Dinosaur Planet - All N64 Games

[Jonnas]

On 2/1/2025 at 2:37 PM, Cube said:

Spider-Man
 

A few days late, but I'd just like to say that I have really fond memories of this game. A friend of mine had it on PS1, and it was one of those games that had a ton of cool details and easter eggs to find, especially on a second playthrough. Plus, surprisingly varied levels and set pieces (the fight with Venom being a particularly memorable one). And the final boss was a heck of a creative decision.

A shame that the N64 version did away with the 2nd playthrough. I remember just suddenly seeing new characters like Lizard, Human Torch or Namor in the playthrough, or having certain cutscenes just have random new dialogue for no reason at all (they were probably bloopers, too).

So yeah, rooting for this game to see a rerelease someday. If MvC can do it, so can this game (and its sequel, which I never played).

[Cube]

Scooby-Doo! Classic Creep Capers

• NA release: 30th November 2000
• PAL release: 30th March 2001
• JP release: N/A
• Developer: Terraglyph
• Publisher: THQ
• N64 Magazine Score: 23%

I had no idea that there were so many games for kids at the end of the N64’s life. It makes some sense, the consoles were cheaper or handed down to younger children. What’s more baffling is why a publisher and developer would choose to make a game just for the Nintendo 64, due to how successful (and at this point, cheap) the PS1 was. This was also the only finished N64 game from Terraglyph, who had previously made Tiny Toon Adventures games for the PS1. A PlayStation version of Classic Creep Capers was supposedly in development, but was for some reason cancelled to focus on the Nintendo 64.

Classic Creep Capers takes half of a point and click adventure and mixes with half of Resident Evil, but the end result doesn’t make a complete game. Like Resident Evil, the game used fixed camera angles. But the enemies in this are humorous – spiders, bats, moving dinosaur museum exhibits, wood, and people in costumes (you also can’t fight them). The fixed cameras in Resident Evil were used for the horror aspect, as well as being able to use pre-rendered backgrounds. The areas in Classic Creep Capers are fully modelled, and widescreen hacks not only work, but reveal doors that should be obvious, but are just off-screen.

You can also choose between two terrible control schemes. The first is Resident Evil-style tank controls, the other is for more analogue movement. However, the fixed camera angles make it annoying to use. As you move from one screen to another, Shaggy will keep walking based on your starting movement. Let go, and the directions will reset based on where the camera is now. It’s particularly frustrating when you have to run away from enemies, especially as the camera can snap to other positions many times.

You play the game as Shaggy, with Scooby following you along most of the time – although he doesn’t do anything at all, he’s just set dressing. You have to explore the areas to find clues, and parts that can be used for traps. However, the game sticks a bit too close to the show, as you hand over all these parts to Fred, and he works everything out and comes up with a plan, all you get to do is backtrack through the level to get the ghost to follow you to the capture spot. You don’t get to solve the mystery.

As a result, this has the “finding items” part of the point and click adventure, but none of the resolution of using the items. Across the four campaigns, there are a couple of moments where you actually get to use items, but they’re extremely obvious. What makes matters worse, is that finding the items themselves is annoying. There’s plenty of nonsense that you can’t interact with, and what you can interact with is often difficult to see, and can be hidden by other objects due to the bad camera angles. There’s a slight sheen on objects that you can barely make out, but it’s not enough. It means you go through the game tapping A until something works. Why not have Scooby point out objects, with his famous point pose?

Even though there isn’t much to the game, and it contains some tedious stuff, there’s still some charm here. The visuals are nice and capture the show well, as does the music (with a few good renditions of the classic theme). There’s only a few small snippets of voice from Shaggy and Scooby, but the tropes in the dialogue (like Fred and the girls checking somewhere safe) are part of the charm of the show. There’s even a corridor full of doors that you can use to escape one of the villains in a cutscene, and you can play with them yourself.

At the end, we have a game that is entirely full of awful ideas, but manages to be somewhat enjoyable due to capturing some of the charm of the original cartoon. A point and click style game is perfect for Scooby-Doo, it just needs to have more of the puzzle solving elements, and a camera that works with exploring the levels. There was even a decent LucasArts-inspired point and click game on the Genesis (it was exclusive to North America) called Scooby-Doo Mystery – not to be confused with Scooby-Doo Mystery on SNES, a 2D platformer.

Fine

Quote

Don’t fall for the excuse that Creep Capers is aimed at younger gamers- we’ve seen four-year-olds finish Perfect Dark, and they’d find this as much of an insult to their intelligence as the last hastily knocked-out cartoon tie-in. With no fewer than nine adverts in Creep Capers’ manual hyping everything from videos to cuddly toys, it’s evident that this travesty of a game is just one cog in the Cartoon Network’s cynical pocket-money-pilfering machine. And that’s the most frightening thing on offer here.

Mark Green, N64 Magazine #51

Remake or remaster?

There’s not much to the game, but a good Scooby-Doo game should be possible.

Official ways to get the game.

There is no official way to play Scooby-Doo! Classic Creep Capers

 

Edit: I just remembered I took a picture of my very chaotic lounge when I played DDR Disney.

 

It did the job.

[Cube]

Dinosaur Planet

• NA release: N/A
• PAL release: N/A
• JP release: N/A
• Developer: Rare
• Publisher: Nintendo
• N64 Magazine Score: N/A

Towards the end of the N64’s life, Dinosaur Planet was looking extremely promising – it was going to be Rare’s take on Ocarina of Time, then all of a sudden things went quiet until it resurfaced as Star Fox Adventures on the GameCube. The original story and design of the game had been altered to fit Star Fox, with one of the main characters replaced by Fox, and the other turned into a damsel in distress (as well as getting redesigned by Nintendo to be “sexy”, to appeal to more mature audiences). For ages, fans wondered what the original design would have been like.

Then, a late N64 build of the game got leaked. This was part way through the transition to Star Fox Adventures, with Fox replacing Sabre, but the original plans for the game were still much there, with the key element of swapping between Sabre and Krystal very much intact. Fans have restored the original Sabre model and removed references to Fox, and are still trying to fix as many glitches as possible. This gives us a decent look at the original plans for the game.

Dinosaur Planet starts with Krystal trying to rescue Princess Kyte, a flying dinosaur who turns out to be a significant part of of this version of the game. In Dinosaur Planet, Krystal ends up being separated from Kyte when she seeks her adoptive father – a wizard called Randorn, who was cut from the final game – for advice to open her cage. He’s wounded and passes on his remaining magic spell to Krystal, who must carry on the quest. I found it interesting that it’s not the staff that provides the powers, but seems to be more of a way to focus the magic fireballs, I think it makes the game feel more majestic.

Not long after this, you encounter the SwapStone, who breaks the fourth wall to talk about Sabre, you get to swap with him for a bit as he rescues Prince Tricky (who was based on the dinosaur boss from Diddy Kong Racing). Sabre controls the same as Krystal, and his sword acts in the same way as Krystal’s staff for using spells. Sabre is the biological son of the Wizard Randorn. There’s a rather deep history on how the characters are linked, but we only get a few snippets from what we see in the prototype.

From the feeling of the lock-on combat, movement, and jumping, the Zelda inspiration is very clear. But, despite this, Dinosaur Planet still feels like its own thing, due to a different level design philosophy. Items are handled differently, as you swap between various spells, items, and companion abilities with different c-buttons, so it’s quick to swap and access abilities without needing to pause, a system that works well.

Tricky is still annoying in this version of the game, and where you use his digging ability isn’t telegraphed very well (but only at this part of the game, it’s better later on). Once you go back to Krystal, you do get to finally rescue Princess Kyte, who becomes Krystal’s dinosaur companion. Her abilities are similar to Tricky, with digging replaced with activating unreachable switches. As she flies around, she’s not in the way as much, and is a far more charming character, with some surprisingly emotional moments throughout the game. I checked how one particular moment changed in the final game, and it was changed to be rather tame and unremarkable.

It’s a shame Kyte couldn’t have been Fox’s companion with Tricky taking a back seat instead, she’s one of the standout characters in Dinosaur Planet. In Star Fox Adventures, her character just told you to use the A button to interact with things, you never actually rescue her.

The first five or so hours of the Dinosaur Planet (with the latest fixes) go quite smoothly. I got to CloudRunner Fortress before I had to use debug tools. From then on, my progress of the game was a method of getting as far as I can, then checking some videos to see if I’m doing something wrong, or the game isn’t activating or loading something properly. I had to start using the noclip option to get through some areas that should have been open, and then eventually the warp to location to get to areas that aren’t fully connected to the main game world. I still mostly went through the game in what I think was the intended route, getting the six spellstones and eight krazoa spirits (quite a bit more than the final game).

The areas vary a lot in terms of how much they are completed. For the most part, the actual levels are built, but many elements are missing. There are a few places where the Spellstone is just out in the open, with an empty area to explore. Other places have all the elements, but don’t fully work (such as the Walled Garden, which was fully completed for SFA), while others are near complete, other than a bit of bug fixing. Luckily, there is a large story outline that leaked in 2012 which explained what happened in these places, and it sounds fascinating – especially the time-travelling in the original Krazoa Palace (with Warlock Mountain getting renamed Krazoa Palace in the final game).

One fascinating thing about the world is how well connected it is, using short tunnels to mask loading times, so that there’s only very few instances of the game fading to transition to a new area (other than swapping between the two characters and warping to Warlock Mountain). This is a very common technique now, so it’s interesting to see it done on the N64.

The end of the game in the prototype is a tease. We find out more about the Krazoa and Drakor, the main villain in this version of the game, and the ancient war between their species. A lot of the actual things are missing from the prototype, especially after Sabre gets attacked and Krystal needs to rescue him, which leads to a final confrontation between Sabre and Drakor. Although with the Krazoa revelations, we don’t know if there was going to be a final twist of if something was being left open for the sequel.

Dinosaur Planet could have been the N64’s swan song, a final outstanding title just before the GameCube. Even if it had moved to GameCube anyway, I feel like there’s a ton of great stuff in here that had to be gutted to fit twhat Nintendo wanted from the game, and Krystal was even completely removed for a while, until Nintendo wanted a sexy character added. With Star Fox Adventures getting some criticism for not being a Star Fox game, I really think that this would have been much better off, left as Dinosaur Planet. I look forward to seeing what fans do with the game in the future.

Great

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After rumours began circulating that development of the game had shifted onto GameCube, an irate Rare spokesperson reassured gamers that they’re “still working on Dinosaur Planet for the N64”. And, from what we’ve seen of the title so far, the looong wait should be instantly forgotten the moment dinosaur Planet’s jaw-dropping prehistoric vistas and staggering Zelda-like play burst onto your screen.

N64 Magazine #51

Should it be finished?

We can already see what the game was transformed into, but I would love to see a recreation of this version of Dinosaur Planet, with the original story intact.

[BowserBasher]

Whilst I enjoy SFA, I was so disappointed that we didn’t get this true version of the game. It looked amazing for the N64 and would have been a great send off.