot the gunpowder box doesn’t matter, because you can just shoot earlier when standing further away. On a weird note, the last input in level 1 is at frame 13666.
Stage 2
Note the way he jumps onto a box of gunpowder and over the obstacle. Normally, you have to shove a box over to get onto that. But this is much quicker.
The boss fight is very annoying. Because of a movement glitch, you cannot run while the electricity is zapping. Since you need to make 15 hits to kill the bosses, it’s one of the longest boss-killing sequences in the game.
Stage 3
This is a level where the screen is scrolling sideways constantly. As anyone who has seen the Super Mario 3 TAS, these make for a lot of fun. I tried to take out every enemy there was. Strangely, some cannot be hit without taking damage. There are many necessary jumps you must make. On these, I try to do some fancy manoeuvres. There are some puddles of sludge, which you must “zoom” over. At one point, I leap right over a huge gap then a puddle of sludge. This level easily has the most hits, with 65 hits.
Stage 4
He has to wait a couple frames before bashing the crate; otherwise the Pachycephalosaurus will charge into the guy and hurt him, slowing him down. Then there’s catching the tree with the wire. THAT took about 200 rerecords. Many places are annoying in this level because they were meant to go through at lower speeds. That, of course, is unacceptable. The timing all has to be very precise, and even then, there are some points where the guy can’t make landings. There is no variation in his jump height. At some points, the “hit checking” is ludicrously bad. I deliberately show off the bad hit checks and go right through a raptor. Finally, there’s the “boss”, which has a little glitch where no wind-up lets it smash the rock just as hard. So I just get him to constantly whack the rock. Shooting the dinosaur with the flare gun is sometimes faster, sometimes slower than letting it turn. This level took less than 2 minutes to beat, and I am pretty proud of that! Where did those hits come from? They’re the dinosaurs that fell into holes chasing me.
Stage 5
That shortcut through the door is not an intended feature. Yes, it is necessary to get hit twice. Otherwise you get killed while opening the door. I went 140 rerecords trying to get it optimized. Thanks to the massive shortcut, the level is the only one to be beaten in less than 1 minute.
Stage 6
This level is another annoying side-scroller. There are vines that must be climbed, a slow process. This makes it annoying to TAS. Then there are falling rocks, which are even more annoying. The boss fight is rather interesting, though. After that, you have to parachute down the mountain. There is no way to hurt the pterosaurs, so I just avoid them. This level is the first over 3 minutes and infuriatingly close to being under that boundary.
Stage 7
This level involves running through with reckless disregard. I have nothing much to say. Although, I must point out that the splashes in the water cause a lot of lag. Then there’s the boss fight, which is hilariously fast. Normally it takes several minutes, but this takes seconds. I made a couple mistakes in the first run-through, so I redid about half the level, saving 5 ¼ seconds.
Stage 8
To meet my time goal of 30 minutes, this level became a frenzy to complete within that barrier. Beyond the first minute, this level is a compilation of the game’s bosses. This is like a “flashback” to the boss pwnage from earlier levels. Some details on the bosses:
First boss: This is pretty easy. It’s actually impossible to take out the packs of Compsognathus in one shot, so I let a rock fall onto some, crushing them.
Second boss: Like the original T. Rex boss, this one walks into the explosions.
Third boss: This fight can be skipped.
Final boss: This is just running away from the Spinosaurus. Nothing to it.
Screenshots:
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Truncated: Less than lukewarm reception from the viewers, and I agree with them. This game doesn't have much going for it. Two autoscrollers, slow and long bossfights, little in the way of action. (I find it ludicrous that there are hundreds of crates of gunpowder littered about, even falling from the sky at convenient times, but no weapons whatsoever to use with those weapons.)
Because I do not think it makes an interesting movie, I will reject this run.
Ilari: Filling the form...
