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May 23, 2011 2:35 AM   Subscribe

What are some fun videogames where you play as a dinosaur?

The SO and I would like to combine our twin interests in videogames and big stompy dinosaurs by finding a videogame where you play as a dinosaur. Any recommendations?

We're looking for this to be at least semi-realistic, so this rules out Bub and Bob (who aren't very dinosaury, really) or the Rampage and Primal Rage style of anthropomorphised dinosaur. Roaming around as a t-rex would be ideal; a co-op mode would be even better. Console preferred to PC.
posted by thoughtless to Sports, Hobbies, & Recreation (19 answers total) 10 users marked this as a favorite
 
While the dinosaur game has yet to be perfected by western civilization - your choices in the genre are limited - there's an old SNES game where you evolve and upgrade a creature, and I remember lots of dinosaur-ish options.
posted by Rinku at 2:42 AM on May 23, 2011


Sorry, I missed the link button. The game is EVO: Search for Eden. Single player only, but pretty easy to come by as a ROM, and there are a million SNES emulators.
posted by Rinku at 2:43 AM on May 23, 2011 [1 favorite]


What you are looking for is Dino D-Day:
"The year is 1942.
Adolf Hitler has succeeded in resurrecting dinosaurs."

posted by EndsOfInvention at 2:53 AM on May 23, 2011 [1 favorite]


Best answer: Damn, stupid Google redirects.
http://www.dinodday.com/
posted by EndsOfInvention at 2:54 AM on May 23, 2011


Trog, which was an arcade game, was awesome. Dunno if you'll find it outside of Mame.
posted by plinth at 3:04 AM on May 23, 2011


Dino City is a little-known platformer game for the SNES I played when I was a kid. It's a fun and fairly challenging alternative to the Mario games.
posted by matticulate at 3:40 AM on May 23, 2011


can't vouch for it as a game,
but i have a really good photo of my son and my younger brother wearing red/blue 3d glasses playing Nanosaur on a laptop
posted by compound eye at 3:49 AM on May 23, 2011 [1 favorite]


There were a metric buttload of Jurassic Park video games of varying quality, including the dino-on-dino fighter game Warpath: Jurassic Park for the original Playstation (video). That's probably your best bet for realism, though it did get fairly mediocre reviews.

The only Jurassic Park game I ever played was The Lost World (also for PSX), which had some neat playable dinosaur levels mixed in with the regular human gameplay -- examples: "Compysaurus", Velociraptor, T-Rex.

The indie title Primal Carnage features playable dinos, but it's sadly still in development.
posted by Rhaomi at 3:58 AM on May 23, 2011 [2 favorites]


Jetpack Brontosaurus is very realistic for values of realistic equal to, "if you put jet engines on a brontosaurus, it would be about this aerodynamic."
posted by Kid Charlemagne at 4:29 AM on May 23, 2011


DINO RUN!
posted by to sir with millipedes at 5:13 AM on May 23, 2011 [1 favorite]


Best answer: I enjoyed the sega genesis version of Jurassic Park. I think it had co-op mode and decent graphics for the time too... but you'd need a sega or an emulator I guess.
posted by glip at 5:33 AM on May 23, 2011


Best answer: Came in to recommend the Sega Genesis Jurassic Park. The levels where you play as a velociraptor, disemboweling security guards, are some of my fondest memories of gaming.
posted by Netzapper at 6:32 AM on May 23, 2011


Best answer: Oh my gosh, definitely try Designasaurus 2! It's very old and it was designed for kids, but I loved it back in the day.

You get to design your own dinosaur (tail, teeth, spines, etc.) and then you run around chomping leaves (if you're an herbivore) or chomping other dinosaurs (if you're a carnivore). The goal of the game is to find "geneprints" in each chapter that let you go to the next era but frankly I just ran around chomping things till I died. Admittedly there aren't tons of opportunities for stomping and it's not really a challenging game but I think the OMNOMNOM makes up for it.
posted by daelin at 6:34 AM on May 23, 2011 [1 favorite]


[Possible videogame spoilers]

Bulletstorm has a level fairly early in the single-player game where you control a mechanical T-Rex rampaging through a replica scale model city. There are machine guns involved so it's not entirely realistic, but it is a hell of a lot of fun. The game has a coop mode as well but I don't think it involves dinosaurs.
posted by Gortuk at 6:39 AM on May 23, 2011


Rampage and Rampage: World Tour for the N64 had Lizzie, she looked like a dinosaur. Then you got to eat the planet :D Loved playing those games with my brother.
posted by Canageek at 11:10 AM on May 23, 2011


Cadillacs & Dinosaurs is an awesome side scrolling beat em up like Final Fight, The Simpsons, X-Men, etc.

You will need to download the ROM and a MAME Emulator but then you are pretty much good to go. Great f-ing game too.
posted by darkgroove at 3:02 PM on May 23, 2011


DINOSAURS. FIGHTING.
SNES BEAT'EM UP.

Okay I have no idea if this is still any good because I have really fuzzy memories of it, buuut:

Primal Rage

posted by litleozy at 3:36 PM on May 23, 2011


annnnnnnnnnnnnnnnd I just realised you already mentioned Primal Rage in the question.

DEVOUR PREVIOUS ANSWER
posted by litleozy at 3:36 PM on May 23, 2011


Response by poster: *crushes litleozy's answer under a massive claw*

Thanks all for the ideas. Dino D-Day, Genesis Jurassic Park and Designasaurus 2 look closest to what we had in mind, so we'll give them a try. (Though there's nothing exactly right - I smell a gap in the market.)

FYI, this question was inspired by visiting a museum at the weekend, where a little boy ran in behind us asking his mum, "Where are the videogame dinosaurs?" And I had to concede that it was a great and pertinent question.
posted by thoughtless at 4:03 AM on May 24, 2011


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