Telltale To Take On Jurassic Park And Back To The Future

Hold on to your butts and your hoverboards. Telltale Games, the clever girls beneath the hood of a crop of licensed-based games, are tackling two new properties: Jurassic Park and Back to the Future. No, really.  

In the July issue of Game Informer, it's revealed that Telltale has inked a deal with NBC Universal Studios to produce an episodic series based on the JP license. A recent AP report confirms that the studio is also planning to start working with Back to the Future series as well.

Talking to GI, Telltale CEO Dan Connors didn't have much to say about the Jurassic Park series, only mentioning it by name and giving the standard Telltale boilerplate answer about any new titles: "For Jurassic Park, we will leverage Telltale's expertise in storytelling and game design to deliver on the tension and drama of the series creating the ultimate cinematic adventure."  

In the official announcement materials, Bill Kispert, interactive vice president at Universal Studios, seems to suggest that these games won't be shoot-'em-ups. Whew. "Jurassic Park and Back to the Future are two of our broadest and most beloved properties," Kispert said in a statement. "We were very interested in bringing them into the interactive space, but they're not exactly the kind of properties that lend themselves to the stereotypical shoot-'em-up style of gameplay." 
  
Electronic Game Informer points out that JP series is slated to launch this year, though the amount of episodes that will be produced is unknown. According to the AP report (and our own materials), both IPs are slated for release on the usual Telltale platforms--the Xbox 360, PS3, PC, Wii and Macintosh--this winter...when everything else under the sun releases, too.

I'm guessing we'll learn a bit more about both games at E3, so until then I'll just keep dreaming the dream of playing a Malcolm-centric, point-and-click adventure game. I've no interest in this Back to the Future business, mainly because it doesn't have a quirky chaostician. If the dog is confirmed, though, count me in. I love dogs.