The Greatest Health Bar In The History of Video Games

Jurassic Park: Trespasser is a pretty bad game from the late 90s, when Spielberg ensured that anything even peripherally related to dinosaurs would sell like hotcakes. JP:T broke that winning streak by only moving 50,000 copies after a 3 year + development cycle.

So, Trespasser didn't give us any good times. What it did leave us with, however, is the best health gauge in history. Keep in mind this was an entire generation of hardware (or two!) before the idea of getting rid of onscreen health meters became popular. (How much press did Donkey Kong Country get from the then-still-relevant game journLOList racket simply for doing away with the heads up display? This was a big deal! This was the future!)

The shot is thus: In Trespasser, you are a woman whose plane crash lands on Jurassic Park. You have a cute little heart tattoo on your cleavage. When you get attacked (or accidentally shoot yourself in the stomach, as in the video), the tattoo fills with red ink. When it is full, you die.

Being a late 90s first person shooter and given the fact that this thing was already way over budget and behind schedule, they never actually modeled the rest of your character. There are videos of hacked playthroughs where you can see the character model from the 3rd person - nothing more than a poorly modeled bust and an arm.

The only way to really win at Trespasser is to not play the steaming pile. But as bad as it was, Dreamworks Interactive was clever to let you shoot yourself in the stomach: played properly, it was a brilliant metagame - If you survive a plane wreck only to find an island full of savage meat-eating beasts waiting to tear you apart, falling on your sword -is- winning. Because it is a profound statement on the hopelessness of humanity when faced with the savage reality of nature, I am ready to declare Jurassic Park Tresspasser as bonafide digital artistic art.(*)

(*)100% sarcasm.