Steven Spielberg's "Jurassic Park" will be re-released in theaters on April 5 in celebration of its 20th anniversary and has been remastered into the 3D format by Universal Pictures.
But that is not the only "Jurassic Park" related media releasing in time for the film's anniversary. A team of talented modders has created a spectacular Half-Life 2 mod featuring the prehistoric beast of the Jurassic era.
The Jurassic Life mod was created by a European team of volunteers and is a first-person shooting game with the character of Robert Muldoon as the main protagonist.
In a recent interview with IGN, one of the Paris-based team-member Nicolas Kirsch spoke about the game on the behalf of his teammates who include Régis Boissenin, Robert Olender and Julien Desnos.
Kirsch told IGN that the motivation behind the game stems from a childhood love of dinosaurs and just a need to be creative.
"Also, we're interested in learning new things and being creative," Kirsch told IGN. "Using the SDK and various tools has expanded our knowledge of the game creation process. The work we put in is also a tribute to all game developers who made our childhoods so great and of course a tribute to Jurassic Park as well."
Kirsch said that the development team spent lots of hours looking at screenshots from the movie and visiting fansites to help them recreate the island from the film and book.
"I can't tell you how many hours we have spent looking at blurry DVD screenshots and trying to figure out the details in a scene," Kirsch said. "The HD version did give us some relief but we have had to use research and imagination to fill in the gaps. There's a lot of good reference material on the Internet as well as Jurassic Park fan sites that go into a lot of detail on the subject."
He says that feedback from the gaming community and the "Jurassic Park" fan base has helped to drive the project forward. When asked why the team selected to recreate "Jurassic Park," Kirsch said it is all about the story.
"The story takes the idea of bringing dinosaurs back to life and makes it believable," Kirsch said. "The visual effects which aid in that immersion still hold up after so many years and they trigger the imagination even after the movie credits have rolled out. There is no reason to not make a game of such a world in whatever format you would want it in."
You can check out the full interview on IGN and check out the Jurassic Life webpage here for more information about the game and its developers.
Check out the latest video showcasing Jurassic Life below...