Cunzy1 1's Dinosaurs in Games Blog

Dinosaurs in Video Games 2012

2012-01-28T04:16:00.000-08:00

Not dead. Just coming out of a winter torpor but what is this? It hasn't been a proper winter. Ut ohs. This will cause problems for the circle of life.

Raving Rabbids Travels in Time added to list! Also why didn't you guys tell me about GameBoy Advance game A Sound of Thunder, DS game Digging for Dinosaurs or Dinosaurs Vs Alamo? Are we keeping secrets from each other now?

But enough about the warming globe. How is 2012 shaping up for dinosaurs and other prehistoric creatures in video games? Well the last issue of EDGE has confirmed that a popular racing game series will feature a roadside Tyrannosaurus rex. I got a copy of Dino Strike and have played it (review pending) and I'll be keeping my unblinking eyes out for more dinosaurs in games whilst trying to play through Syberia 2.

Wii Play Motion

2012-01-03T11:15:00.000-08:00

Wonderfully, over Christmas I found myself with some surprise Christmas money giving me the unusual opportunity for some guilt-free video game purchasing. Normally, splashing out on a video game means taking money away from some other serious and always more important budget (savings, food for the kids, new shoes etc.). Christmas money is guilt free, indeed it is given with the express intent to be spent on something fun, plus the kids could do with losing some weight. So I found myself in a fine Belgian video game vending establishment with euros to spend.

Oh my lordy! Shop bought video games are expensive. Dreams of a purchase of two or possibly three games with the aforementioned Christmas credits were realistically adjusted to possibly one. My options were either Metroid: Other M (I read mixed reviews but wanted to see for myself), Super Mario Galaxy and some change (I know, I know why don't I own this already), Super Mario Galaxy 2 minus some extra money (why do Nintendo games stay so expensive?) or Sin and Punishment 2. Or it turns out Wii Play Motion.

You may have gathered I opted for Wii Play Motion. WHY? You might cry. Well yes all those other games are good or very good and belong in any discerning gamer's library but I figured it was time to get on the Wii Motion Train. Plus the Wiimote that comes bundled with it is sexy red to match my sexy red classic controller that came with Xenoblade Chronicles. Also, the swing factor was I spotted this on the back of the box:

What do you mean What the hell is that? That is an unmistakable* screenshot of the mouth of a Tyrannosaurus rex with targets on it probably from a light-gun shooting game. See that marketeers? Nintendo would have missed a sale if it wasn't for the box art. Who says you should never judge a game by its box art? Much to my joy, Tyrannosaurus rex with targets on it probably from a light-gun shooting game is exactly what it turned out to be. New Year Dinosaur gaming in motion plus extravaganza! Also, another nice benefit of buying this game (I mentioned sexy red wiimote already right?) is that some of the mini games are quite good. Like my GOTY 2011 good.

For those of you not au fait with Wii Play or Wii Play Motion, these two games are essentially tech demos for what the Wii and more recently what Wii Motion Plus can achieve. The mini games on offer in both games are a mixed bunch but sadly, it seems other game developers don't take more inspiration from the Wii Play gamelets. There's some tantalising uses of motion controls and ideas in the rather shallow games that others could have taken and run with. Could have run with is operative here, or you know, instead they could make buggy shovelware, poor Wii Sports clones and light gun shooters. Sigh. Tanks!, for example, in the first game is amazing even as a mini game and significantly better than most full price games. Wii Play Motion has some corkers (and some stinkers) on it. I've already mentioned Star Shuttle but completing level 30 of Teeter Targets was tough, emotionally draining and spine tinglingly good in the way that games used to and should be. Human and controller needing to become one in order to master what on the surface looks like an unchallenging premise.

Anyway, it also has Dinosaurs in it. Specifically, one of the levels of Trigger Twist a sequel, if you like, to Wii Play's Shooting Range sees your Mii dressed in Safari Khakis and sporting a musket tasked with helping a bunch of dinosaurs and other prehistoric creatures on their way to extinction. Right about now I'd post an image from the game but can you believe there isn't a single decent screenshot within a quick google? There's plenty of videos on YouTube but I don't want to ruin it for those of you as 'purist' as myself. No wonder the game hasn't flown of the shelves. Rule number one of video game marketing, if your game has dinosaurs in it, put out screenies of dinosaurs and the sales (at least one guaranteed) will explode. You'll have to make-do with this image, again from the box art (IMAGE NOT REPRESENTATIVE OF IN GAME DINOSAURS):

The Trigger Twist game itself isn't particularly innovative. It is a fairly standard light gun shooter except Wii Motion Plus allows you to look around 720 degrees (?) by moving the controller around you. However, this concept is limited in that it is pretty hard to aim when you've got the Wiimote pointed over your shoulder and this is acknowledged by the game makers as targets rarely appear beyond 180 degrees of vision. Still a nice idea that another developer might run with.... So what do we have?

Dinosauriness: There's no 'Dinopedia' but I'm going to hedge my bets with the IDs here. For example I'm going to assume that the iguanodont you grease isn't intended to be Mantellisaurus or Muttaburrasaurus but is in fact a vanilla Iguanadon but if a developer interview comes out that states otherwise I'll be more than happy to change the details here. We appear to have a very typical assemblage: Brachiosaurus, Iguandon, an ornithomimosaur, a Plesiosaur, Pteranodon, Blue, Red and Gold 'Raptors', Stegosaurus, Triceratops and drum roll please....... Tyrannosaurus rex.

Scientific Accuracy: All the usual bum notes- temporally distributed genera appearing together (Stegosaurus I'm looking at you), a classic example of a freshwater plesiosaur is also a highlight. Scale is hard to determine from a first person perspective but as ever it feels a bit off. There's not a feather to be seen either. Lastly, unless a new discovery confirms that dinosaurs were neon coloured, the skin colour seems a bit too 90s rave scene. Did I expect anything different? No. God forbid fun be scientifically accurate. GOD FORBIDS IT.

Buzz Bonus: I've really nothing to say here except I also received a copy of Dino Strike for the Wii over Christmas. Don't worry it wasn't a present I bought it myself. Otherwise I'd never tell you that it is awful. Awful and less fun than Trigger Twist. Expect a full review soon.....!

*Well I do have my eye in for spotting this kind of thing. Endless trawling the internet for smidgens of dinosaurs and other prehistoric creatures in video games means I can spot a virtual dinosaur in a screenshot from at least 50 paces in a mild fog.

More Joy From Endless Ocean 2

2011-12-18T02:38:00.000-08:00

Endless Ocean 2 is the game that just keeps giving for the fan of dinosaurs and other prehistoric creatures in games. Here's how I called it a mere 70 hours in. Put another twenty or so hours into it and there's still plenty of new stuff to see.

But for my purposes the most important new discoveries in this game are the Cambrian predator/poster organism Anomalocaris, pictured above and the Ordovician giant nautiloid Cameroceras. Both of these creatures can be found bobbing around and require a double take before realising that they are creatures out of time. Prehistoric marine life often doesn't get much of a look-in in many video games as most games are terrestrially based. I'm chuffed to bits that Arika really ran with their imagination in this game and found a way to sneak these two prehistoric animals in as cryptids.

Syberia

2011-12-13T03:18:00.000-08:00

After what seems like forever, I finally got around to finishing Syberia. It may seem stupid for a game that's nine years old but I'm gonna put a SPOILER warning up here. If you like Dinosaurs and other prehistoric creatures in games then Syberia is definitely worth a play. Then come back here. Okay?I don't know if it is just because I'm a jaded old gamer or because I haven't played a solid point and click adventure for a longtime but I really enjoyed Syberia. Probably more so than normal because it's a dinosaurs game that isn't a Pokemon clone or FPS. It's pretty standard fare really. Point here, click there, pick up this item, give it to this person who'll give you another item to give to someone else. It isn't free of the frustrations particular to the genre and if you played it like I did over a space of months rather than hours you'll need a number of trips to the excellent Universal Hint System for some of the (subtle) clues you end up forgetting between plays.

The game takes you on a fantastical journey in the shoes of lawyer Kate Walker, sent to a weird French town to settle the estate of an eccentric woman whose automaton factory is due to be bought by a big toy company. Unsurprisingly, things don't go as planned and Kate ends up tracking down the deceased woman's brother, a curious savant obsessed with mammoths. The game takes you to some really amazing places and I found myself forgiving the linear nature of the game (item A to place B to get to item C etc..) because the environments you visit are so fantastic, the writing and characters are compelling and solving the puzzles to progress are normally just the right side of head scratching. There's also a snazzy little gimmick in that Kate has a mobile phone and occasionally gets phoned by her boyfriend, mother and best friend. LIKE HOW MOBILE PHONES WORK IN THE REAL WORLD! The phone does a good job of giving an insight into who Kate is beyond the person you mercilessly puppet about the place as well as being key to progressing at times. I've said too much already just go and grab it. Sure, it's dated but it's less than a tenner on Steam,just under 12 for both Syberia and Syberia 2. As a fan of dinosaurs and other prehistoric creatures in games I really like that this game is palaeontologically themed rather than just a palaeontologically skinned generic game as so many DiGs are. Mammoths, biology and palaeontology run through the game and kept me playing. It's just refreshing still, even from a nine year old game, to see that the Syberia team actually did a bit of research rather than just pick up My First Book Of Scary Dinosaurs, bung in the usual suspects and then copy and paste the "facts" in the ubiquitous dinopedia. Anywho, down to the regular bitness...

Dinosauriness: Remember that spoiler warning? Well you don't actually see any real virtual mammoths in the game, the three screenshots in this post is as near as you get. Early on you find a prehistoric mammoth doll and make a mammoth rubbing (pictured above). At the Barrockstadt University the skeletons of Megaloceros, Mammuthus primigenius, Platybelodon and some other extinct mammals that are hard to identify (speculatively equid and elephantid) can be found. In addition to the amazing statues you can see above there's a pair of sabre-toothed tiger statues although I wouldn't like to guess exactly which 'sabre-toothed tigers' they are (sabre-toothery in mammals is an amazing example of convergent evolution).

Scientific Accuracy: So far so good. You don't see any real mammoths although the game foreshadows an encounter in Syberia 2, apparently there's a cryptic population of mammoths possibly alive on an island called Syberia. More outlandish is the automatons, wind up robots, you meet throughout the game. But this is Dinosaurs in Games NOT Robots in Games.

Buzz Bonus: There's so much to say, there's a sequel that's on my to play list and the sort of announcement of a third one to be released for PS3 and PC with the demand that Sony stop their Syberia PS2 denial.. This game was also released on the DS in 2008 and was the version I originally wanted to pick up but the handful of sites that reviewed it all recommended picking up the 2002 PC version. My last buzz bonus is that in the Barrockstadt University library you can see Aristotle's principle 'Natura non facit saltus'- nature does not make leaps a famous proposition invoked by a number of the brightest luminaries in science throughout time and just one of the biology geek references that endeared this game to me even more.

Dino Strike and Zoo Entertainment

2011-12-06T02:49:00.001-08:00

Sad news about Zoo Entertainment. Let's hope it doesn't affect our preorder of Dino Strike which has already been delayed by a bit. I was expecting it sometime next week. Theit website still ists it as avialable "February 2011".

Ahh, gotta love game companies and their bad websites...

Dinosaur Games on Android

2011-11-29T10:15:00.001-08:00

I've been desperately trying to breathe some life back into the ol' PC in order to finish Syberia. Whilst I was waiting for loading and installing bars to go up and down I thought I'd hit the Android market to see if there was any Dinosaur Goodness to be had. Over 700 hits for "dino"! This could truly be the future of dinosaurs and other prehistoric creatures in games?

Of course, I'm not going to pay for any of them! Why risk paying for something that might be awful? So I downloaded a couple of free ones. The first game I tried was called Dino Attack Hunt (screenie above). The "game" involves prodding the dinosaur pictures as they scroll down the screen. If you correctly prod them you are rewarded with a shotgun noise and the dinosaur's heads pop off. The game is fun for a little bit less than it takes to download. It was a really really quick download too. Annoying too is that the background is clearly a well looked after park. Is this really the future of games? There may have been a point where something other than prodding the three dinosaurs shown above happened but I just couldn't bear to see it through. Life is too short.

Next up is a game/app simple called Dinosaurs!. I was excited about this one. Somebody had undertaken some serious research into the ways that dinosaurs could possibly make different noises by looking at laryngology as well as a comparative analysis of vocalisation in reptiles from throat rumbles, specialised resonating chambers through to beak clacking. From this academic research they were then able to upload authentic sounds of 45 dinosaur (and other prehistoric creature) genera including relatively obscure genera like Herrasaurus (an apparently new genus to science, the first to be described in an app and surely definitely not a typo of Herrerasaurus), 'Parsaurlophus', Monolophosaurus and everyone's favourite Chirstenote(?!). Of course, I am being facetious here. Somebody has simply uploaded 45 random roary noises and attached them to 45 misspelled and poorly researched dinosaurs and other prehistoric creatures. Accuracy alarm bells started to ring when the picture for Ankylosaurus, one of the most recognisable dinosaurs after Tyrannosaurus rex, Triceratops, 'Brontosaurs' and Stegosaurus, instead depicts the sauropod Amargosaurus. The image below shows some of the errors on the first page. There are more, believe me.

So there we have it. I'm not going to make a habit of looking at every single dinosaur (and/or other prehistoric creatures) app/game because most of them will be a pile of rubbish like these two but when I do there's a new section on the left here where they will be listed.

Disney's Dinosaur

2011-11-27T07:08:00.000-08:00

Disney's Dinosaur was a game that was released on virtually every single platform at the time, Game Boy Colour, PlayStation, PlayStation 2, Dreamcast and Windows. I've been meaning to pick up a copy of this game for a long long time.

It's a Ubisoft game, when Ubi wasn't so fussy about not for making awful games before the days of Assasin's Creed. That being said, this game (the PS2 version at least) isn't as bad as I expected. It isn't as good as it could have been either. The game plays like a bit like Baldur's Gate is as much as it an isometric 'dungeon crawler', although the water isn't as good as in Baldur's Gate. A nice twist on the dungeon crawling is that you need to combine the specific skills of Aladar the Iguanodon, Flia a Pteranodon and Zini a lemur to make it through levels that roughly follow the plot of the film. There's a neat little squad organising mechanic that makes it easy to split your team of three or to combine them all together. Aladar can give out and take a lot of damage, Zini can climb up ladders and hurl stones at enemies and to create walkways and Flia, who has been created specifically for the game, can act as a scout, access areas the land dwellers can't as well as being able to pick up and carry objects. The game occasionally falters in that unintuitive and cryptic mechanics are sometimes introduced in order to progress through levels requiring a number of frustrating failures in order to work out what you're supposed to do. Some sections also suffer from the classic problem in that bridges and ledges require a careful navigation that simply isn't possibly with the unrefined controls. I had to restart a couple of the escort missions because I'd fall off a ledge and respawn to find my escortees blocking the way through. As you can see below, the game isn't exactly a looker but it deserves some credit for not being a Pokemon clone, RTS or light gun game as so many of these Dinosaurs and other prehistoric creature games are.

Dinosauriness: The game departs slightly from the film including some dinos that didn't make the cut. Creatures featured are: Albertoaurus, Ankylosaurus, Brachiosaurus, Carnotaurus, Champsosaurus, Dryptosaurus, the bat Icaronycteris, Iguanodon, Oviraptor, Parasaurolophus, Pteranodon, Quetzalcoatlus (misspelled Quetzelcoatlus in the game), a' raptor', Spinosaurus, Styracosaurus (misspelled Styrachosaur in the game) Talarurus and of course a Lemur. A number of other genera appear in cutscenes including Pachyrhinosaurus, Struthiomimus, Stygimoloch and possibly Ichthyornis.

Scientific Accuracy: Where to begin? First off talking animals loses some accuracy points. Secondly, a lot of the dinosaurs have been found continents apart, Carnotaurus remains have only been found in Argentina, Styracosaurus is only known from Canada, Oviraptorin Mongolia and possibly China. This is not to say that they couldn't have met but current evidence doesn't suggest they did. Also many of the creatures represented weren't coeval. Champsosaurus resembles a giant lizard and is found roaming the desert rather unlike a Choristoderan really. Lastly, the lemurs (and similarly Icaryonecteris) really throw a spanner in the works. Not only are lemur fossils only known from Madagascar, Asia and continental Africa conflicting with the Dinosaurs from the Americas but even the most immoderate estimates for the appearance of lemurs don't go as far back as 75 Ma. However, most irritatingly in the game is that Zini sounds like some kinda New York wise-guy. Having been forced to watch the film again for fact checking, bizarrely this accent has been added specifically for the game. Thanks guys. Someone should really publish a paper on the independent evolution of NY wise guy accents in sidekicks.

Buzz Bonus: It seems almost obligatory for dinosaur games to have a 'dinopedia' and this game is no exception albeit with a shocking number of typos. This makes my life a lot easier because I don't have to keep quite so many notes. The dinopedia in the PS2 version is a nice little three-dimensional diorama that you can whizz around and discover various dinosaur (and other prehistoric creature) facts.

What no Turok?

2011-11-21T09:00:00.000-08:00

My little gaggle of followers may have noticed a recent spate of posting. Unfortunately, I seem to be fighting a losing battle when it comes to covering all the games listed under "THE GAMES" over there on the left because as soon as I get round to playing through one of them another three pop up. Not that I'm complaining. We all know there aren't enough dinosaurs in games. The more the merrier! To infinity!

However, eagle-eyed readers will have spotted that the Turok series remains greyed out for the time being. Can't be fussed checking, here's the proof:

So what's the deal? Shirley, Turok is an obvious place to start when it comes to dinosaurs in games? Well I'm inclined to agree but I want to play through them all in order to get a better sense of the " "Storyline" ". At the moment I've been playing them in reverse order. I played the Xbox 360 one then Turok: Evolution. I want to start playing from the beginning but you know what it is like. Finding all the cables and setting up the N64 is such a pain... I was secretly hoping that they'd appear on the virtual console but alas that doesn't seem to be something that is planned to happen.

Tl:dr the short story is, I'm getting around to it, I'm not ignoring the series or anything jeez!

Planet Dinosaur

2011-11-20T12:13:00.000-08:00

Planet Dinosaur was oh so briefly on the TV recently and as with Walking with Dinosaurs, an accompanying game has been made. You can go and play it right now, right here.

It's a fun little browser game. You can breed a number of species from the television series then let them loose in your own little panorama. It won't be breaking any records for looks. Or playability. But hey, it's free. Oh and it has achievements if you like that kind of thing. It is quite slow and if I was being cynical I'd say it was a cheap way to get people to keep coming back to the website. In fact, there are achievements for logging in every single day.... Here's my panorama so far:
Nuffin but a couple of Spinosaurus at the moment. They don't get up to much. They stomp around. There's a little sawfish catching mini game you can play for in game credits to buy more dinosaurs, food to help your babies grow to adulthood and extra bits of scenery to enrich your panorama. I'll hold off the final judgement when I've unlocked more of the dinosaurs and mini-games. If you decide to give it a go, let me know what you think in these comments.

A Bumper Crop For Mammoths Today

2011-11-17T04:27:00.000-08:00

A Hirsute* of mammoths if you will. Typical! You wait for ages for a mammoth to come along and then two appear!

Just in via RPS it's Trine 2. Is this mammoth skeleton nought but a Checkov's Gun for the real thing? I'm hoping it is. Even if it isn't it's nice to see such a lovely mammoth skeleton.

* Sadly, not the actual collective noun.

UPDATE: Apologies if this post keeps changing. I've had to edit this post about five times for typos. I'm just too excited.

Dinosaurs and/or other prehistoric creatures in games spotted!

2011-11-17T04:07:00.001-08:00

Spotted this screenie over on Capcom-Unity from Strider 2.

Yep. That's a cyber-mammoth if I ever did see one. Capcom have always got some love for dinosaurs and or other prehistoric creatures in games from Cadillacs and Dinosaurs through to the excellent (except maybe the third one) Dino Crisis. The question is, is it worth hunting down and getting? Or is this the only dinosaur or other prehistoric creature in the game? File this under needs more research.

Endless Ocean 2: Adventures of the Deep- Wii

2011-11-15T09:00:00.000-08:00

What's that coming ~~over the hill~~ out of the deep? Is it a monster? Well sort of. It's a plesiosaur of some kind! Other prehistoric creatures made a bit of a cameo in the first Endless Ocean, the sequel fleshes out them old bones with a live and kicking real virtual plesiosaur. Can you kick with a paddle? Doesn't matter, down to bi'ness.

Dinosauriness: As far as I'm aware there's just this Plesiosaur in the game. I wouldn't like to hazard a guess as to which species. It's fairly big, between 12-14m long and the neck is very long so probably an elasmosaurid of some sort. Don't quote me on it though. You can also find a 'Dinosaur egg' and some fossilised wood as treasures of the deep. Exciting stuff indeed!

Scientific accuracy: The consensus is that plesiousaurs bit the dust at the end of the Cretaceous*.However, there are plenty of myths about extant plesiosaur. The most famous is the Loch Ness Monster but it isn't the only cryptid plesiosaur story about. It is appealing to imagine that plesiosaurs are still hanging on somewhere, however, it is statistically unlikely. Fossil plesiosaurs haven't been discovered in rocks younger than the Cretaceous and no conclusive proof has been found of living plesiosaurs. Quite a lot of the "proof" that has been found has subsequently been debunked as deliberately hoaxed or misinterpreted. Shame.

Buzz Bonus: These photographs were snapped by my lovely wife! Endless Ocean 2 is one of a handful of games that make taking screenshots easy. More games like this please. As an extra extra buzz bonus here's an olden times photo of the same plesiosaur!
This plesiosaur is givin' me the vapours!

*Sure, I know this is a bad way to express it as the mass extinction at the end of the Cretaceous is used to define the end of the Cretaceous so this is somewhat tautological but you know what I mean right?

Jurassic Park: The Game

2011-11-12T09:00:00.000-08:00

I've mentioned the any day soon release of Jurassic Park: The Game and how I'm quite excited about it. I was excited about it. Having caught up with the available information about it, I'm struck by five things.

It looks quite QTE heavy. Like Heavy Rain but with dinosaurs. No biggie though. I prefer being explicitly told to "press A to win" rather than be given the mere facade of agency a la Modern Warfare 3 single player. Plus hopefully that'll mean the journey should be quite fun because it is so controlled? Not that you get to take in much of the action sequences when your scouting the screen for the next button to press.
The characters are still worryingly reminiscent of the characters in Timesplitters 2. Not the style of the characters in Timesplitters 2 but as if somebody had transplanted the characters in from that nine year old (and excellent) game. The dinosaurs look mighty shiny too. Too shiny. Like early days of the Xbox360 shiny. Bad shiny. Not that I'm a graphics snob, as long as a game has dinosaurs in it I'll happily play it, but I can't imagine that this game will be pushing the 360 or PS3 not to mention the PC and Mac. Confusingly, I thought that one of the main advantages of making a QTE game was that you could make it look beautiful because the player is limited in their interactions with the game and environments......
The Wii version was either never announced or dropped. I can't tell which, Telltale's own site says it'll be on "all major video game platforms". To not be on the third biggest platform (after PC and Mac) seems to make that sentence untrue. Sad because I think there's a lot of love in the world still for Jurassic Park. With some decent marketing I imagine it could have been a big hit on that particular platform. Ho hum.
This game is another great example of how poorly game makers serve their potential consumers. Telltale's own website isn't very useful on actual information about the game. The game itself is confusingly described as episodic by some sites and others don't mention this at all. Also, that lovely deluxe PC edition we told you about? If you want it in Europe before Christmas, ermmm there's no guarantee you'll get it for Christmas. You know, Christmas, that time of year that people like to spend lots of money on expensive presents for each other, possibly on video games, possibly on video games that come out at the end of the year. Even friends of fans of dinosaurs in video games like to splash out on video games with dinosaurs and other prehistoric creatures for their dinosaur fan friends. Not if it won't be delivered on time they won't though. Oh also aren't we in the middle of an economic crisis or something? Telltale not bothered in maximising their profits at all? Good on you.
On that note, why is the limited edition for PC only? Xbox 360 owners get a free virtual T-rex for their avatar. Wait whilst I feign a yay. yay. Presumably it is the same game? Now I'm torn as to which one I contemplate getting (if I get it all straight away). Do I want to get it as quickly as possible with all that extra stuff to put in my big 'ol pile of limited edition game junk I've never opened or used? Or do I wait so I don't have to mess around with PC settings and get stuck with looking at Xbox 360 button prompts for my QTEs. I've not seen a video without Xbox pad prompts, presumably the mac version will be changed at least? A professional games company might clarify these things days before it is due out. Oh well.

Sorry to gripe. I like to keep this site as a happy place normally. Takes some doing to bring a dark cloud over talking about dinosaurs in games. Especially when talking about the biggest high profile dinosaurs in game release for a long long time.

The Lost World: Jurassic Park

2011-11-10T09:00:00.000-08:00

Well I tried guys but I'm afraid I'll have to phone this one in. It's hard to believe we used to put up with games like this in the 90s. Okay so today we are somewhat wrapped in cotton wool with quicksaves, infinite continues and restarts but boy this game is tough. The first chapter sees you playing as a Compsognathus. Each level has a double helix hidden in it if you get them all you unlock gallery artwork. The DNA in the first level is a real pain to get requiring you to do a bunch of fiddly jumps over a bottomless pit and then get the DNA, drop back down and do the fiddly jumps again. The characters also have a really weird momentum making tight, accurate jumps nigh impossible. You only get three lives and then thats it. Game Over. Start again from the beginning. So it was only the first level, what kind of dinosaurs and other prehistoric creatures in games fanatic would I be if I missed out on some artwork? 30 lives and 10 restarts later I finally get the DNA and make it out of the stupid jumping and bottomless pit area to discover that's area 1 of level 1. There's a load more levels to play through before you get given an end of chapter password (no saves here). Two lives later and it is back to the menu screen. Do it all over again. I quit after two hours of losing a life or two to get the DNA, getting it and then getting mauled/falling from a height/glitching through platforms on the third area. Sorry guys. I tried.

Also to note, now that publishers are pretty much forcing boxed products into extinction, I'm going to miss BACK OF THE BOX LIES. Here's what it says on the back of the box of The Lost World: Jurassic Park.

40 levels of gripping gameplay
Interact with 20 dinosaurs accurately modelled from the movie
25 unique 3-D environments with secret locations to explore

Being as charitable as I can, the first three levels I played were brutal and full of stupid jumps and poor collision detection. Not my definition of 'gripping'. As nice as it is to see them in the game, I don't recall Leptoceratops, Baryonyx or Orodromeus from the movies so I'm doubtful of the "modelled from the movie" claim. Lastly, I only got to the third level and already I saw some environments "uniquely" recycled. Anyway, on to business. A nice range and some dinosaurs unique to this game!(? needs checking).

Dinosauriness: Like I said, phoning it in. I only saw six of these in game and a further two from the rolling demo when you stay on the menu screen. Here's what the book says: Allosaurus, Baryonyx, Brachiosaurus, Carnotaurus, Compsognathus, Deinonychus, Dimorphodon, Euplocephalus, Leptoceratops, Orodromeus, Pachycephalosaurus, Parasuchus, Staurikosaurus, Stegosaurus, Tricerarops, Tyrannosaurus rex, and of course Velociraptor.

Scientific Accuracy: Of the handful of species I saw, seems alright. Didn't get to the Velociraptor levels to complain about them being somewhat oversized as they are want in the JP universe. Didn't even see any coelurosaurs to wheel out the old feathers issue (although from the book they're all naked) sad to say. Leptoceratops was a very unlikely neon teal colour. I'd advise that if you want to go into dinosaur palaeontology there are probably better references to draw on than this game when it comes to interpreting these wonderful creatures (fossils, books and journal papers perhaps?).

Buzz Bonus: This was a Dreamworks game and as such has the little boy on the moon logo at the beginning. Various Dreamworks games would vary what the boy would do (in Medal of Hono(u)r he parachuted off) and this is one of a couple of JP games to see the boy come to an unfortunate fate. See for yourself.

Too Many Dinosaurs In Games

2011-11-09T04:25:00.000-08:00

There are too many! Orion Prelude seems to be coming along nicely as does the new Jurassic Park: The Game, not to be confused with the game Jurassic Park. Just look at this a super sexy deluxe edition. In other prehistoric creatures news, we've spotted a Plesiosaur in Endless Ocean 2: Treasures of the Deep and some of the cutest dinosaurs known to games in Kirby's Epic Yarn. Dino Strike for the Wii is out this month (not to be confused with Combat of Giants: Dinosaurs Strike also for the Wii and out this month). We've been so inspired by excitement for the new JP game to play The Lost World: Jurassic Park.

SOME TIME LATER

The Lost World Jurassic Park isn't very good. Expect a full review soon! I'll be the first to admit I've been bad a keeping up with indie and/or browser games. Soooo many indie and/or browser dinosaur games.

Dinosaur Zookeeper is an excellent game with dinosaurs in it. You can play it for free right now here. It's like a browser Jurassic Park Operation: Genesis, including "accidental" visitor deaths n'all. Full review sometime soon!

Seen any dinosaurs and/or other prehistoric creatures in games in the wild? Drop a comment and I'll add them to the to do list!

Animal Crossing; Let's Go To The City

2011-06-06T13:00:00.000-07:00

As with the other two games, Animal Crossing; Let's Go To The City (AKA City Folk in other regions) brings with it a world of crazy ass geology and dinosaur goodness. You can excavate fossils, donate them to the museum, show them off in your house, sell them for cash or if you are feeling particularly generous, you can give them to fellow villagers who will put them in stupid places in their house, try to sell them back to you and then move out. Make no bones about it readers (and loyal followers) this post is but a mere ruse so I can show off my sick Wario threads and the completed palaeontology halls.

Dinosauriness: ACLGTTC boasts the most dinosaurs and other prehistoric creatures of all the Animal Crossing games, if this trend continues then the 3DS game might justify the purchase of a 3DS just to absorb the dinosaur goodness. If you dig for victory, you will eventually find; Some amber, an ammonite, Ankylosaurus, Apatosaurus, Archaeopteryx, a coprolite, Dimetrodon, a dinosaur egg, a dinosaur track, a fossil fern, Ichthyosaurus, Iguanodon, Mammoth, Pachycephalosaurus, Parasaurolophus, Peking Man (Homo erectus), Plesiosaurus, Pteranodon, Velociraptor, Sabertooth tiger (Smilodon), Seismosaurus, fossil shark tooth (megalodon), Stegosaurus, Styracosaurus, Tyrannosaurus rex, Triceratops and a trilobite.

Scientific Accuracy: Well it's hard to judge scale when a human child is the same height as talking racoons, elephants and oh-so-elusive talking octopus people. Of more concern is the unique geology of Gaywood (insert the name of your town here) Town that seemlessly rolls all these strata of different ages into one. Unless of course Gaywood was previously an isolated paradise, protected from the extinction events of the rest of the world so that at one point in the near geologic past trilobites lived alongside mammoths and seismosaurs. It's best not to overthink these things, if you are really concerned there is probably a fan fiction about it.

Buzz Bonus: Close examination of the Archaeopteryx fossil shows that the fossil appears to be similar, albeit cropped slightly losing the tail, to the juvenile Archaeopteryx specimen currently on display at the Museum für Naturkunde in Berlin. A museum I was very lucky to visit just last week

Street Fighter X Tekken

2011-04-20T01:12:00.000-07:00

Good news dinosaurs and fighting games fans. Looks like Street Fighter X Tekken has a stage set in what superficially resembles Jurassic Park.

Alex has been spotted hopping around in the background with his bigger cousins and has been announced as a returning character.

I haven't been this excited about dinosaurs in fighting games since DoA 4 although we suspect this level was only included to get some free publicity from this blog WHICH IS FINE. Looks like A Brachiosaurus in the background there and probably a Tyrannosaurus rex (again!).

Jurassic Park: Naked Dinosaurs Edition

2011-03-30T06:25:00.000-07:00

Watch people talk about the new Jurassic Park: The Game.

Hmm it looks like the graphics aren't up to much. For a start all the people look like Timesplitters 2 characters and a bug they need to fix is that the engine is accidentally showing all the dinosaurs without the feathers. Woops! Naked dinosaur action. Come on guys sort it out.

Legendary Wars: T-rex rumble

2011-02-09T12:00:00.000-08:00

Some lovely dinosaur flavoured DSiWare from Interplay. I'm sure you've all wanted to "build villages inhabited by up to 20 men" right? WELL NOW YOU CAN!

Errors aplenty here but I'll forgive them just this once. In an alternative universe somewhere, mankind is on the brink of extinction. Fortunately, there's melons to collect, magic to use and ~~Tyrannosaurus various theropods~~ dinosaurs to fight whilst building sausage-fest villages.

Expect a full review......pah sure, right. Look at that massive list on the left.

Primal Carnage

2011-02-06T08:58:00.000-08:00

I sink maybe there is a renaissance in ze dinosaur vs man FPS non? Ave a look 'ere at ze primal carnage.

Whatever mystical forces are at play which conspire to bring us more of this dinosaurs versus gunny men appear to be in full swing. Although they all seem to have similar source material.

1) Character wearing Robert Muldoon hats despite the limited defensive capacities? CHECK.
2) Big Fences? CHECK.
3) STOMP STOMP REVEAL? CHECK.
4) A character says "Shoot her! Shoooooot her!"? Well not in this trailer but here's hoping.
5) Yeah but Spinosaurus is bigger innit? CHECK.

Also, some feathers would be nice guys. It's a definite fact that most dinosaurs had feathers let's keep up now shall we? Primal Carnage ladies and gentle spoons. Indie developers too which is always nice to see.

Pokemon Black and White

2011-01-13T01:24:00.001-08:00

Pokemon Black and White is the next Pokemon game to introduce even more critters to the mix. We've previously blogged the mon inspired by dinosaurs and other prehistoric creatures that are normally revived from fossils and B&W introduces two new 'uns.

Archaeos which, we hope you'll agree is an homage to fossil extroardinaire Archaeopteryx.

And here is Abagoura who, we hope you will agree again is an homage to super fossil turtle Archelon. Two of my favourite palaeontological classics pokemonised. Good work Game Freak.

HEART Spiral Game Studios

2011-01-13T01:07:00.000-08:00

HOW QUICK WAS THAT? Following yesterday's ORION prelude post, the guys at Spiral Game Studios have already changed the details of the dinosaurs (and pterosaurs) in their game.

That's what we like to see. A commitment to excellence in dinosaurs and other prehistoric reptiles in games.

More of this please.

ORION Prelude

2011-01-12T09:12:00.000-08:00

Check out Spiral Game Studios page for their new game, or a prelude to another game: ORION Prelude? There's even a trailer!!

It isn't a great trailer there are only a maximum of two dinosaurs on screen at any time. I'd be interested to see how they've contrived their dinosaurs into the game because there are jet pack people which could mean time traveling people but then there's also a lot of grass which suggests time traveling dinosaurs? Maybe clones? It could be any of these. Or all of them. Time traveling people travel a little bit back in time and meet time traveling dinosaur clones who have also time traveled. I'd buy that for a dollar.

The website confirms three genera of dinosaurs, Pteranodon, Tyrannosaurus and Velociraptor. Can't say I'm surprised by any of those except Pteranodon but only because they aren't dinosaurs. Also, it should be Tyrannosaurus rex, not Tyrannosaurus Rex. WHEN WILL THESE DEVELOPERS OPEN A BOOK ABOUT DINOSAURS? We've emailed them about it.

1993

2011-01-11T06:57:00.000-08:00

Was when Jurassic Park was released. We all pretend that the second and god forbid the third one don't exist but that doesn't stop the IP from getting flogged like a dead horse. RPS have the low down about a new game inspired by Jason-'em-up Heavy Rain.

In other news have some lovely palaeo-themed concept art from Donkey Kong Country Returns. Isn't it wonderful?
In other less interesting news both Fossil Fighters and Combat of Giants: Dinosaurs have sequels coming out in the future. CoD (see what I did there) is even on the 3DS. I was pleasantly surprised by CoD afore however, we know it is going to be middling isn't it? Isn't it hey Ubisoft? Middling to average to par. For shame.

Carnivores: Dinosaur Hunter

2010-08-18T08:26:00.000-07:00

One day, descendants of the dinosaurs that invented space travel and set off to explore the universe in the late Cretaceous will come back to survey the planet they evolved on and to check to see how the hairies have done since they left the primitive beasts 65 million years ago.
"Avert your eyes crewmates! They've ruined the birth planet. Look at it! It is sick and dying yet still they rape and pillage it." "We should destroy them with our space dino lasers and wipe their fragile little existence off of the face of the birth world. Give me that order sir and it will be done without a moments hesitation" "Belay that order! Let them revel in their own filth, dirt and dust until they suffocate themselves. Let the last remaining hairy ones look each other in the eye under a scorched sky and realise that they have doomed themselves into extinction. They won't last another century I'd wager.""Sir! Our scans have shown that they... I can't believe it sir! Our scans of their limited technology shows that have desecrated the remains of our ancestors and recreated them in virtual play pens where the hairy ones hunt down our naked ancestors. They depict our glorious lineage as nothing but featherless savages who exist only to endlessly fight each other in desert and jungle type localities.""Why would they simulate the hunting of our poor defenceless brethren? What perverted race creates such sycophantic fantasies? Imagine if they ever created technology that allowed them to escape this hell they have created for themselves? This seals their fate. Ready the space dino laser!"

"One last question sir! Why do we call ourselves dinosaurs? That would make no sense?"

"FIRE!"

Attack of the Verbose Dinosaur

2010-08-18T08:07:00.000-07:00

Who says games are all evil? Who says games can't educate? Who says that the shocking pulsating bag of creations that game designers call 'dinosaurs' seem to be accurate according to fifty year old scientific consensus? ME. ME ON THAT LAST ONE. For example, let's take a look at the Xbox Live marketplace title, Attack of the Verbose Dinosaur.
Mother of the mechanisms that lead to the improbable evolution of life as we know it! What is that? Look at that posture? Why is it in a city? Why does it want to affront the street creole that now passes as the language known as English? According to the official trailer this is the last of the dinosaurs and he lived at the bottom of the sea and learned to read from the books that would fall from shipwrecks. He was happy until he got the internet whereupon he decides to seek vengeance on those who abused the beautiful language. Sounds reasonable I suppose. Makes more sense than the plot of Jurassic Park.
Here's the scoop:

Dinosauriness: One incredibly arthritic, overweight internet surfing, book reading, angry marine 'dinosaur' that is some kind of carnosaurian-godzilla love child.

Scientific Accuracy: Unfortunately, the teeth seem to be built into a continuous bar, one on the upper jaw and one on the mandible. Apart from this single slip up this is a pretty accurate recreation 9/10.

Buzz Bonus: I cannot spell dissappear, tommorrow or suprise. I used to be able to but my brain cells are starting to die from playing all those awful Land Before Time GBA games.

Sonic and the Secret Rings

2010-08-18T07:52:00.000-07:00

If I was a lazy games hack I'd start this post going on about how Sonic used to be so great and how recently the games haven't been a patch on the older games and how Sega's flogging of a dead hedgehog is retrospectively ruining my childhood memories. I won't though because Sonic Rush was actually alright and OMG SONIC AND THE SECRET RINGS HAS Triceratops in it. Egg on my face, only earlier today I was bemoaning the lack of dinosaur love on the Wii.

My exclusive hands-off review: A return to form for Sonic the hedgehog! Sonic, Sega and Dinosaur fans belatedly rejoice this three year old game! Huzzah! Hurrah! Sonic is back. Sure Triceratops can run that fast. And sure carnosaurs were bright pink. That's reasonable. 10/10

Dinosaurs Strike

2010-08-18T07:36:00.000-07:00

Does Pokemon play a little too well for you? Want the chance to fight against anachronistic objects that normally don't have agency on the big screen?

Then today is your lucky day reader because Combat of Giants Dinosaur Strike for the Wii was just announced. A November launch date has been slated.

I was mildly surprised by the DS game Combat of Giants: Dinosaurs. Its dinosaur customisation, arena based combat, unique evolution mechanism as well as combat against tractors stood it apart from the usual run-of-the-mill-shoddy-boring-miss-the-point-dinosaur-pokemon-clones and we haven't had a decent Wii based dinosaur or other prehistoric animal related game since Sea Monsters. Scratch that. We haven't had any decent Wii dinosaur based games in the UK. Oh, Jurassic: The hunted, WHEN WILL THEY PORT YOU?

More Jurassic Park Games?

2010-06-09T09:49:00.000-07:00

Read all abaat it here.

This could be the dawn of a new era in dinosaur related games. For so long I've been saying that Jurassic Park should be turned into a series of games.

OH HANG ON....

Dinosaurs vs. Sharks

2010-05-17T03:47:00.000-07:00

The official Nintendo magazine is running this brilliant non-competition forum members have been asked to create a Dinosaurs vs Shark microgame on Warioware DIY. Why a 'non' competition you ask? Well that's because dinosaurs would so obviously win. On land. Maybe not so much in the sea.

Either way if you fancy your chances you should enter!

Combat of Giants: Dinosaurs

2010-05-04T04:46:00.000-07:00

I'll be honest, when Combat of Giants: Dinosaurs first came onto the radar there was more than a little bit of eye rolling. Like a crufts judge getting a handful of the testes to check pedigree lets quickly metaphorically check the nads of CoG:D. This is a quietly released, Ubisoft DS game. Chances are it isn't going to be picking up GOTY awards. Even the front cover doesn't really give anything away. I was expecting something between the awful awful 101 Dino Pets and the pokemon-alike-games like Dinosaur King. Unfortunately, critical damage to the touch screen of my original DS meant that even though I had CoG:D I couldn't play it. The lovely DSiXL changed all that....

Well reader, much like the newly diagnosed hermaphrodite teen I was pleasantly surprised by this game! You get to choose a dinosaur (you have to start with the sauropod and unlock others later) to take through various arenas with the objective of collecting 100 gold eggs and completing a five part fossil skeleton. Some of the eggs are rewarded for unsurprisingly, beating other dinosaurs in combat and the fossil bits are hidden in uninspiring looking domes of mud that you have to visit on your way around the arena. The arenas are also filled with non egg-rewarding dinosaurs which you may wish to avoid or combat. The combat itself requires choosing and attack and then having to accurately draw a line shape. The stronger the attack the more complicated the line in the shape of a dinosaur head, arms, leg or whole body. The better and quicker you fill in the line, the better your attack. So far, so what right? But the brilliant bit comes later. When you earn enough eggs you can buy various upgrades for your dinosaur allowing a surprising amount of customisation. After the first couple of arenas you unlock the ability to change the colour of your dinosaur but also you can buy 'evolutions' for a number of slots on the body. These take three types. You can either boost attack by buying bony spikes, boost the amount of health you regain using defensive moves by buying what appears to be metal plate armour or boost the number of attacks you can make by decorating your dinosaur with feathers. The best bit is that you actually see the upgrades on your dino. If you get a bit battered in combat then you can replenish health by drinking water or eating bananas? You can also attempt to dissuade the NPDs from battle with a vocal warning meaning you don't have to fight every single dinosaur per arena to proceed. In yet another bizarre twist, occasionally when looking for the fossil pieces you stumble across a mystery combatant which takes the form of commonplace static objects.

I never really realised how much I wanted to play as a pitch black with green tiger stripes, armour plated Brachiosaur with bony spikes coming out of it's face and fancy feathers on the tail attacking a particularly vicious phone box until it happened. I won't regale the epic clashes with a house or a tractor either. Let's do this.

Dinosauriness: I'm yet to play through all the arenas and unlock em all but there are a healthy number of dinosaurs as well as a bunch of inert objects. I'll update the list here when I'm done.

Scientific Accuracy: Well, armour plating, phone boxes, automobiles and nose bone weapons aside I hate to bring down the mood by calling foul on this one. Bananas are suspect too and when the combat starts to get heavy, dare I say it, the sauropods start to do 'combos'. The feather problem normally par for the course in dinosaur games is cleverly dealt with with the crazy customisation tool. Physiologically shall we say, challenging, combos.

Buzz Bonus:On the upside though, this is by far the most comprehensive dinosaur customisation in video games (Spore doesn't count because everything looks like a muppet any approximation to a dinosaur you make is but a muppet dinosaur rather than a dinosaur muppet).

Dotting t's and crossing i's

2010-04-15T03:52:00.000-07:00

Reader Grady [quite rightly] has emailed in to point out that Mamoswine was not included in this post all those months ago. Mamoswine is a mammoth-in-disguise which can be found in Pokemon Diamond, Pearl, Heart Gold, Soul Silver, many of the Mystery Dungeons, Pokemon Battle Revolution and perhaps some of those WiiWare games.
The writers of Cunzy1 1's Dinosaurs in Games Blog do not hesitate to point out that the exclusion was no reflection on Mamoswine and was a mere oversight. Consider this post a formal apology!

Jurassic: The Hunted

2010-04-15T01:54:00.000-07:00

We got pretty excited when we heard about Jurassic: The Hunted last year so it is without a hint of sadness to discover that it came out with AN ALMIGHTY WHIMPER!
Only two reviews on Metacritic and not so much as a sniffter of an EU release. We're used to hunting down obscure and unsuccessful dinosaur related games on auction websites but not when they were published by Activision! What is the world coming to when a dinosaur game with this kind of pedigree fizzles to release? More on this when we get it.

UPDATE: My co-author, Richie! over at That Guy's A Maniac took justice into his VERY OWN HANDS and contacted Activision about the EU release, they had this to say:

"Unfortunately, we cannot answer questions about a game until it has been released. All new game information is available on the website or in our press releases."

Having just spent the last twenty minutes waiting for all those ridiculous flash videos to load up (why do publishers insist on website design circa 1990? Hello! User friendly!) we cannot find any news related to Jurassic: The Hunted. SO WE@RE TAKING THIS AS CONFIRMATION THAT IT WILL BE COMING OUT SOON! You heard this juicy morsel of dinosaur game related news here first people!

Dino D-Day

2010-02-16T05:44:00.000-08:00

Many think Half Life 2 to be a great game. Maybe the best game. But it was missing two vital things.

List of things Half Life 2 was missing
1) Nazis
2) Dinosaurs

Heroes, nay Legends! correct these errors people:

Fingers crossed everyone that Dinosaurs become the new zombies in games.

Spare a thought for B.C.

2010-02-16T01:43:00.000-08:00

2010 is the year for dinosaur games readers. I can feel it in my waters but before we get all worked up for behemoths like the awesome Dinosaur D-Day let us spare a thought for a little gem that never made it to market. Today readers we stare at our shoes for two minutes for Lionhead's aborted B.C.
172 Million years ago it was the Jurassic period. 71 999 994 years later, Lie Head Peter Molyneux broke the news that a little game that Lionhead had been working on for the Xbox had been canceled. That game was B.C. or BC or B.C? . It is perhaps one of the most annoying games to look for on an internet search engine is what it is which is some kind of accolade. Anyway, BC would have been a game that celebrated the apocryphal co-existence of dinosaur and caveman as illustrated by many early silver screen dinosaur forays. Even to this day the artwork looks very nice and the game would have set the player in the shoes of (well third person so 10m behind the shoes of) a caveman chieftan who had to lead his tribe off of the menu and well details get sketchy. As you can see from the above and below screens though it had dinosaurs in it which makes us sad to think this is one prehistoric world we won't get to be a part of :(

So far so good and so old but there is a petition to get it going again if you think the world needs a bit more dinosaurs in games. Which it MOST DEFINITELY DOES. So go sign it you loons.

Escape the Museum and Jurassic: The Hunted.

2009-10-21T09:50:00.000-07:00

Ever since gaming got mainstream, the hardcore have complained that games have been ruined. More people now play hidden object games or social games through facebook than those really good games about big marines shooting aliens. Gaming proper is officially dead. Long live gaming.

Except when your hidden object game has dinosaurs in it! In which case, screw hardcore gaming we didn't like it anyway and step up Escape the Museum for the PC and now for the Wii!

We haven't played it yet because it is still £14.99 and we'll wait until it drops to around £5. We have to be careful though because once games go to £5 they next just dissappear from the internet and you have to go looking in dirty pawn shops and antique shows in order to find them again.

SURPISE DINOSAUR GAME! Also expect to see Jurassic: The Hunted in stores soon for the Xbox 360, Playstation 3 and Wii. It looks like next gen finally got on the dinosaur train. And we haven't been this happy for SEGA. It is a shame that Activision didn't get Flash Bang's memo about feathers though :( A possible step backwards for dinosaurs and other prehistoric creatures in games.

Viva Pinata: Trouble in Paradise- Xbox 360

2009-08-25T06:59:00.000-07:00

I am painfully aware that there should be an accent somewhere over one of those letters up there in the post title. I apologise but it doesn't matter anyway because SHOCK HORROR do we have a drop in standards by covering this game?

Very early on, I made it clear what exactly constituted a dinosaur and/or prehistoric creature and hence what kinds of things I would and wouldn't be covering. So for example, Yoshi would not count as a dinosaur but Rampardos would. Where is the rationale you might ask? Well it's my blog and I'll do what I want. Plus those Pinatas are so adorable I just had to include Choclodocus even though I imagine it won't exactly flourish in the following analysis:

Dinosauriness: Well a Choclodocus (should I italicize it? yes, yes I should) can take many forms, shall we say 'taking inspiration' from such dinosaurs as Ankylosaurus, Stegosaurus, Triceratops and some kind of Sauropod.

Scientific Accuracy: Well it does look very cute. Look at his liddle face. I don't think we need to ruin the atmosphere by going on and on about scientific accuracy. Do you?

Buzz Bonus: I was rooting around the internet and came across the following coded message "Place the skull, ribs, spine, and amber gem into a store house. Eventually they will fuse into a Choclodocus egg. This egg can be hatched by a Cluckles wearing a Jurassic Hair accessory". Presumably that means something to somebody but alas that person isn't me.

How to get dinosaurs into your game

2009-08-25T05:26:00.000-07:00

Boy! Playing all these dinosaur games for this site is tricky. Especially when your dinosaurs and other prehistoric creatures don't appear until right at the end! Syberia I'm talking about you. So today I'm gonna be taking a different tactic so that this site isn't months and months between updates.

The inaugural post in this series is how to gets them Dinosaurs and prehistoric creatures into your games. Are you making a game right now? Trying to find an angle to get some of them extinct beauts in? Then you've come to the right place.

Clone 'em in! Largely inspired by Jurassic Park many games including the JP games use artistic licence with current scientific cloning knowledge to justify them dinos. Just dig up some fossils, umm clone them, voila. Ici est un dino!
Scientific Accuracy: Way off. Way way off. Like, seriously. Way. Off. Cloning technology for animals that still exist struggles to get it right. Cloning animals when we have some of their DNA is still completely unsuccessful e.g Thylacine, Mammoths. Cloning animals when their DNA has never been found is, as I type, pure science fiction.
As seen in: All the Jurassic Park games and Killer Instinct.

Reconstruct them in! Only slightly different from the above method in that cloning isn't explicitly mentioned. It normally involves some mysterious process off screen. Excavate a fossil pop it into a machine at a lab and hey presto! You've got your dinosaurs and other prehistoric creatures. Just don't ask us how we did it. Its science and stuff.
Scientific Accuracy: Since the process is not available for us to assess it is impossible to comment other than to say hmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm really?
As seen in: Tekken, Small Arms, Pokemon, Dino Master.

They were hiding all the time! You just weren't looking properly. Lost Valleys, remote islands and inhabitable climates are the staple hiding place for most dinosaurs and other extinct species. But be warned! It makes a little bit more sense if your dinosaurs are in an ecosystem that could actually support them. The dinosaurs in Tomb Raider are all obligate carnivores and in Tomb Raider 2 generations of Tyrannosaurus rex seem to have survived and propagated for millions of years in a giant, featureless pit. It a make a no sense!
Scientific accuracy: This method of getting dinosaurs into your game is probably the least offensive to scientific reason and many modern day 'sightings' of dinosaurs and dinosaur myths seem to centre around remote unexplored regions.
As seen in: Peter Jackson's King Kong the Official Game of the Movie, Syberia, Tomb Raider.

Have a Museum!This is where most people see dinosaur and other prehistoric creature remains and many games have museums packed with skeletons of prehistoric creatures. More often than not though the beautiful skeletons are destructible playgrounds :( Also, this means that your dinosaurs have to be pretty static unless you go for a Night at the Museum thang.
Scientific Accuracy: As long as your fossils aren't coming alive at night due to an ancient Egyptian artifact or zombie curse and all the bones are in the right places you're alright by me.
As seen in: Animal Crossing, GTA IV, Stranglehold, Evil Dead Fistful of Boomstick, Siphon Filter.

Time travel/Bending! Can't find a way to bring the dinosaurs to your characters? Then bring the characters to the dinosaurs. Crazy scientists can be working on a time travel device when it goes wrong, time travel technology just inexplicably exists or you can always invoke an anomaly. Choose your method just don't expect a physicist to endorse your product.
Scientific Accuracy: See cloning.
As seen in: Dino Crises, Fossil League, Turok: Dinosaur Hunter, Paraworld.

Just don't explain at all why they are there Hey! It's your game. Do what you want. Most games would be very boring indeed if we stayed within the realms of what is possible in real life. Alternatively, you can go for a mixed message like Dino King which just seems to be very confused as to how the dinosaurs get there. Something about some stones and a meteorite? It doesn't matter.
Scientific accuracy: Nothing is impossible! It's just that most things are improbable.
As seen in: Dino King, DoA 4.

They're just there okay! It's not important how they got there but they are here! That's all that counts. So have fun.
Scientific Accuracy: In a time before Wikipedia things could just be the way they are without an army of people constructing possible causation theories. It's fiction for god's sake!
As seen in: Off Road Velociraptor Safari, Doritos Dash of Destruction, 101 Dino Pets, Deathtrap Dungeon, Timesplitters.

Its all about the timing. Conscious about offending your palaeontologist friends? Unwilling to contravene science with time travel or over ambitious cloning projects? Then simple. Just set your whole game in the world of the dinosaurs and/or prehistoric creatures. That's allowed. But it does mean that you can't have any human protagonists but often I find them overrated anywho.
Scientific Accuracy: As long as your environments are good palaeo environments and there are no anachronistic blunders your game will be good until a new scientific discovery goes and ruins it all.
As seen in: Sea Monsters: A prehistoric adventure, Jurassic Realm, Ice Age, Dinosaur!

In the wind.. Fossil Fighters, Ice Age 3 and Go Diego Go! Great Dinosaur Rescue

2009-06-30T09:25:00.000-07:00

Oh what a surprise! A DS based Pokemon rip-off where collecting fossils, cleaning them, reviving them and then battling with them is the order of the day.

This does make a refreshing change (See also Dino Master and Fossil League: Dino Tournament Championship).

I'm going to resist the temptation to review it from prerelease videos and screenshots although we all know it's going to be so-so. And the dinosaurs are all made up :(

Ice Age 3 plods onto every console going as did the first two games of the films. Expect generic platforming. It's hard to get excited about these when the previous ones were playable but mediocre. It's even harder just contemplating the wedging the dinosaurs into the Ice Age format. Still final judgement to be reserved after I play through all fourteen versions.

Go Diego Go! Great Dinosaur Rescue. Firstly why are the not so great dinosaurs not worth rescuing? And also...just no. Just no. I'll be honest, the to do list just got a new last place with this game.

Tot ziens!

Peter Jackson's King Kong: The Official Game of the Movie-Almost every platform

2009-02-25T06:41:00.000-08:00

Widely (and rightly) ridiculed for it's ridiculous name, this game was released on a shed load of platforms. Some of them were surprisingly good considering the film tie in (PS2) and some were pretty bad (GBAand the DS version ). Either way dinosaurs were a feature of the films and games and they are a delight in this title. Fans of dinosaurs in games should endeavour to pick this title up (on the consoles) as rarely have nicer dinosaurs been seen on the little screen.

Dinosauriness: A number of dinosaurs with very silly names. Quite why the silly names I'm not too sure. Perhaps it is so that know-it-all palaeontologists can't later poo poo some of the made up dinosaurs and other prehistoric creatures as they are want to do. Perhaps there has been some crazy isolated insular evolution going on on Skull Island which led to the total loss of feathers. And silly names. Anyway there's some sauropod ones, theropod ones, some hadrosaurs, some permian mammal-alikes, ancient giant crocodiles, some pterosaurs and the very silly named Vastatosaurus rex.

Scientific Accuracy: I quite like the idea of making up some dinosaurs rather than lazily skimming described species. This gives you a lot of artistic freedom and a way to ignore the palaeontologists who go to cinemas and concentrate on biodynamics and scale rather than the action/drama etc. I'm giving it a 5/10 but only because it could be a 0/10 (they are all made up) or a 10/10 (they made them up so how can it be inaccurate?).

Buzz Bonus: All dinosaur fans should play this game. It has some nice settings some cool set pieces and spear throwing. Who doesn't love themselves some spear throwing?

Tekken 2, Tekken Tag Tournament-Arcade/PlayStation, PlayStation 2

2009-02-25T05:28:00.000-08:00

Like or hate Tekken, Alex is in Tekken 2 and Tekken Tag Tournament. Alex is a dinosaur (albeit a dinosaur cloney job [as they so often are]). Alex is a weird name for a dinosaur fighter guy. Apparently he was created by Doctor Boskonovitch and learned how to wrestle from Armo(u)r King. He currently resides in Australia.

Dinosauriness: Hard to judge really. Alex was created by extracting 'something' from a fossil tentatively from the dromaeosauridae family. Judging from the state of him this is probably correct.

Scientific Accuracy: Well. The usual extraction from fossils, no feathers etc. etc. caveats. All in all 4, no 3 out of 10 for accuracy. Maybe that's too generous. 2? 1? It's hard to say. Make your own mind up.

Buzz Bonus: Alex was in the Tekken animated film. Although it wasn't Alex. They were called Rex. Under no circumstances watch the animated film. It is bad. No. Awful. Word.

The to do list

2009-02-24T08:11:00.000-08:00

So little time. So much to do! Here is the to do list in case you were wondering WHY THE HELL I HADN'T GOT ROUND TO LOOKING AT Land Before Time: Into the Mysterious Beyond Yet.

Playing all these through takes time peeps! And some of them are shovelware to the max.

Batman Lego, BUZZ! JUNIOR DINO DEN, Carnivores, Carnivores 2, Carnivore Ice Age, Carnivores Cityscape, Combat of giants: Dinosaurs, Dino Hunter, Dino Land, Dinotopia: The Sunstone Odyssey, Dino Stalker, Dinosaur park, Disney's Dinosaur x 3, DoA 4, Dinosaur World, Evil Dead Fistful of Boomstick, Fossil Fighters, Fossil League Dino Tournament Championship, Go Diego Go Great Dinosaur Rescue, Ice Age, Ice Age 2, Ice Age 3, Jurassic Park, Jurassic Park Trespasser, Jurassic Park Dino Defender, The Land Before Time: Into The Mysterious Beyond, Lost World: Jurassic Park, Siphon Filter, Splashdown 2, Syberia, Syberia II, Tomb Raider 3, Tomb Raider 10th Anniversary Edition, Turok: Dinosaur Hunter, Turok Evolution, Turok (Xbox 360), Turok Rage Wars, Turok 2 Seeds of Evil, Warcraft III, War of the monsters and Zoo Tycoon: Dinosaur digs.

There's more out there, I know it. Apologies peeps.

Small Arms- Xbox 360

2009-02-24T07:43:00.000-08:00

Small arms is a poor man's (and suitably cheaper) Super Smash Brothers. The idea is to jump around and beat the other guys but without all the tech. The characters are cutesy and a little more-than-a-little-bit Fur fighters. It's available on Xbox Live Arcade which means that a gazillion people played it for two days before going onto the next PlayStation-era-esque throw away.

Regardless of the merits of Xbox Live arcade, Tyrone, one of the characters in small arms is a dinosaur!

Dinosauriness: Some kind of genericy raptor jobby.

Scientific Accuracy: He was created in a science research facility, a la Riptor from Killer Instinct so it may be possible that he doesn't have feathers, is ludicrously coloured and carries and ice ray thing to fight a mouse, a chicken and a small ninja woman. Overall 7/10.

Buzz bonus: Tyrone falls very close to the line of being a not real dinosaur (like Yoshi or godzilla and therefore not eligible to be covered here) but he has such a nice little face. Look at his face. Lovely.

Dino King-DS

2009-01-28T04:31:00.000-08:00

At first glance, Dino King from Sega on the DS appears to fall into the same trappings as Fossil Torunament and the battling sections of Dino Master for the same platform. That is trying to be Pokemon but failing in terms of execution, depth, playability and a lot of thought and some nice extra touches.

Fossil tournament fails purely because even until late in the game, moves consistently miss so even in battles where levels and numbers mean the odds are vastly stacked in the player's favour it is still possible to lose because you just can't hit the oponent for no clear reason. The battling sections in Dino Master (largely an after thought and completely uneccessary considering the Qix and collect section of the game is so addictive) fail because combat is a little too random. On top of mechanics, neither of these games serve up a good storyline and the niche appeal of these titles means you can scour the earth and the internet and you'll never find someone to fight against over wi-fi or DS to DS play.

So it was with some trepedation that Dino King went into the DS. After a couple of hours of play though it appears to actually be quite engaging. The top down view is completely stolen from pokemon and the gameboy link games and the storyline won't be winning any awards anytime soon (the game literally starts off with a device for bringing dinosaurs back to life being invented and two seconds later stolen by the bad guys).

Instead of complex movesets a la Pokemon or the random attacks of Dino Master, combat is actually paper, scissors, stone. This image on the back of the box put me off buying this title simply because I still have Fossil Tournament to beat and I didn't fancy more random battling from start to finish. However, what appears to be a very simple way of deciding combat is actually more complex and all the more engaging for it. Firstly different species of dinosaurs have different critical moves so my Triceratops has a critical move on scissors. But rather than simply guessing your attack, enemies give off clues as to which moves they will be using. This starts off simple enemies telling you: "I'm going to go for my critical attack" to which the correct response would be to look at the enemy critical sign e.g. paper and choose scissors. Later on in the game, characters give you more complex cues like "Critical moves are a no no" meaning they won't use their critical move (e.g. Rock) so you have to choose one of the remaining symbols that beats the other remaining symbol (in this case scissors would be the correct choice).

Maybe it doesn't sound so great but after numerous battles your head starts to overthink the moves and you end up making some silly mistakes but this beats totally random battles or battles that would otherwise be too easy. The moves look good and are animated in 3D and unlike Fossil Tournament the moves aren't exactly copied (names and all; tail swipe, bite etc.) from pokemon red/blue. A black mark on scientific accuracy though as some moves make the dinosaurs perform physics defying, back breaking moves. One move, 'boomerang attack', sees the dinosaur jump into the air, tuck it's tail under it's chin and do a spin attack. From the opening FMV it looks like fire breathing may feature down the line too :(

As is standard for DS dinosaur games the collect 'em up part involves collecting and excavating fossils. This is done by using a radar and a drill and although isn't quite as fun as the cave excavation in Pokemon it's okay. You then have to clean the fossils in order to be able to turn them into cards, to summon, to use in battles. The cleaning section seems broken as your pick (the stylus) seems to break well before you could ever completely expose a fossil but you get the dinosaur anyway. Maybe I'm missing something though.

It'll be interesting to see how Combat of Giants (see yesterday's post for the trailer) compares but until then Dino King is a good title with an unusual amount of effort put in, considering it could have been a very shallow agme. I'm only two hours in but I'll post up more details when I have em.

Dinosauriness: Over 70 dinosaur species according to the back of the box but the species list seems to be quite comprehensive, somewhere between Fossil Tournament and the impressive Dino Master in terms of taxonomic coverage. Tyrannosaurs rex makes an early appearence as the nemesis and Triceratops or Ceratosaurus? are the squirtle and bulbasaur you have to choose from at the start. The first level (Euro Town) has such dinosaurs as Dacenturus, Gorgosaurus, Iguanaodon, Irritator and Wuerhosaurus . So it's clear we're not just dealing with the Hollywood stars.

Scientific Accuracy: The usual bringing dinosaurs back problems as well as biodynamically impossible moves and stratigraphically puzzling sequences are all correct and present. There appears to be some minor scale inaccuracies too. No feathers either but hey that's pretty much every dinosaur game right?

Buzz Bonus: The receptionist or assistant at the D-site is called Minmi which is a cool name for a person and used to be the shortest dinosaur genus until Mei was named.

Super Smash Brothers Brawl-Wii

2009-01-26T04:33:00.000-08:00

It did get a mention a while back but SSBB does have something of the dinosaur about it. On the Pokemon Stadium 2 level you can find fossils of Kabutops and Omastar. You want proof? Okay.

Here is the Kabutops fossil complete with palaeontological tools and field map.

Here is the spiral shell of an Omastar awaiting excavation.
Tricky the Triceratops from Starfox Adventures also features as one of the trophies.

Dinosauriness: Ammonites, Trilobites and a Triceratops.

Scientific Accuracy: In a universe where plumbers fight pink blobs who can swallow other people ummmmm? 2/10?

Buzz Bonus: The trophy Diorama mode in SSBB is simply brilliant. That is a truth.

Off Road Velociraptor Safari- PC

2009-01-26T04:20:00.000-08:00

Velociraptor Safari from Flashbang studios is yet another great and free dinosaur game. Play it in your browser now you crazy boyos.

The aim of the game is to drive around in a jeep as a monocled Velociraptor and using ramps, speed boosts and a genius spiked ball that comes out the back of your jeep you need to take down some wild Velociraptors, with panache and style. Although it looks simple it can be tricksy but judging from the highest scores you can get a knack from running down your feathered kin.

Dinosauriness: Velociraptor galor, a Triceratops skull sits in the back of your jeep and an unidentified pterosaur flies around in the sky.

Scientific accuracy: Major kudos to the inclusion of feathers (which some gamers questioned). 8.5/10.

Buzz Bonus: The achievements are truly great. This whole game shows more polish and attention to detail than many other current releases. Sad really :(

Doritos Dash of Destruction- Xbox, Xbox 360

2009-01-26T04:10:00.000-08:00

Is now free to download on Xbox live. Despite being a free game and one that is corporate sponsored it is probably one of the best single screen co-op games in the world. Much better than the new Battlefront:Lord of the Rings edition by a long shot.

The premise of the game, if that is the right phrase, is that you have to deliver doritos around town but a number of Tyrannosaurus rex and other delivery drivers try to stop you. Pretty straight forward really but very very playable. In multuiplayer if you get stomped by a T.rex you then become a T.rex. First to 20 odd number of deliveries is the winner!

Now for the breakdown.

Dinosauriness: Just T.rex yet again. But it comes in a range of neon colours which some consider a measure of awesomeness.

Scientific Accuracy: No feathers, unlikely colours but scale is okay. Umm 4/10 for this one.

Buzz Bonus: This game is allegedly the easiest XBLA game to earn all the achievments for so now you have four reasons to get hold of it*

*Because it is great. Because it is free. Because you can get easy cheevos and because it has dinosaurs in it.

Happy 2009!

2009-01-26T03:47:00.000-08:00

Happy new year all. It's 2009, year of the dinosaurs and other prehistoric creatures in games. That may not be true but there is plenty of dinosauriness in games stuff going on. First up, a game that slipped under my radar is Combat of Giants: Dinosaurs, a DS game you won't find in stores because it doesn't have a 'z' on the end. Here's the trailer:

Which I think you'll agree looks kind of cool. The problem is that it is probably yet another wannabe pokemon game. Along with Dino Master, Dino King and Fossil Tournament, both extensions of dig/catch, train and battle games these games suffer from trying to be Pokemon but despite the richer (and realer) source material they often lack the depth and playability of the pokemon games. However, I'll reserve final judgement for when I've played what looks to be the best dinosaur game on the DS so far.

Google Lively-RIP

2008-12-04T04:09:00.000-08:00

You may have heard that google recently shut down it's Google Lively service, google's own virtual world. I was ambivelant about the news, having not heard about it until it was shut down. But then, dear reader I saw this screenie in one of the articles.

Yep! Dinosaurs. Upon this discovery I became sad. It's always sad when a dinosaurs in games brother passes on to the other side, let us take a minute to think in silence before the inevitable analysis.

Dinosauriness: Well from this single screenshot it looks like we have (had) yet another Tyrannosaurus rex. Still, even a Hollywood lost brother is a lost brother.

Scientific Accuracy: What accuracy Lively gained from not having to bother with feathers it lost from having an animated skeleton. You would be hard pressed to move that hulk around without any connective tissue or muscle. Still it looked cool so 8.5/10.

Buzz bonus: Google lively, others may not mourn your loss but here we salute your dedication to make games and virtual worlds 1000000% better through the inclusion of dinosaurs. May nobody say a bad word about you without the caveat "but they did include some KICK ASS dinosaurs". RIP.

Dinoworld-PC

2008-12-04T03:38:00.000-08:00

Way back when Walking with Dinosaurs came out, the beeb put up a neat little "game" downloadable here. Although basic and very dated now it still offers some surprising enjoyment, some mission based play and even the chance to create your own herd of dinosaurs!

The game/edutainment software starts out with our protagonist mysteriously transported back to the Jurassic. There's very little exposition (you are sometimes treated as a human, sometimes as a disembodied camera) but it's best kept ambiguous in my opinion. You can then explore a number of environments (salt lake, forest, desert) and discover some facts about dinosaurs and other animals as well as observing them milling around and doing their thang.

Surprisingly there is a little bit of progression through the 'game' and you have see and discover certain things (an Allosaurus eating a meal or large dragonflies) in order to unlock the next event culminating in you hitching a ride on a pterosaur to a secret area. In this new secret area you can use a couple of simple keystrokes to spawn your own herd of Diplodocus or Allosaurus or both!

The program is entirely free and runs quite smoothly and definitely worth a try, you could even set it up to be some kind of persistant screensaver when you are away from your desk as all the animals continue to potter around even if you aren't there to see them do so.

Dinosauriness: A smattering of prehistoric critters are here. Allosaurus, Diplodocus, Stegosaurus and a pterosaur (the ID escapes me know) all populate the environs.

Scientific Accuracy: Nothing obviously wrong the environments don't exactly blend together realistically but whatcha gonna do about it. Of course no feathers but this was made almost 6 years ago now.

Buzz Bonus: Climb to a high ledge and hitch a ride on a pterosaur to the secret salt plain where you can spawn as many dinosaurs as you want until your computer crashes. CONFESSION TIME! I spent hours spawning sauropods and theropods trying to arrange two armies to fight against each other. Unfortunately, the AI isn't up to enacting my grand plans so half the dinos would potter around oblvious to the threat whilst the Allosaurus queued up to get beaten to death by a single Diplodocus. Oh well, you win some, you lose some...

Endless Ocean- Wii

2008-09-26T03:34:00.000-07:00

Even Endless Ocean can't stray from the glory that is dinosaurs and prehistoric creatures in their games. Endless Ocean is awesome. You should buy it.

Dinosauriness: One can find some splendid vertebrate fossils in the Abyss, including this plesiosaur above and if you look hard enough you can find a lovely Anomalocaris fossil!

Scientific Accuracy: Aside from a bit of ecosystem merging, pretty good. 8, no 9 accuracy. HELL MAKE MINE A 10!

Buzz Bonus: You should make use of the SD card soundtrack possibilities. Disney's Under the Sea is an obvious choice....

Stranglehold Revisted, Xbox 360, PS3 and PC

2008-09-02T03:50:00.000-07:00

Hello readers! You may remember recently (ish) that I mentioned the game Stranglehold in the pages of this here blog. Since then I have had a chance to visit the museum proper and boy o they have a lot of stuff on display! Here's a guided tour (ish). Apologies for the broken objects but at the time of the tour I was under some pretty heavy fire you know?

Welcome to the ~~Chicago Field Museum~~ a museum in Chicago! I'll be your tour guide Tequila Yuen! It's a name!

The museum has at least four taxidermy specimens of Thylacinus on open display! You won't see these in the wild unfortunately!

A nice Parasaurlophus skull!

What a surprise! On your right you'll see a Tyrannosaurs skeleton :(

And wow what a treat! A taxidermy Dodo. You won't see many of these around.

You uncultured bastards!

Giggidy

A GIANT Rhamphorynhcus!

Eeeeygh!

Here you will see a Camarasaurid sauropod just past the goons!

This was a tail.

This was some vertebrae with ribs but...

Yafleur!

It's just tommy K

And that brings us to the end of our tour. Please wait here for the tour of the Archaeology section and apologies to those visitors who lost limbs and relatives.

Dinosauriness: Countless of prehistoric creatures in these galleries and some nice recent examples of extinct animals including: Tyrannosaurus rex, Stegosaurus, Camarasaurus, a couple of pterosaurs, a sabre toothed cat, Einosaurus, Parasaurlophus, Triceratops, Mosasaurus, Rhamphorhynchus, an Ichthyosaur, various dinosaur eggs and footprints, Velociraptor, Thylacinus, Raphus cucullatus and a selection of flightless birds!

Scientific Accuracy: Museum conservation issues aside (the taxidermy specimens of the dodo and thylacine shouldn't be on open display) they are striking representations of real specimens with the rare exception of a few enlarged specimens.

Buzz Bonus: If you shoot all of the bones off of the large sauropod skeleton you can run up the back of you get the achievment "Palaeontologist".

GTA IV, PS3, Xbox 360, PC

2008-09-02T03:25:00.000-07:00

Hello readers! It's time for an update! Today we are looking at the popular videogame Grand Theft Auto IV and the dinosaurs therein!

Tucked away in Liberty City, where the AMNH would be in the real New York, is a lovely museum! As you can see from the expert images taken here, Rockstar copped out by including the museum "undergoing redevelopment" which is a lazy way of saying we have better things to do than fill a museum with objects.

The museum includes a bunch of Egyptian bits and pieces, a whale skeleton AND SOME FRIGGIN DINOSAURS LADIES AND GENTLEMEN. They have a Tyrannosaurus rex and a Triceratops (species unknown). If you so wish you CAN SHOOT ALL THE BONES OFF AND DAMAGE THEM. Why you would I don't know but vigilant curators magically fully repair the skeletons by the next day. Good work museum guys.

The museum even has labels, where are the anti GTA guys now huh? This shizzle is educational as well as violent. Time for the business however.

Dinosauriness: Just two this time round, the classic match up of Tyrannosaurus rex and Triceratops.

Scientific Accuracy: The skeletons seem pretty accurate although I did notice abnormal vertebrae numbers and morphology of forelimbs on the Triceratops. Also, the poor Tyrannosaurus seems to be without gastralia. I hope they are just in storage or something. More importantly though, the specimens are repaired every day which certainly is not accurate. It would take months of work to repair thedamage by machine guns.

Buzz bonus: Technically, birds are dinosaurs as any smart arse palaeontologist will tell you so we should include all the birds (the collectible pigeons). Do you have all the pigeons yet reader?

JetPack Brontosaurus

2008-08-01T08:47:00.000-07:00

It's an Apatosaurus called Brontosaurus see! And it is wonderful. Watch, listen play here. If it's anything like Velociraptor Safari it'll be proper wicked! And addictive and better than 98% of Ubisoft's recent softography. Oooooh burn from a blogger I bet they are crying into their shreddies* as we speak**!!!

*English use, not ozzy
** Read. Or you read. Or as I type. Whenever. They'll cry whenever.

Warpath: Jurassic Park- PlayStation

2008-07-12T09:29:00.000-07:00

Another day, another JP game. This one is "based" on Jurassic Park: The Lost World movie. You know, the worst one.

In this game you get to fight against other dinosaurs in arenas taken from the movie. That is pretty much it folks. One of the great things about this game is that you can eat passing goats/humans to replenish health. For the carnivores fine but for the ceratopsian dinosaurs it doesn't make much sense. Also, the game comes complete with a museum where you can check out all the battling beasties and learn all kinds of factoids about them. WARNING! Do not play this on a PS2 with the fast disc speed setting. It condenses all the narration in the museum mode. Well you could I guess.

Dinosauriness: Acrocanthosaurus, Albertosaurus, Ankylosaurus, Carcharodontosaurus, Cryolophosaurus, Giganotosaurus, Megaraptor, Pachycephalosaurus, Spinosaurus, Stygimoloch, Styracosaurus, Suchomimus, Triceratops and inevitably Tyrannosaurus rex.

Scientific Accuracy: The dinosaurs have all kinds of anatomy defying moves that they probably couldn't have used in real life. However, I have never extracted dino DNA from mosquitos in amber and mixed it with amphibian DNA to make dinosaurs so what the hell do I know about it? 6/10.

Buzz Bonus: Fighting through the levels and different opponents unlocks a host of extra characters and features. One such feature is exhibition match. We regularly set up exhibition matches, betting on which dinosaur is going to win. HOT TIP: Always bet on the Ankylosaurus FTW!

Pokémon!!

2008-07-12T08:55:00.000-07:00

Yes! Readers of the other stupid thing I do on the internet will know that I am a bit partial to a bit of the Pokémon. I justify this to myself by claiming there be prehistoric creatures in them thar games. Or parodies of anyway. The above Pokémon and their pre-evolutions represent the first, second and third generation of prehistoric pokémon. From left to right we have Omastar (representing ammonites), Kabutops (representing trilobites), Aerodactyl (representing pterosaurs), Cradily (representing Crinoids many groups of which were mor eprevalent in ancient times), Armaldo (representing Anomalocaris, the prevolution is clearer), Relicanth (representing coelacanths for completeness) and Piloswine (representing mammoths). The fourth generation introduced the first true dinosaur critters, Rampardos (Pachycephalosaurs) and Bastiodon (Ceratopsian dinosaurs) are here on the left. Pokémon players must revive fossils that they find in the game to own these extinct pokémon (Swinub, Relicanth and Piloswine can be caught in the wild). The Pokémon series of games is famously a parody of biological organisms we find today and as fossils. Most of the major groups are represented (some to an agreeable level of accuracy).

Dinosauriness: (Parodies-of people!) Ammonites, Anomalocaris, Ceratopsian dinosaurs, Coelacanths, Crinoids, Mammoths, Pachycephalosaurus, Pterosaurs and Trilobites. I appreciate that crinoids and coelacanths are still around today but this is my website K?

Scientific Accuracy: Well. Once we get past the "not real animals" and the whole "reviving fossils" business I'd say 9.5/10. Yeah. 9.5/10.

Buzz Bonus: As you may know Pokémon can only say their own name or parts thereof. What evolutionary benefit this has no one knows but one person might be able to tell you. That person is OMASTAR!

Exciting Times!: UPDATED

2008-07-07T03:39:00.000-07:00

Imagine my happiness when this game turned up in the post today:

Yes I don't know why Top Trumps has been turned into a DS game. What is the merit/advantage over the traditional pack of cards? But it does have dinosaurs in it. So expect a review in two hours when I have finished the Ubisoft shovelware.

Preview based on box art: 5/10. Too many dogs.

UPDATE: Having now played the game it is as nonsensical as it sounds and a bad game to boot. This version has no benefits over the traditional game (aside from the fact that you can't cheat, which may not be an advantage). The two player game is awful because for obvious reasons you can't see both cards so one player guesses which attribute they will win on until they lose then the second player does the same. The element of "I hope he chooses this one" is completely lost. Furthermore, in the one player tournament game you have to play through ten rounds in one sitting without the option to save the session after each round. Even furthermore still there is a quiz option but some of the quiz questions are a bit wrong. So questions like "How many Corythosaurus are on the Corythosaurus card?" create difficulty, firstly because, you can't see the pictures on the card very well and secondly because the answer (one) doesn't appear to be correct.

Review based on playing it for an hour too long: 5/10 too many dogs.

Jurassic Realm PC

2008-07-05T06:21:00.000-07:00

Found in a Morrisons for £5 I could not not buy Jurassic Realm especially with these lovelies on the box art. At the same time, I also bought 101 Dino Pets but I'm saving that gem for a rainier day. Jurassic Realm is essentially the game jewelled but given a Jurassic Twist. I say "Jurassic Twist" but quite what handaxes have to do with the Jurassic is anyone's guess.
So the aim of the game is to get rid off the symbols by clicking on ones that are in rows or columns of three or more. Different "slime" and "dynamite" items help you to clear levels quicker by wiping out entire rows or by detonating and destroying symbols nearby. The reward for beating a level is that you get to go to a new level. If you manage to beat special levels within a time limit you get to unlock dinosaurs which you can check out on a rock or something. It's not a bad game and it's not really a dinosaur game. It's a puzzle game with a coat of dinosaur paint on it but it'll munch up and hour or two in the same way that spider or minesweeper might.

Dinosauriness: Lots of dinosaurs and non dinosaurs are unlocked as you progress through the levels. And there are lots of levels currently I have unlocked Dimetrodon, Lesothosaurus and Triceratops but there are still plenty more to unlock.

Scientific Accuracy: It's a tricky one to call. Being first and foremost a puzzle game, the scientific accuracy is kind of hard to measure. I mean what are you supposed to be? Either way the first wheel and handaxes are some of the symbols you have to destroy which, science currently has not discovered in the Jurassic. Or Dimetrodon either. Or Triceratops really. So not winning too many points here.

Buzz Bonus: Once again, Morrisons came up top trumps. I think they may have noticed that someone is buying up all the £5 dinosaur games so are stocking them on purpose. Fair enough I guess.

Jurassic ParkIII: The DNA Factor, Game Boy Advance

2008-07-05T05:51:00.000-07:00

Perhaps the King of film to movie spin-offs Jurassic Park spawned yet another game conversion. Jurassic Park on the Mega Drive was classic (and impossible), Jurassic Park: Operation Genesis was nice and Warpath: Jurassic Park and Jurassic Park: Tresspaser have a cult following. Jurassic Park III: The DNA Factor is not so great. In fact this one is pretty much the worst one I've played so far. It's as if they weren't even trying. Gameplay is poor, storyline is non existent, characters are generic.

It's basically a side scrolling dodge em up (you can get a gun or some fruit to use as a lure but running past everything is by far the quickest route to success) and the player has to negotiate dangerous jungle and avoid dinosaurs to collect bits of DNA that fell out of a plane before it crashed on the island. You play as pilot Lori Torres or photographer Mark Hanson and you negotiate 12 levels to collect DNA which you then use in a mini "game" to get DNA sequences for dinosaurs. Except it's all a bit rubbish. The side scrolling parts are repetetive, annoying and bland. The recombining DNA game is easy. Which is a good thing because if you waste all of your DNA before you complete the sequence you have to start the level all over again.

Dinosauriness: I've yet to beat it but I imagine it's all the Jurassic Park lovlies. I'll get back to you on that one later.

Scientific Accuracy: There are no scientific mistakes in this game. It's all feesible and plausible. Just look at the DNA base on the log on the screenshot. That's what DNA bases look like when they fall out of planes on islands.

Buzz Bonus: The copy I purchased from Amazon was listed as "new". So I was surprised when it came through the door. True to the promise it was new and still sealed (with Comet security stickers intact) however it looked like a 10 year old child had been carrying the unopened box in his school bag since the game's release in 2001. Tat-o-rama. Although it doesn't affect the game play experience it did irk me. I was irked.

Jurassic Park: Operation Genesis PS2, PC, Xbox

2008-03-26T05:04:00.000-07:00

Yes, the Easter holiday allowed a small amount of gaming time and I was able to spend some time with some of the dino games I've been neglecting because I wanted to savour rather than rush. One such game is Jurassic Park: Operation Genesis.

Jurassic Park: Operation Genesis, or JPOG as I will refer to it, is essentially Theme Hospital but with Dinosaurs. What do you mean what is Theme Hospital? Oh yeah, that's right I forget that kidz these days grew up in a world without Bullfrog. No wonder they're all wrong. So, to begin again. Jurassic Park:Operation Genesis, or JPOG as I will refer to it, is essentially Zoo Tycoon: Dinosaur Digs but without boring modern day animals and with better Dinosaurs in it. You have to build your own Jurassic Park, populate it with dinosaurs and then build shops and other attractions to keep the moronic masses happy because, you know, it's not deemed impressive enough that dinosaurs have been more or less brought back to the earth for your viewing pleasure unless you have a souvenir shop to go with it. So you go about building your park but you have to fund palaeontological digs in order to dig up fossils in order to get enough fossil material to SCIENCE MAGIC HAPPENS HERE then you have dinosaurs. But don't worry because none other than Dr Alan Grant, Dr Sattler, Robert Muldoon, Sam Jackson, Dr Wu (Not that Dr Wo) and John Hammond pop up on average every ten seconds to tell you that something is broken or someone's unhappy or that someone died. If you read the instruction booklet it sounds like managing the park is going to be a nightmare because occasionally the creatures go on rampages or there's a twister that destroys your park. However, these rampages do not occur very often. Twisters do happen but are more annoying than life threatening. By far the biggest challenge is pleasing the miserable visitors. There's a nice feature (taken straight from Theme Park) that lets you check the passport of every visitor to the park and despite the fact that your park may boast up to 100 dinosaurs with countless viewing vents, domes, safari trips or balloon rides some spod will still walk around your park claiming that "there aren't enough dinosaurs" or "This place is alright". This can be remedied though, more often than not the dinosaurs will need a bit of "encouragement" from the player before "accidentally" being let out into the park to begin chomping on Giselle from Ohio who wants to see more blood or Shaun from South Korea who takes issue with the fact that you charge entry for the toilets.

Overall the game is great, you get what you pay for and in today's market you can pick up a PS2 copy of JPOG in almost every preowned Game section in the world for around £9.
Dinosauriness: A number of the film dinosaurs return as well as some old favourites and the did-you-know-they-were-bigger-than-T.Rex newcomers like Carcharadontosaurus. Here's the full list Acrocanthosaurus, Albertosaurus, Allosaurus, Ankylosaurus, Brachiosaurus, Camarasaurus, Carcharadontosaurus, Ceratosaurus, Corythosaurus, Dilophosaurus, Dryosaurus, Edmontosaurus, Gallimimus, Homacephale, Kentrosaurus, Ouranosaurus, Pachycephalosaurus, Parasaurlophus, Stegosaurus, Styracosaurus, Spinosaurus, Torosaurus, Triceratops, Tyrannosaurus and Velociraptor.

Scientific Accuracy: Aside from the whole bringing dinosaurs back thing, which is the staple of every second dinosaur game, and a few scale issues it's standard fare. This game also (allegedly) lets you create mixed or single species herds and packs of dinosaurs. I've never seen this though. All I know is that no matter how many Ceratosaurus you create they all get murdered. Seriously. Just don't bother with them.

Buzz Bonus: The music is ace because it is taken straight from the film. You know, the film. Before the awful sequels. You can also unlock the theme tunes to Indiana Jones, Superman, Star Wars (all 6) and E.T! Nice.

Sea Monsters A Prehistoric Adventure- DS

2008-03-15T02:34:00.000-07:00

Another week another Dinosaurs in Games update. Phew! You must be on the edge of your seat. Today we're going to look at a contender for Game of The Decade, National Geographic's Sea Monsters A Prehistoric Adventure on the DS. Do not be misled by the screenshot below [from IGN] what it lacks in aesthetic appeal in more than makes up for with Gameplay.
This game (also available on PS2 and Wii) is an adaptation of the National Geographic's recent IMAX blockbuster film of the same title. Now if I think National Geographic-Games-And documentary tie-in then I'm instantly forming an idea of a game in my head that's part Clever Kids in Dino Land, part Catz by Ubisoft and part whatever the latest Pixar lazy mulitplatform effort is. However, I was pleasantly surprised.

Imagine the stealth-hit, Crackdown for the Xbox 360, but replace city heights with sea depths, replace cybernetically enhanced agent with extinct marine reptiles (and a flying one) and exchange hunting down increased abilities with collecting fossils to unlock other organisms to explore the depths with. All of this on the DS! Yes it is that good.
Playing as a Sea Monster you have to explore various marine environments to unlock the full cast of playable characters to then further explore hidden areas in order to beat all the challenges and collect all the fossils. Each reptile has advantages and disadvantages. Players start out with the generalist Thallasomedon who is quite nippy in the water but cannot go too deep in the water column before expiring. Progress then rapidly unlocks the rest of the cast. Henodus is slow, tiny and is restricted to the shallows but can dig in the sea bed to expose hidden fossils, Temnodontosaurus can dive to the sea bottom, Tylosaurus is the top predator and can bash through walls to uncover new areas. Players have to use a combination of the 7 characters in order to complete the game.

Dinosauriness: Of course, no dinosaurs but the cast of prehistoric animals is pleasantly diverse; Archelon, Cretoxyrhina, Dolichorhynchops, Enchodus, Gillicus, Henodus, Hesperornis, Kronosaurus, Nothosaurus, Pteranodon, Shonisaurus, Temnodontosaurus, Thallasomedon, Tylosaurus and Xiphactinus feature .

Scientific Accuracy: Unfortunately, not all of these creatures are coeval but unlike ever other title that makes this mistake there is a disclaimer at the beginning. So, ultimately, forgivable. But unlike the majority of other dinosaur and extinct organism titles, this one is educational but not in the usual obvious "here's a fact way" but in a more subtle learning through experience way. So for example, if I were to ask you how do marine reptiles breath underwater? Would you be able to answer confidently? Play this game and you'll know. To be commended by reviewers who can see past the simple nature of the game.
This game does show some mild strain being crammed onto the DS though. Occassionally the Cretoxyrhina sharks will swim through walls, above the surface of the sea or upside down but palaeontologists have not strictly ruled out this behaviour in organisms in this genus so who knows, it might be correct.

Buzz Bonus: Other reviewers slated this game for being too shallow but in terms of the DS this is a quietly revolutionary title. The controls are difficult at first but then quickly become second nature and the gentle exploration is engaging and relaxing. The sandbox nature of the game is a welcome addition to the DS which up until now has been primarily minigame titles or lazy RPGs that have little to offer in terms of replay value. Oh and Advance Wars. Plus it's always nice to be able to play as the creature themselves rather than continuously running from them (Dino Crisis), managing them (Operation Genesis, Zoo Tycoon) or merely learning about them (Clever Kids Dino Land). 10/10 Game of the Decade and new benchmark for dinosaurs in games (and other prehistoric creatures. In games)

Dino Master- DS

2008-03-11T04:26:00.000-07:00

I touched on it way way back when but some dinosaur based games are so good you have to look at them twice.
On the face of it, Dino Master is a relatively simple game.

For half the game, you play as a palaeontologist who has to look for dinosaur fossils in six different sites spread across the globe; Africa, Eurasia, Australia, N.America, S.America and the Antarctic. You have to excavate the sites facing the usual hazards encountered on a typical palaeontological dig. By excavate sites I mean drive around isolating areas Qix style (not Qix style actually, just Qix)and by usual hazards I mean being harassed by gigantic crabs, horseshoe crabs, dragonflies and ladybirds with minions of car sized caterpillars, flies and scorpions. Upon exposing areas in the Qix game you occassionally expose a fossil which you then later get to re-animate
and battle with, either against one of five bots or over WiFi. THis last notion is a joke because I don't even know anyone else who knows about this game and I've only ever seen it for sale online. Which is sad because my Ceratosaurus could KICK SOME ASS. I imagine. The battling itself requires players to give their chosen fighter a number of techniques (which can be attacking, defensive, etc.), the number and type of techniques that can be learned varies from species to species and techniques have to be unlocked with progression through the fossil hunting stage. The battling game is then a slightly more complex version of rock paper scissors. Each dinosaur you reanimate also varies depending on the size and quality of the fossil you uncover so sometimes they will have extra attack power, or low HP which adds another slight element to the strategy which is all academic anyway because I doubt a single person has ever played this game over wi-fi. Seriously. Let me know if you have but I bet the experience was ultimately unrewarding.

Dinosauriness: A whopping 100 different species of dinosaurs and prehistoric animals some you'll recognise, some you won't, some old skool ones and some brand spanking new finds. Here's a not so completed list because I'm struggling to collect the last 22 species. Here's the list so far Abelisaurus, Amargasaurus, Anatotitan, Apatosaurus, Archeaoceratops, Aralosaurus, Argentinosaurus, Borthriospondylus, Breviceratops, Carcharadontosaurus, Carnotaurus, Centrosaurus, Ceratosaurus, Chungkingosaurus, Cryolophosaurus, Dacentrurus, Daspletosaurus, Deinocheirus, Deinonychus, Dicraeosaurus, Dromiceiomimus, Dsungaripterus, Einiosaurus, Elaphrosaurus, Euplocephalus, Futubasaurus, Gallimimus, Gargoyleosaurus, Giganotosaurus, Gondwanatitan, Gorgosaurus, Goyocephale, Harpymimus, Huayangosaurus, Hydrotherosaurus, Ichthyosaurus, Indosuchus, Kentrosaurus, Kritosaurus, Lambeosaurus, Lexovisaurus, Majungatholus, Megalosaurus, Monolophosaurus, Montanaceratops, Nanotyranus, Neovenator, Opisthocoelicaudia, Opthalmosaurus, Parasaurlophus, Pinacosaurus, Pelaneustes, Pelecanimimus, Pentaceratops, Plateosaurus, Pleurocoelus, Prenocephale, Pteranodon, Saichania, Saltasaurus, Sauroposeidon, Scipionyx, Saurornitholestes, Stegoceras, Stenopterygius, Stygimoloch, Styracosaurus, Suchomimus, Supersaurus, Tapejara, Toopkusaura, Torosaurus, Tuojiangosaurus, Trinacromerum, Tyrannosaurus, Udanoceratops, Unenlagia and Utahraptor.

Scientific Accuracy: For the sheer number of genera included this title is by and large very accurate. There are a few issues arising. Bizarrely Plateosaurus is included as a plesiosaur and on the dino rebuild screen, Icthyosaurs, Plesiosaurs and Pterosaurs are listed as Gyoryu, Cubinagaryu and Yocuryu 'kinds'??? Some may complain that real palaeontological digs are not undertaken by driving a jeep around in perpendicular lines whilst being harassed by giant invertebrates but those people would be liars friends. Liars. Listen to them not a word more.

Buzz Bonus: For what the game lacks in the polish that say, Halo might have in spades it is an addictive game that has kept me up until 3 or 4 in the morning on occassion with "just one more go". For dino lovers it's great with a big list of extinct creatures to find and it's also good for passing a bus journey or tube journey with a couple of fossils hunts. Some other """Sites""" that reviewed it complained that the touch screen controls were unreliable. Sadly this is the liars at work again friends. How they live with themselves I do not know. So far in this existence it's my favourite game of all time!

Next week on Cunzy1 1's Dinosaurs in Games: I finally bought myself a copy of Sea Monsters A Prehistoric Adventure for the DS so expect a skit sometime soon. The low down is it could be great. The expectation is it won't be that great. But what is the reality?

Clever Kids: DinoLand

2008-03-06T09:00:00.000-08:00

Yeah, so the old format wasn't working too well so from now on I'm going to update the site every time I play a new dinosaur game. So what better way to re-launch the site than to look at Midas' Clever Kids Dino Land.

The gaming establishment said that the PS2 era was over. They said that next-gen is the way forward. This game proves them all wrong. I picked up my copy for a mere £8. Perhaps the best 8 pounds I ever did spend.

The game (philistines may claim it is aimed at the kids) is a series of dinosaur themed minigames set in the titular DINOLAND. Dino Land appears to be nothing more than a 2D landscape with 6 dinosaurs in it but oh what a land! Lucky players have to solve complex puzzles (with upward of five pieces!) in order to unlock such wondrous dinosaur themed games as 'Trax', Slide Puzzles, Target Practice and Spot the Difference. The game is so forward looking that you don't even need a memory card! A mere passcode will work (hint star, star, cross, square is the code to unlock all the minigames). What a future looking title, if only some of the triple AAA games would take a leaf out of the CKDL book. Anyway, on with the overview.

Dinosauriness: A number of dinosaurs are present as well as the usual extinct prehistoric critters: Amargasaurus, Brachiosaurs, Deinonychus, Euplocephalus, Mammoth, Plesiosaurus, Pterodactyl, Pteranodon, Shunosaurus, Spinosaurus, Stegosaurus, Triceratops, Troodon, Tsintasurus, Tyrannosaurs and Velociraptor.

Scientific Accuracy: For a low budget Edutainment (or is that Infocation) title there are a surprising number of misnomers, weird language use and factual inaccuracies. Mammoths, plesiosaurs, pterosaurs and icthyosaurs are unashamedly called dinosaurs and there is no attempt to highlight that they aren't. The game also claims that Ultrasaurus is unequivocally the biggest dinosaur known. Firstly, Ultrasaurus is the genus of an insect not a dinosaur so it should be Ultrasauros but even then the correct name for this species is Supersaurus and was changed over 10 years ago, so triply wrong. Furthermore, it's not too clear if it even is the biggest dinosaur (Sauroposeidon is a recent candidate for bigger). Doesn't anyone fact check these games? Also, the sentence "Tyrannosaurus was born in the late cretaceous" wouldn't sit well with most palaeontologists either. Some of these mistakes have been seen time and time again and are always pointed out by some nit picking scientist and it's a bit saddening to see them reproduced here especially for a title aimed at the "kidz". Overall it's a bit too naughty and lazy 3/10.

Buzz Bonus: On the pause screen you can check your progress in the minigames. Completing all the games, slide puzzles and spot the differences will get you a higher result on the "Dino meter". I have a serious problem with slide puzzles though so I only ever managed to reach Brachiosaurus status :(

What is it?

2007-02-02T08:08:00.000-08:00

Blood? I hope this isn't Chris's Blood.

Hi my name is Cunzy1 1, formerly one of the co-authors of That Guy's a Maniac, the world's second greatest video game blog of all time and I have a passion reader. A guilty passion. That is for dinosaurs in video games!

Every child or larvae has a fleeting obsession with dinosaurs (and other extinct prehistorid animals). They are big, scary and mysterious. But then girls get more interested in being women. A bit later boys get interested in the women that the girls are trying to become and dinosaurs kinda fall off the radar. THAT NEVER HAPPENED TO ME. Not to say I didn't become interested in women, WOMEN FRICKIN DINOSAURS. But then as I entered 'kidulthood' I began to become interested in videogames. After a time my two passions fused and collided, neurones were formed in my brain which bypassed all my "Don't obsess over dinosaurs in videogames" parts of my brain. Fortunately, my real day to day job brings me into contact with dinosaurs so this kinda counts as research.

Why this blog?
After clogging up That Guy's a Maniac with posts about dinosaurs I took it upon myself to become the World's Authority on Dinosaurs in Video Games. I'm going to collect them all, bust them wide open and make notes on the scientific accuracy of the games and their dinosaurness.
If you know of a game featuring dinosaurs* and other prehistoric animals** let me know and I'll add it to the 'must get and play' list. Then only then will I be the world's leading expert on dinosaurs in games. Hah!

*I mean real dinosaurs. That means no Yoshi or Bub and Bob. Possible evolutionary descendants of dinosaurs or genetically enhanced ones are allowed (e.g Dino Crisis 3). Godzilla is right out I'm afraid.
** You know what I mean mammoths, coelodonta, pterosaurs, icthyosaurs, plesiosaurs, ammonites, trilobites, vendezoa, carpoids etc.......

Animal Crossing, Animal Crossing Wild World, Ape Escape

2007-02-02T07:44:00.005-08:00

Animal Crossing- GamCube & Animal Crossing :Wild World-Nintendo DS
Dinosaurs you say? What now? Well good friends Animal Crossing has dinosaurs a plenty. Your town in Animal Crossing has an empty museum and you can decide whether to donate any fossils, insects, fish or paintings you find. Blathers the museum curator is always happy to identify fossils and accept donations. Alternatively you can erect the fossils and skeletons in your house or sell them to Tom Nook, the village trader. This could be seen as condoning the illegal trade in fossils readers! Be wary! Here's a screenshot (above from gamespot).

Personally my house has a Stegosaurus skeleton with a mammoth head! Such larks. Wild World is pretty much the same with the option of going online and showing of your fossil collection or contributions to the museum! Glory!

Dinosaurness: Well there are a range of fossils of dinosaurs and other prehistoric creatures including Amber, an Ammonite, Ankylosaurus, Apatosaurus, Archaeopteryx, Dimetrodon, Dinosaur droppings, a Dinosaur Egg, Dinosaur Footprint, a fern fossil, Iguanodon, Mammoth, Pachycephalosaurus, Parasaurlophus, Peking Man, Plesiosaurus, Pteranodon, a Fossil Shark Tooth, Seismosaurus, Stegosaurus, Tyrannosaurus rex, Triceratops and a Trilobite.

Scientific Accuracy: Pretty frickin comprehensive fossil set however the Animal Crossing Town must have a very unique geology what with all these finds from such a limited area. The fossils can be found with relative ease and without extensive excavation so perhaps the geology of the basin in which the town is situated is complex. WHO KNOWS! It's difficult to say without a full survey. However, as can be seen above you can see all the major bones in the skeletons. Well done Animal Crossingss

Buzz Bonus: Due to the drawing tool in the game there is plenty of scope for creativity. YOU COULD MAKE THE TOWN FLAG A DINOSAUR FLAG or YOU COULD DESIGN A DINOSAUR THEMED T-SHIRT. Very exciting indeed.

Ape Escape-Playstation

Clarification is needed on this one. My long time gaming buddy, Chuff_72 alleges that on one level

"I mean there's a huge dino in ape escape, and I think it's pretty much based on a real one"

Verdict: TO BE CONFIRMED. Although already I am very excited about the possibility

UPDATE: With this exciting screenshot from Gamespot it looks like the rumour is true! Put Ape Escape on my need list

Deathtrap Dungeon, Demo 1, Dino Crises, Dino Masters, Dinotopia the Sunstone Pirates

2007-02-02T07:43:00.009-08:00

Deathtrap Dungeon-PlayStation
There's like this Tyrannosaurus rex in it on the circus level and if you preordered the game you got this cool little card game with it too. That also had a T.rex in it albeit a card. Deathtrap Dungeon was both very hard and cool. You should get a copy of it today. In fact, better still send me copies!

Dinosaurness: Malheuresement, there was only one dinosaur in DD and that was the "king" of all dinosaurs T.rex

Scientific Accuracy: Not good. I'd say a 2/10. The T.rex is anatomically fair enough but I'm not sure about it's presence in a Circus themed dungeon miles underground. More research is needed by scientists to discover the possible origins of this Tyrannosaurus rex. Maybe it was transported from elsewhere or maybe it was found underground. Either way Science needs to find an answer.

Buzz Bonus: I don't really like Tyrannosaurus rex, as a species it totally sold out man. There are totally cooler dinosaur species which are like so underground right now, you probably haven't heard of them. For example one of my favourite bands, Yanchuangosaurus, I have all their albums and they haven't actually released any commercially yet and I saw them play behind one of the stages at Reading and like they were the best and I know someone who totally went to school with their ex-drummer.

Demo 1-PlayStation
Not a game as such but the Demo 1 disc that came with the original Playstation had two tech demos, one of a Manta Ray and one of a frikkin Tyrannosaurus rex. He would stomp along the screen to a bum, bum, de bum, bum theme tune. You could spin the camera and zoom in and zoom out. There was also a button you could press to make hime OPEN HIS MOUTH! Unfortunately, the Manta ray one was much better. The music was better and you could press buttons to make ALL THE FISHES SWIMMING AROUND IT go away or come back again! Screenie needed for this one.

Dinosaurness: Again. Only a T.rex :(

Scientific Accuracy: It wasn't bad. Of course nowadays it looks dated. However, the T.rex was running in a black void. How did he get there? Was it cold? Like all the good science questions and like the end of every Panorama or Horizons TV episode more research is needed to answer these questions.

Buzz Bonus: Fishes go away, fishes come back. Fishes go away, fishes come back. Fishes go away, fishes come back. Fishes go away, fishes come back. Fishes go away, fishes come back. Fishes go away, fishes come back. Fishes go away, fishes come back. It was hours and hours of fun I'm tellin' ya.

Dino Crisis- Dreamcast, PC, PlayStation

Capcom's dinosaur version of Resident Evil. There's a thing and then there's dinosaurs and then shooting of said dinosaurs. However, Regina (above) must have the same crippling disease that the Resident Evil crew have in that she can't run and shoot. Women are supposed to excel at multitasking though! Ha.

Dinosauriness: On a recent playthrough, the dinosauriness is a lot less than I originally remembered. Anyway here's the list. Compsognathus, Deinonychus, Therizinosaurus, T.rex and Velociraptor. Clicks for Pteranodon too.

Scientific Accuracy: Quickly glazing over the time travelling aspects (naturally) some of the dinosaurs appear to be anachronistic with regards to each other, Compsognathus known from the Jurassic and Deinonychus known from the early Cretaceous. The others are pretty much coeval without too much of a leap in time. By and large the titular creatures seem quite accurate in scale with the exception of Velociraptor but what'cha gonna do about it? 6/10

Buzz Bonus: Beating the game in a certain time unlocked extra outfits. Beating the game again unlocked Regina's cave woman outfit. Yes it did.

Dino Crisis 2-PC and PlayStation
Yes hot on the heels of Dino Crisis came the imaginatively titled Dino Crisis 2. Following the mysterious events in a mansion on the outskirts of Racoon City. Sorry, following the events of some time travelling doo-dah, there is another oppurtunity for shooting some dinosaurs and other prehistoric creatures! Yaaay! Since the previous game Regina and company mastered running and shooting, significantly increasing survival chances.

Dinosauriness: The roster was boosted for the second game. This time Allosaurus, Compsognathus, Giganotosaurus, the Permian gorgonopsid Inostrancevia, Mosasaurus, Oviraptor, Plesiosaurus, Pteranodon, Triceratops, Tyrannosaurus rex and Velociraptor make up the dinosaurs and other prehistoric creatures list.

Scientific Accuracy: Ummm yes. Time travel aside some big anachronisms with the spp. present. But it's an action game so get on with it.

Buzz bonus: Regina's outfit was unlockable in Resident Evil 3 (see above). Brad looks horrified Regina!!

Dino Crisis 3-Xbox
As is inevitable with any series there is a strong impetus to 'ramp it up' from one game to the next. Unfortunately, in the instance of Dino Crisis 3 this particular sequel ruined an otherwise nice series of games. In a bid to keep the series alive the setting was shifted to space and the real dinosaurs and prehistoric creatures were unceremoniously changed to electric zombie versions. The controls were also changed from intuitive to very bad. Sad but true.

Dinosaurness: No real dinosaurs per se but lots of modified versions of real spp. Here is the list; Ankylosaurus, Giganotosaurus, Spinosaurus, Tyrannosaurus rex and Velociraptor. Really breaking the mold with that selection. Yes sir.

Scientific Accuracy: After we take of points for setting it in space and then further points for the mutated DNA storyline. I won't spoil it but the accuracy here is low. 3/10 is an arbitary measure I have decided to give it.

Buzz Bonus: Despite the B movie plot, awful controls and camera this game is very nice looking and if you get a chance watch some of the cutscenes on Youtube because they are good in a dinosaur stompy way.

Dino Masters- Nintendo DS

Dino Master is a little game I had been trying to get hold of for a long time. And thanks to Santa Claus, I now have it! Initial words from the internet slated this game, unneccessarily so. Gamespot criticised the controls system, claiming that stylus input is "unpredictable". This simply isn't the case. I say that Gamespot should stop employing monkeys who can't hold a stylus to review games. Of all the criticisms that could be aimed at this game, stylus input isn't one of them. I've had more trouble with the touch screen on Metroid and the Phantom Hourglass but you don't hear the shallow ninty-philes whinge about that. How dare they! Anyway, simply you have to collect fossils, reanimate them and then there is an option to use them in battle against a handful of bots or over wi-fi (I cannot imagine this game has ever been played over wi-fi). So far, so Pokemon or Fossil Championship Tournament league (or whatever it's called). Well after extensive gmeplay I can tell you it is the greatest DS game to date. Definitely the game of 2007. Try and find a copy, you won't be upset!

Dinotopia: The Timestone Pirates-GBA

This little gem for the GBA, despite having a high potential to be another tie-in rubbishness is.........actually alright. It plays solidly, the graphics are nice, even if the whole thing is a little bit generic. There is a platforming section, a side scrolling shooting section and a submarine section. Downsides: The main character looks like Frodo Baggins and It's hard to get drawn in to the story which is basically: Frodo fights pirates who took eggs to get to the Timestone. It's up to you to work through several get from A to B levels, using your sunprod to find T.rex eggs and unveiling the mystery behind why pirates might want a Timestone. A stone that controls time. Hmmmm I wonder?

Dinosauriness: Due to the nature of the source material, a series which, weirdly, completely passed me by, there are a plethora of dinosaurs in the game and other prehistoric creatures feature either as rudimentary vehicles or nice background animated features also in the "cut scenes". However, I have yet to complete this game so this list may not be comprehensive:

Brachiosaurus, Dunkleosteus, Parasaurlophus, Plesiosaurus, Protoceratops, Pteranodon, Quetzalcoatlus, Tyrannosurus Rex. Dinosaurs that look like Triceratops and Kentrosaurus appear in one of the cut scenes featuring the Dinotopia council. I don't know if that officially counts though.

Scientific Accuracy: Yeah, it's got legs, I'm not so convinced about some of the scales of the dinos and the 'shipwrecked humans living with sentient dinosaurs' bit is a stretch too far. The Frodo cross over is just a hollywood cash in. God damn you Hollywood and your cash-ins.

Buzz Bonus: I have nothing interesting to say about this game. Except check out the clips of Dinotopia on YouTube. It's awful. Wentworth Miller acts like he is twelve years old and has been starched for a week. Ha ha! "Wentworth". Ah.........

Final Fantasy VIII

2007-02-02T07:43:00.005-08:00

Final Fantasy VIII-PlayStation and PC
Although the fakiness of the dinosaurs in Final Fantasy VIII rivals that of Yoshi or of Bub and Bob the dinosaur in FFVIII makes the list because, hey it's my list and I think it's good enough. That's right kids I'm talking about T-Rexaur (seen here from IGN).

Dinosauriness: Once again that veritable slut of a videogame dinosaur a T-rex. Well a fake T-Rex.

Scientific Accuracy: I'm not sure of the SI unit for scaryness. T-rexaur isn't that scary but it is big and a bit vicious so I'm going for a standard 6/10, Try Harder

Buzz Bonus: The card game on FFVIII was super addictive, like crack and pringles mixed up into one and made into a virtual card game. The T-rexaur card isn't particularly great. A solid left and right but the above and below numbers are tricky. A good one for putting down in the middle after cards had already been played above and below.

Guitar Hero 2

2007-02-02T07:43:00.003-08:00

Guitar Hero 2- Xbox 360 & PS2
Yep. That's right. I completely discovered this on my own. Don't believe me huh? Yeah that’s right Guitar hero 2! I’m sure you are all asking yourselves, “Dinosaurs in guitar hero? How? Where ? As if!” Well they are and they are not… there are 2 separate references to Dinosaurs.First up we have the two player select screen (see above).

Dinosauriness: As you can see from the above picture it depicts a Mammoth, Sabre-toothed Tiger, an extinct antelope, an ancestor of the foxes, some kind of Dinornis, smaller mammals, cats etc.

A Fighter jet dropping a bomb on them all.When I first saw this I was admittedly shocked to see some obscure extinct animals just on a 2 player co-operative sceen. But then I realised that this may be a graphical representation of one of the songs, which brings me nicely onto the next instance of “Dinosaurs” in Guitar hero 2:One of the bonus tracks: Fall of Pangaea, by Valient ThorrAdmittedly when I saw this track name in there I should have spewed a load into my underwear straight away. However my ejaculate was suppressed as Pangaea nowadays is rarely used properly, it is usually used in Sci-fi or Fantasy as the name of some country on a different planet/reality. For those of you who don’t know what Pangaea is, it is the name given to the “Supercontinent” millions of years ago when USA, Russia, Africa, Europe Australia etc were all joined together in one big happy land-mass. Anyways back to me attempting to fertilise my boxers… I never really listened to the song as, well, the song is rather “Metal” and the lyrics can sometimes be inaudible.Check out the Lyrics:before the dawning of mankindother creatures roamed this landthey were from a far off timeand they brought with them a planfrom a dying portal in the sky it came, a grey transporter set the skyablaze in search of sanctuary to the earth they came all life beforethis point had just been washed away asteroids and comets ripped rightthrough the atmosphere laid waste to all the dinosaurs its a cycle itsa cycle thats been going on since before this world began, even thoughthey cause destruction they’re vital they’re a vital part of reality,the spores in side were alive, when the dust settled over the oceanbedthey watched it they watched the natural process of evolution in theraw, lifeforms grew in the water and this is what they saw they sawvolcanoes, Earth was a wreck, the cooling of the lava produced a sideeffect they saw amoeba combine with light, they saw the first thingcrawl on land and try to walk upright they saw the dolphin, they sawthe ape, the combination of the two would help the world take shape(they bred them) on the beaches, it was called Pangea population spreadso fast it caused an imbalance, but that couldn’t stop em even then,c’mon!let’s get on the road, i got somethin to show, pull up yr roots, andpack yr bags, let’s go!let’s get on the road, i got somethin to show, pull up yr roots, andpack yr bags- let’s go to the mountain and then you will see the placewhere Pangea Ma-jor used to be the tectonic plates moved where workershad mined the shift in the continents divided mankind Tidal waves brokethe goddamned thing in half, 7 pieces that wouldn’t last spread likegerms, thats the human virus form seeds were planted here on earth,young mothers then gave birth they remembered the men from the sky,named them gods and never questioned why?climb up the mountain and see for yrself, the ice caps are melting awayfrom the shelf the earth is evolving, you must have forgot, the life onthis planet has only one shot.Tidal waves broke the goddamned thing in half, 7 pieces that wouldn’tlast earths been silent many times, u seem to forget:we are temporaryyou are temporarywe’re all temporaryAs you can see the lyrics do site some rather humorous palaeo-references. The whole song almost seems like an evolutionists “The end is nigh” sign… “The mass-extinction is coming”

Scientific Accuracy: Well the scale is out and there are some big anachronisms. The plane and the bombs? They came much later. I would also like to note that this entry is also not very scientifically accurate. The animals aren't given their proper names. It is as if I am having an off-day. Or like someone else wrote it....... Strange.

Buzz bonus: I also write another blog http://www.thatguys.co.uk/ with Richie. I always beat him at Guitar Hero 2 especially this song too!

Killer Instinct

2007-02-02T07:41:00.011-08:00

Killer Instinct- SNES
Although the dinosaur character from arguably the greatest beat em up of all time (second maybe to Warpath Jurassic Park) this game featured a character called Riptor who is a genetically bred and altered velociraptor, created by Ultratech to fight! The genetic alterations means that he could cough up green fireballs and for that matter, be alive in the first place. SPOILER If you beat the game with Riptor you were treated to glimpses of a world overrun with Riptor clones. Quite how this would happen nobody knows.

Dinosauriness: Killer Instinct only features a velociraptor (genetic hybrid).

Scientific Accuracy: I'd like to stick out my scientific neck and say that I highly doubt that the future will permit genetic reanimation and/or fireball breathing. Also, if I were in the mind to, I would point out that Velociraptors probably didn't have forked tongues and that it would be cheaper for Ultratech to create a Deinonychus which is about the right size for Riptor rather than create a Velociraptor and make it bigger. But I won't 7/10. Entirely plausible.

Buzz Bonus: Killer instinct featured Ultra combos, combos of 20+ hits you could perform on an opponent on low life. Riptor's was quite hard to do in so much that I did it once, by accident. Then again maybe I wasn't skilled enough :( Remember that this was also back in the day before GAMEFAQs and Cheat Magazines and the book with the game didn't tell you all the moves. That was good times, when gamers were gamers. None of this Gameshark rubbish or GameFaqs. *sigh*

Paraworld

2007-02-02T07:41:00.001-08:00

Paraworld-PC
Paraworld is a RTS that would otherwise be average save for the fact that IT HAS DINOSAURS AND OTHER PREHISTORIC ANIMALS IN IT. The 'story' is that there is a parallel world which has dinosaurs and vikings and ninjas in it. Something about an evil organisation yada yada. More importantly you can build units of Dinoriders and wage big wars against other dino riders. If you squint and turn the sound down and sit like 3 metres from the screen it looks actually like the popular TV series Dinoriders. Amazing! It plays OK, well exactly like Warcraft III. But with dinosaurs and with the exception that some of the humurous comments your guys make when you keep clicking on them aren't very humurous. AT ALL. However, if you, like me, like dinosaurs and videogames then you should check Paraworld out.

Dinosaurness: It's like the most ultimate dinosaur (and other prehistoric animals) video game EVER. There are Achelousaurus, Allosaurus, Ankylosaurus, Apatosaurus, Archaeopteryx, Baryonyx, Bothriolepis, Brachiosaurus, Carcharodontosaurus, Carnotaurus, Coelodonta, Corythosaurus,Deinonychus, Dilophosaurus, Diplodocus, Dunkleosteus, Eusmilus, Gallimimus, Henodus, Iguanodon, Kentrosaurus, Kronosaurus, Lambeosaurus, Macroclemys, Maiasaura, Mammoth, Megaloceros, Muraenosaurus, Ornithocheirus, Oviraptor, Panoplosaurus, Parasaurolophus, Pentaceratops, Placochelys, Polacanthus, Psittacosaurus, Pteranodon, Quetzalcoatlus, Saltasaurus, Seismosaurus, Smilodon, Sordes, Spinosaurus, Stegosaurus, Stygimoloch, Styracosaurus, Triceratops, Tyrannosaurus rex, Velociraptor and Wild boar.

Scientific Accuracy: Apart from the whole "parallel world which has the exact same fauna as this one used to at various times in the past" not too bad. Some of the dinosaurs aren't to scale but many things in an RTS aren't too scale, like ships. More games should have Bothriolepis in it though for sure.

Buzz Bonus: Sometimes late at night I play Paraworld whilst listening to the Jurrassic PArk theme tune and, no word of a lie, all your units move faster and are better in combat. Bah bah, bah bah, bah da da da dut dut daaaaa, but bah da da deradeda daaaaaaaaaaa da de la da, usw.

Stranglehold and Super Smash Brothers

2007-02-02T07:40:00.007-08:00

Stranglehold- Xbox 360 and PC

Mucho speculatory with this one but screenshots tell us that this game has a level set in a Natural History Museum and/or gallery.

Dinosauriness: From this screenshot alone (sorry) looks like we have: Archaeopteryx, Brachiosaurus, Dunkleosteus, a Mosasaur, Pteranodon, Tyrannosaurus (snore) and a Velociraptor.

Scientific Accuracy: Pretty scientifically accurate there my friends. All of the dinosaurs seem to be to scale and you can even see specific specimens, so the Velociraptor skeleton at the back on the left is the exact specimen from the 1971 Polish-Mongolia expedition and right at the back, almost obscured by the strut supporting the T.rex it looks like the British Museum specimen of Archaeopteryx! Wowsers. Probably the nicest looking virtual museum you'll ever see.

Buzz Bonus: There is currently only 2 PCs worldwide that can play Stranglehold the specs are that high. There is always the 360 tho'.

Super Smash Brothers Brawl-Nintendo Wii
Speculation city right now but from the looks of this screenie currently over at Smash Bros. DOJO it looks like fossil-o-rama at the new Pokemon Stadium.

Dinosauriness: From this screenshot and this screenshot alone it looks like we've got Kabutops and Omastar fossils which are the poke-parodies of Trilobites and Ammonites.

Scientific Accuracy: Well considering that it's set in a game where all the Nintendo characters come together to beat the crap out of each other I'd say.... PRETTY FRICKIN ACCURATE. 90% Accurate in fact.

Buzz Bonus: I don't have a Wii but this might change all that. Keep your eyes peeled citizens.

Timesplitters, Timesplitters Future Perfect and Tomb Raider 2

2007-02-02T07:40:00.005-08:00

Timesplitters 2 and Timesplitters: Future Perfect-Playstation 2, Xbox, Gamecube

The original Timesplitters was one of the greatest games of all time. Seriously! But they then went and made the sequel infinitely better by adding a dinosaur character to the roster. He is just called Dinosaur.

Dinosauriness: Well surprise surprise it's just another T.rex. This species seems to be overwhelmingly popular with game makers.

Scientific Accuracy: I highly doubt that T.rex could fire or even hold automatic weapons. Indeed Bakker even says so much in the seminal volume the Dinosaur Heresies (Bakker 1986) in the chapter: Gun-toting, how sauropods and large theropods are at a serious disadvantage in all out gunfights. But it is Timesplitters 2 so I'm going to stick my neck out and say that this version of T.rex is perhaps the most accurate reconstruction ever to grace the screen. 10/10

Buzz Bonus: Timesplitters 2 was and still is the greatest game of all time. Timesplitters Future Perfect is and will always be the worst sequel of all time. This isn't the place for this rant but take my word for it. However, Dinosaur was in both games so we can thank the God of small mercies at least. Oh, also, according to the character gallery in Timesplitters 2 Dinosaur: "breathes fire and has vestigal forelimbs". I think the breathes fire bit might affect the scientific accuracy but it's too late to change it now. *sigh*

Tomb Raider 1

Tomb Raider 2-PlayStation & PC
On the first level, the Great Wall of China, right near the end of the level after the gauntlet and before the death slide to the Goon with a "Tommy Gun" on his keyring there is a pit with TWO Tyrannosaurus rex in it. There is also a secret with a grenade launcher.

Dinosaurness: Once again just T.rex the Jimmy Carr of TV for dinosaurs in games.

Scientific Accuracy: Low. Very Low. How two Tyrannosaurus rex got into the big pit is a mystery. Were they transported as babies and then fed until they grew into adults? In that case how come they aren't etiolated there isn't much light in an underground valley? Also who put them there? Why did they put them in the pit and not by the gate? Where did they find T.rex? All these questions and more. Also a population of 2 isn't going to be enough to keep a constant population of T.rex in the pit after a couple of generations, assuming that a)There's a boy and a girl, b)They aren't Homeosaurs ha ha ha and c)It doesn't matter anyway they aren't real and Lara kills them.

Buzz Bonus: I saw a real life T.rex in a pit once. I didn't go in though- too dangerous.

World of Warcraft

2007-02-02T07:39:00.002-08:00

World of Warcraft (WoW)-PC Yes kiddiewinks it's the big one. World of Warcraft. One area in the game, Un'Goro crater there is a glut of pseudo-but-enough-to-feature-here dinosaurs and prehistoric animals. The area and fauna resembles the plateau in Conan Doyle's Lost World. The creatures to be found here are various Stegodons (a cross between a Stegosaurus and a Rhinoceros), Devilsaurs (an obvious nod to Tyrannosaurus or other large carnivores), Diemetradons (obvious reference to the Permian Dimetrodon), Pterrordaxes (Generic Pterosaurs) and Ravavsaurs, which are a kind of Deinonychosaurid type beast and are also featured as epic mounts?. There are also sabre toothed tiger mounts which I'll count as well.

Dinosauriness: Well if I am generous and vague we'll say a Dimetrodon, Pterosaur, Smilodon, Stegosaurus, Tyrannosaurus and Velociraptor. Some of them could be representing a range of creatures though.

Scientific Accuracy: It's difficult to say as most of these guys are based-on but not tied to real species. We'll say 6/10.

Buzz Bonus: I have never played WoW for fear of spending all my time in Un'Goro crater. I would you know. I would