Star Road

Back in the 1990’s, two seemingly unrelated things gained mainstream popularity: dinosaurs and survival horror games. What would happen if you combined Jurassic Park, Steven Spielberg’s blockbuster movie from 1993, and Resident Evil, Capcom’s smash hit game from 1996? You’d get something like Dino Crisis, released in 1999.

Shinji Mikami of Capcom was the director of Resident Evil (1996) and producer of Resident Evil 2 (1998) and 3 (1999). In between RE2 and RE3, Mikami-san directed and produced this game, Dino Crisis. While the Resident Evil series announces its title when pushing Start, sadly Dino Crisis does not. A sign of a less campy direction for this series, perhaps?

I started a new game by loading my completed save from the first time I beat this game on Duckstation a couple years ago. After beating the game once, you get this “costume change” menu when you load your save game. Spy Type is Regina’s default outfit.

For this playthrough, I decided to start with the Army Type outfit.

Anyone remember AOL? If you were around in the 90’s, surely you can never forget the ubiquitous “You’ve got mail!” announcement.

We’re introduced to the plot through these initial messages from our team member: it turns out there is something shady being developed at this island-based research facility (is it just me or does that sound a lot like Shadow Moses Research Facility on Fox Archipelago?). But it’s a non-weapon project. What could it be?

Our team is sent to help. After a dark FMV (sadly computer generated and not live-action like RE1) shows one of our team members getting separated and attacked by something, our leader Gail decides to leave him behind and infiltrate the facility with just the three of us.

We play as Regina, seen here. Despite the low output resolution of the Playstation, this game features very detailed models and high-resolution textures. It’s a bit of a pixelated mess on original hardware or emulated at 1x, so I went straight into the increased internal resolution.

One of the main differences between Dino Crisis and the original Resident Evil games is the backgrounds. While Resident Evil used pre-rendered backgrounds, Dino Crisis has full 3D backgrounds, despite having the same style of fixed cameras. As a result, Duckstation’s built-in widescreen rendering works almost perfectly. Occasionally you’ll see a tiny bit of culling or some object at the edge of the screen you weren’t meant to see, but for the most part it’s easy to play this game and forget that the developers never intended this game to be played in widescreen.

Epic movie-style camera angles are pretty commonplace in videogames now, but back in the late 90’s this was an emerging technique and seemed very advanced. This shot is a good example of how cinematic this game likes to get, with this cool angle looking up at a mostly-obscured Regina.

Here it comes! It’s amazing how much we’ve learned about dinosaurs since the 1990’s. Dinosaurs like these were once believed to be smooth and scaly as portrayed here, but modern archaeology has revealed they were actually covered in feathers. It turns out that birds evolved directly from dinosaurs– which means that all birds are dinosaurs!

If I asked you to identify this dinosaur, you would likely say, “Velociraptor, duh. I’ve seen Jurassic Park.” Well, the real velociraptors were actually about the size of a turkey, despite what they showed in Jurassic Park. Since this game never gets technical about the actual names of the dinosaurs in this game, we can pretend they were trying to be a Deinonychus antirrhopus, a similar dinosaur that actually was that big.

Although this game has nowhere near the cheesiness of Resident Evil, it does have a few moments of levity every now and then.

By the release of this game in 1999, developers had learned a few tricks about developing for the Playstation. What stands out in this game is how epic the baked-in lighting and shadows are. The crepuscular rays steal the show in this screenshot, but check out the subtle shadowing built in to all the textures of the environment.

Avoiding laser fences and climbing in ventilation ducts? Nothing wrong with a bit of Metal Gear Solid influence here.

How does Snake get up there anyway? Regina shoots this cable and it slowly pulls her up, apparently.

Rudimentary it may be, but the game actually does have some dynamic lighting too. There’s an orange glow coming off this equipment.

The lighting on Regina also changes as you walk down the hall; I think at this point we are just hitting the light source from the area ahead. In the era of ray-tracing this might not be too exciting, but back in 1999 this was some cool shit.

Gore was a bit different back in the days of low resolution outputs. Although I do of course play mainly at high resolution, some things are a little better when your brain has to make up the details.

More lighting: Rick and his desk are bathed in the light from his monitors. Sadly, this game has no subtitles so a lot of the dialog is hard to understand and of course, none of it shows up in screenshots.

The dinosaur attacks can get pretty wild. For this one, he grabbed my arm and flopped me back and forth!

Oh crap, I wasn’t supposed to go here yet. The map gives you very little information so I got lost quite a bit. This game is similar to the early Resident Evils with respect to how you need to memorize the map because you have to backtrack and criss-cross a lot. Since the map is fairly open without many locked doors, it’s easy to spend way too much time going the wrong direction without realizing it.

One of the core gameplay elements is these DDK puzzles. I can easily see how someone could get very into these, but I found them annoying.

Hey cool, thanks for your help. I’m sure everything will be okay.

Or maybe not, after a T-Rex smashes through the window!

On Normal difficulty I think you need to shoot the T-Rex until it’s stunned; on Easy I just ran out of there.

What is that? I think I shall step over this ankle-high impediment and find out. Well too bad, you have to go all the way around to go over there.

Like Resident Evil, you have to manage a tiny inventory. The good news here is you only have to worry about your ammunition and healing items: the puzzle supplies like keys thankfully don’t take up precious inventory space as they do in RE.

Occasionally the map will light up with the super handy DESTINATION, but most of the time you have to figure it out. By the way, in the Japanese version it also shows the name of the room you’re in, but this version only shows what floor you’re on.

“Heeere’s Johnny!”

Some of the consequential choices in Resident Evil are pretty subtle; for example, jumping in the hole immediately instead of waiting for Barry. In Dino Crisis, these choices are explicit, and always revolve around disagreements between Gail and Rick. It works fine as a gameplay element, but aren’t we on some sort of special operations team? Our leader is Gail, so we have to listen to him; that’s just how military ranks work. It feels a bit awkward that we’re supposed to be an elite special forces team and we’re this dysfunctional with decision-making.

This is an interesting scene because we are getting way more Rick in this frame than you would normally see in the “intended” 4:3 presentation.

Aesthetically, this is one of my favorite Playstation games. I love the textures, the lighting, and the sky. I also love how Regina looks at the dinosaurs around her, in this case tracking the Pteranodon as it flies over.

There’s another puzzle in here where you have to figure out the correct sequence of plumbing, which I also found to be annoying.

Capcom’s localization in the late 90’s was…not the best. Seeing dry lines like this reminds me of why my dream job back then was “video game translator”.

These guys seem to pop up everywhere, sheesh.

No worries, Tom’s packing a Mini Uzi or similar, he can defend us.

Well he did, but he sacrificed himself. RIP Tom.

One of my favorite situations in gaming is “Things getting way closer to a fixed camera than the developer intended” as we can see here. The dinosaurs are incredibly detailed; just check out the transparency on the teeth, for example.

For this oblique puzzle, you need fingerprint data. Where can we find that? Let’s backtrack to the dead body of a scientist you found earlier.

Once you get that and an ID card, you travel to some far-off room to make a new ID card with this scientist’s data, and then you can open the door that is…exactly the same spot where you got the fingerprints. Sigh.

To unlock a certain type of door, you have to do a puzzle like this. While I was pretty grumpy about all the other puzzles, I thought these were really fun.

For this lock, we need to call someone to help us put the second card key in at the same time as the first one.

Then we get to see a glimpse of the Third Energy machine at work. The Playstation can produce mind-boggling effects!

Here’s yet another type of door-opening puzzle. I enjoyed these as well.

Alright, time for yet another choice. Generally speaking, these tend to break down to Gail’s route having more fighting, and Rick’s route having more puzzles.

At this point I figured I’d had enough of Army Type and decided to switch to the other outfit I’d unlocked, Battle Type. The fourth outfit, Ancient Type, is unlocked after you beat the game twice. I keep saying outfit but it actually changes more than just clothes: Regina’s hairstyle changes for Army Type and her eye color changes for Battle and Ancient Types.

Since the dinosaurs spawn infinitely and your ammo is far from infinite, it’s a good idea to run past dinosaurs instead of fighting them. There is a bit of risk involved here, but no worries on an emulator when you can just hit the Rewind button if you get caught trying to squeeze by. Although sometimes they jump and make it super easy on you!

We’ve tracked down Doctor Kirk, the man we came for. Time to get to the bottom of this Third Energy mystery.

I try to open the laser fences right after the dinos get shocked, which sometimes leads to hilarious poses when the game freeze-frames for the switch’s dialog box.

What in the wide world of sports is going on with this outfit? Listen, I’m not against a sexy getup. This one is just weird. And this is supposed to be the “battle” type?

Oh no…

It’s the T-Rex again!

After a pretty sweet scene where the T-Rex chases us down this corridor, we come to the most annoying part in the entire game.

The USA version of this game gives you 5 continues, and then you also have an item called Resuscitation that brings you back when you die. I assume that after expending your 5 continues you get a Game Over, but luckily that never happed to me due to my use of save states. But if I were playing on a real console, I’m sure I would have gotten one at this scene. After the T-Rex chases you to this dead end, you find a locked door. You have to defend yourself until Rick is able to lock the door, and any hesitation will have you eaten by a T-Rex. I loaded a save state so many times at this scene. It’s almost impossible, even on Easy, to survive long enough to get the call from Rick saying the door is open.

Some enemies are really hard to shoot and very easy to avoid, like the Pteranodons you see here, so it’s a no-brainer to just run past.

This game is from the Wild West era of FMV’s. Like Syphon Filter, the FMV art doesn’t match the rest of the game.

Additionally, even basic mastering techniques like Black Point change between scenes of the same FMV.

Although I have to give credit where credit’s due: the T-Rex does look pretty good.

In this silly scene, the T-Rex grabs the helicopter by the tail and throws it at us, completely unaffected by the screaming rotors of death spinning at the speed of sound.

Then comes this very anti-climatic boss “fight”.

Don’t waste your ammo on this one: we’re just trying to stall for time (again). After what feels like several hours of running in circles playing tag with the T-Rex, Rick opens the door so you can escape.

Oh hey, look at these cuties! I assume these are supposed to be Compsognathus, which is one of the smallest non-avian dinosaurs we know about. In other words, almost all dinosaurs smaller than this were “avian dinosaurs”, or what we now call birds; and they were the only dinosaurs to survive the K-Pg extinction event.

Well, that’s a shame.

Wait, what? I wonder if this is a translation error or just a clunky gameplay moment.

Arsenal Gear?? Okay now I’m just making up Metal Gear references. In this shot, you can see that I’ve used a tranquilizer dart, which for me is the best gun in the game because it takes down any dinosaur in one shot. They do wake up eventually, but if you kill dinosaurs they respawn, so it’s essentially the same outcome.

This is another thing that annoys me slightly, which is not uncommon in this era of games. Instead of balancing out the text boxes, they tend to just fill up the first box as far as it goes and then move on to the next one.

There are a few of these crane puzzles that require you to use a crane to move shipping containers out of the way. Like most of the puzzles in the game, I found these annoying too.

Whoa! This was an impactful scene. You enter the door and immediately see someone who’s had their head blown apart just behind the glass.

Then you walk behind this scanner, which lets you see your position in real-time. If you have a gun equipped, you get this warning. It’s a very simple effect that works very well.

I was already getting tired of the Battle Type costume, so for the last stretch of the game I switched to the default, Spy Type.

Most areas in this game have cold white lighting, but this area has a trippy green/gold-ish tint. I wonder if there is any significance to that.

Right down its throat! What a great shot.

Look how detailed this computer room is. This is another example of how much the emulator can reveal with the increased internal resolution.

It’s the T-Rex again! In a somewhat comical twist, he tries to attack us but ends up smashing some giant electrical thing and electrocuting himself to death.

We then have to turn on the generator with another puzzle. I actually liked these and wish they did more with them. The other puzzles get progressively harder but these are incredibly simple, almost to the point of being boring.

I mean…he looks pretty intact to me.

We’ve found an escape route, but it’s blocked by this wavy force field. This is the root of the game: Dr. Kirk is trying to develop a clean energy source called “Third Energy”, but its development caused some kind of distortion in the space-time continuum, which is how dinosaurs ended up here.

For whatever reason, the shotgun is the weapon that fires the tranquilizer darts.

Hey, when did Dr. Kirk get a gun??

The detail in Dr. Kirk’s office is awesome. These environments really feel alive, and not just simple boxes that you move between.

Period reviews praised the graphics on the Playstation version when it was released in 1999. But a year later when it was ported to the more powerful Dreamcast and Windows platforms, reviewers gauged the graphics as relatively poor.

I love how they drew the frost on these containers. This screenshot just looks cold!

This is another area that reminds me of Metal Gear Solid; specifically the hangar where Metal Gear Rex is stored.

Alright, here we go! This is the one decision that matters because it decides the ending. There are three endings: Gail survives and Dr. Kirk dies; Gail dies and Dr. Kirk survives; or they both survive. The latter, considered the “true” ending, can actually be achieved with either choice. That’s the way I went on my first playthrough, but this time I decided to go with Rick’s idea and let Dr. Kirk die.

We find the hovercraft, but unfortunately it’s out of fuel. Bizarrely, it’s nuclear powered, so all we have to do is…scoop up some “Nucleum” from one of these barrels?

Of course, once we’re ready to roll, another T-Rex shows up.

Yet another anti-climatic T-Rex boss fight ensues, especially considering this is the final boss. Like earlier fights, the first thing you need to do is run.

Then, the camera suddenly switches as the FIRE prompt flashes on the screen. Time to launch a grenade!

After a few grenades, Rick shows up with this rad hovercraft, featuring a WWII-style shark face design.

He busts out the rocket launcher…

Boom! It doesn’t just blow up the T-Rex, it seems to set off some chain recation.

The Third Energy goes haywire again, sending a chunk of this island right back in time. Interesting that this time, all of the land mass disappeared, whereas before only dinosaurs were transported forward in time.

We made it out! Well, our team did; we left Dr. Kirk behind to die.

Backtracking a bit, here is the helicopter ending from my previous playthrough.

Of course, the T-Rex has to come and spoil that party too.

The final boss fight here is a bit different; we are on this horizontally moving platform and have to shoot the T-Rex as it chases us.

After this, all of us manage to escape in the helicopter.

Thanks for the adventure, Mikami-san. He’s still going at it, although I haven’t played anything he’s touched since 2005’s Resident Evil 4.

After the credits, we get to read an email debrief from Regina.

Regina is ready to roll! Bring on Dino Crisis 2, eh?

I miss short games. Nowadays there is outrage over games that are only 5 or 10 hours, but that was pretty common in the PS1 era. These Capcom games in particular were designed to be played repeatedly, uncovering all the secrets and different endings through experimentation. In contrast, games nowadays seem to be intended to have one good playthrough and go back on the shelf.

Mad skills…more like save states! I would like to point out, however, that I did not use any cheats while playing this game.

After finishing the game a second time, you get this message.

From here you would think the mini-game is called “Extinction Agenda”, but I can’t find any other reference to this anywhere.

When you load the completed save game after this, it goes to a secondary title screen allowing you to play the original game or the new “Operation ‘Wipe Out'”.

You get dropped into the game with the supplies you had with your last save, and the goal is to kill 10 dinosaurs within 5 minutes and then escape.

This is harder than it seems, because once you quickly deplete the rest of your grenades and shotgun shells, you have to use the very weak pistol.

It’s also hard to just find enough dinosaurs. I ran out of time with no health supplies left, virtually no ammo, and yet still needed to find three more dinos. This minigame is really trying to turn this game into something it isn’t.

I have very mixed feelings about this game. On one hand, I love so many aspects of this game. It has great graphics with a great style; the music is very cool; the tank controls are the zenith of their type; and I just love the idea of dinosaurs and secret research facilities in general. However, most of the gameplay is super clunky and frustrating, causing me to peek at a walkthrough more than a few times. There is a disjointed flow to the game. And the puzzles are mostly annoying instead of challenging.

I’m generally not a big proponent of remakes because I usually feel like the original work can stand on its own. However, I think Dino Crisis would be a great candidate for a remake. Keep the overall feel, presentation, and characters, but completely revamp all the gameplay to make it a fluid and coherent experience. Even the experience of the original game but with a few quality of life features would help. For example, the map could show room names, where you are, and even where items are (like the modern Resident Evil remakes); it could have some sort of system where it keeps tracks of clues instead of making you take notes; it could even show you a health bar!

Despite all the frustration from clunking through this game, it still ends up being a fun experience, and it sold well. Just over a year later, Dino Crisis 2 was released, although unfortunately without any influence of Shinji Mikami. That game is quite a bit different, eschewing the 3D backgrounds and slow Resident Evil pace for pre-rendered backgrounds and much faster action-shooter gameplay. That’s another pretty short game, and I’ve already started playing it, so that article will be coming soon.