Jurassic Park on iOS is iPad 2 only

By Fred Dutton Published 24 August, 2011

Telltale's latest packs a punch.

The iOS version of Telltale's forthcoming Jurassic Park tie-in will be iPad 2 only, a spokesperson for the developer has confirmed to Eurogamer.

While its last release, Back to the Future, squeezed onto the original iPad, you'll need the latest iteration of Apple's tablet to enjoy its next effort.

The developer is "targeting" a 15th November launch for the PC, PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360 versions. The iPad take will follow on a little later and, unlike its big screen counterparts, be an episodic release.

Jurassic Park is the second iOS game this week to be announced as iPad 2-only, following news that the forthcoming port of PC puzzler Machinarium won't run on older tech.

Picture of Fred.

About Fred Dutton

Fred Dutton is Eurogamer's US news editor, based in Washington DC.

Read more articles from Fred by visiting the Fred Dutton archive page.

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Comments (23) Latest comment 9 months ago

Comments for this article are now closed, but please feel free to continue chatting on the forum!

  • midnight_walker #1 9 months ago

    This forced obsolescence from Apple is a bit ridiculous. We've seen that iPad 1 can run stuff like Infinity Blade with ease, and now you're trying to tell me that Jurrasic Park, which is from a dev absolutely notorious for producing games to run on even the lowest spec machines, and Machinarium, which would run with ease on an Amiga, require an updated model?

    Pull the other one, Apple.

  • Batfink #2 9 months ago

    No, this is telltale with their shitty unoptimised engine that drops frames even on master race PCs.

  • randompanda #3 9 months ago

    Monkey Island and BTTF run absolutely AWFULLY on the iPad 1. It's not a stretch to imagine their next project is slightly more taxing.

    As has been said, they're not exactly skilled at making efficient game engines either.

    Machinarium on the other hand is a completely different kettle of fish, being translated from the highly-demanding Flash platform is massively taxing on resources, despite it looking like it's actually quite simple.

  • Subdominator #4 9 months ago

    Ok, you're telling me that my seven year old PC can't even run 720p videos but can run Machinarium just fine and an iPad 1, which has no problems with HD movie playback, can't run Machinarium? Right.

    Telltale on the other hand just sucks. They didn't even manage to get Wallace & Gromit to run with an acceptable frame rate on 360, despite looking shite. Jurassic Park looks like a 10 year old game made by 10 year olds. Their technical skills are likely the worst of all development studios, they don't even try to improve their six year old engine.

  • GooseUK #5 9 months ago

    Yeah BTTF runs like poo.

  • RodHull #6 9 months ago

    Bloody Apple. If Steve Jobs has even a shred of decency he'll stand down immediately over such an outrage.

  • CaptainQuint #7 9 months ago

    I have an iPad 2 and I very much doubt I'll be getting this. Games like Zookeeper DX are all I play on it - little time wasters etc.

    If this Jurassic Park game turns out to be pretty damn great (unlikely) then I'll pick it up on one of the other platforms - you know: the versions made for proper games machines. Probably the Xbox version, in my case.

    iPad 2 is a media consumption device. The gaming side is the last thing I bought it for.

  • Spence1115 #8 9 months ago

    Whilst their games are great, it's true, BTTF was so laggy on the iPad, it's not surprising they decided to go 'sod it, just iPad 2 this time'.

  • Razz #9 9 months ago

    Trailer here:
    http://www.gametrailers.com/video/exclus...

  • arremelle #10 9 months ago

    I too was shocked by how poor Monkey Island was on the iPad. I couldn't fathom how they could release it in such a state and think it was playable? The testing must have been done on an iPad simulator without realistic h/w emulation.

    really if the device cannot hack real-time 3D backgrounds (with their engine at least), they should have toned it down with static pre-rendered onces instead. Wouldn't be as cool as on the PC but at least it would be smooth and playable. If this worked, then an iPad 1 version of Jurassic park would be possible (and probably play better that the fully 3d iPad2 parent).

  • layleeloo #11 9 months ago

    @midnight_walker. Durrrrrrrr how dumb a comment was your first post! It has nothing to do with apple does it. The developer would like it on as much as possible to get the most money, but if the first iPad can't handle it having 10 times less graphical processing power then I would say the developer has to be believed! They wouldn't limit it to one iteration of the iPad if you could do both. Look at real racing 2 - that is playable on both platforms but is infinitely better on the iPad 2 so thats already an obvious sign of the difference in power. Thus, it is not unreasonable that some things only work on iPad 2

    As for obsolescence of apple - how fickle are people?!?!?! PC's have been obsolete after 3 months of buying one but no one got on the manufacturers case then did they - but people are willing to jump on an apple hate bandwagon for releasing a higher powered product 1 year later!? If they only released more powerful PC"s 1 year at a time, i'd be astonished - they are quarterly to half yearly!
    Edited by layleeloo at 25/08/11 @ 12:03

  • SpaceMonkey77 #12 9 months ago

    I see this becoming more of a trend, as developers seek to do more with Apple's changing spec. While I like my little itouch, if such stuff does happen, creating a split in the iPod/iPhone games market, where some can run some games and others Apple devices can't, it'll just play into the hand of more dedicated game devices like PSVita.

    Sure, PCs do the same kind of thing, but a new PC can go for years, running plenty of the high end games, before you need to upgrade or just buy another machine. An iPod/Pad is a costly device, that gets a new version annually, and actually costs more than a half decent PC.

  • TudeScud #13 9 months ago

    It's better that they restrict the sale of the game to iPad 2 rather than selling a shoddy (read: unplayable) version to the rest. True, games such as TellTale's and especially Machinarium should be able to run on older generation hardware, but if the developer isn't willing to put in the work to make it playable on weaker platforms at least they're being honest about it. There have been games such as the Prince of Persia port that crashed persistently on lower grade models, those sales truly hurt.

    Lastly, I don't find Infinity Blade or Rage especially good examples of pushing the platform personally, as they're both essentially on rails. That and they contain very little of the environmental flourish that we take for granted like animated objects.

  • dagas #14 9 months ago

    That's Apple stuff, if you don't want your hardware to be obsolete after a year then buy a video game console.

  • penhalion #15 9 months ago

    Well good luck to them is all I can say because I'm fairly sure they just mullered their entire market share with this nonsense.

  • Caimbeul #16 9 months ago

    wankers was looking forward to it on pc. will not buy on an apple device

  • Caimbeul #17 9 months ago

    Also - IF (and that is a big if - not just apple trying to get every sucker to upgrade to iPad 2 or 3) a game like machinarium cant be run on ipad 1 it shows that either the Dev is shit at coding, The Apple hardware really isnt up to that much or Apple being greedy tossers. I suspect the latter.

  • oxymoron #18 9 months ago

    Another reason 4 me not joining the 'i' club.

  • mowgli #19 9 months ago

    Love it. Apple are now responsible for lazy devs and technological progress. Do you people ever listen to yourselves? I do love the ironic twist the word sheeple is starting to take. More an more referring to the incessant, lazy and hypothetical rush to attack anything and everything Apple do in some shit attempt at pretending you have an informed opinion.
    Edited by mowgli at 25/08/11 @ 07:48

  • ZizouFC #20 9 months ago

    That sucks, but my iPad is basically for watching Curb while I play Demon's Souls.

  • glottis0 #21 9 months ago

    It just costs Telltale a lot to develop two versions.

    Maybe you guys think Naughty Dog should make a PS2 version of Uncharted 3?
    Is it possible to downscale it for PS2? Probably.
    Is the decision not to because Sony are greedy tossers, or because Naughty Dog are crap at coding? Of course not!

  • Ryze #22 9 months ago

    The first iPad was obviously lacking, and I mentioned it several times at launch, on every news post.

    The 2nd iPad however is a decent piece of kit. I'm not surprised that we're seeing this happen. That said, Telltale aren't the greatest devs, so I'm not surprised that they're struggling with the slower tech.

  • RodHull #23 9 months ago

    @ZizouFC "That sucks, but my iPad is basically for watching Curb while I play Demon's Souls."

    They're both pretty good...pretty, pretty good.