A month ago we got the 3D re-release of Jurassic Park, and a few weeks later we got Far Cry 3: Blood Dragon featuring dinosaurs of all kinds shining under neon lights. This happy coincidence provides us an opportunity to gather some of the most amazing video games with dinosaurs stomping around inside them.
Raptors, T-Rex and Pterodactyls all have their cool statuses safely secured, but they’re even more fearsome with mounted cannons or lazer guns on their back. You just don’t mess with that.
As we march forward in time the changes are easily noticable. In 30 years we went from the cute little Bubble Bobble characters to the most insane, blazing neon monsters with rocket launchers. And this is an awesome thing!
B.C.’s Quest For Tires (1983)
In Quest for Tires we have to rescue our girlfriend on a stone uncycle who has been kidnapped by a dinosaur, who apparently looks like a really cool guy.
Dino Eggs (1983)
Save the scattered dinosaur eggs from prehistoric creatures of all kinds as our time traveller main character.
Bubble Bobble (1986)
Taito’s classic, popular arcade game that was later ported to almost everything featured Bub and Bob, who easily can be considered as the cutest dinosaurs in video games.
Rampage (1986)
Lizzie, once a young woman, is mutated into a godzilla-like dinosaur is one of the playable characters in Midway’s ’80s arcade game Rampage.
Super Mario World (1990)
Mario’s number one dinosaur buddy Yoshi first appeared in Super Mario World as a mountable pet.
Jurassic Park (1993)
The 1993 movie resurrected the dinosaur craze with the speed of light that resulted in several video games linked to the film. Sega’s side scroller was among the better titles.
Jurassic Park Arcade Game (1993)
Sega also had a Jurassic Park themed arcade rail shooter that wasn’t half bad.
E.V.O.: Search for Eden (1993)
We have to navigate through Earth’s geological periods including the Mesozoic Era full of dinosaurs in Square’s really unique game for the SNES.
Cadillacs and Dinosaurs (1993)
Survivors in a post-apocalyptic Earth have to face dinosaurs in one of the best Capcom side scroller beat’em ups based on the comics of the same name.
Primal Rage (1994)
A traditional 2D fighter also set in a post-apocalyptic Earth featuring seven playable dinosaurs (mostly).
Turok: Dinosaur Hunter (1997)
Acclaim’s dino themed first-person shooter was one of the first games that utilized the capabilities of the very first 3D graphics cards.
Dino Crisis (1999)
Resident Evil creator Shinji Mikami’s survival horror is set on a remote island where a failed military time travel experiment spawned hundreds of dinosaurs from another era.
Dino D-Day (2011)
World War II with a little bit extra mad. The dinos with cannons mounted on their backs or on their jaws look absolutely insane in 800 North’s first-person shooter.
Tokyo Jungle (2012)
Survival with dinos can be hard in a post-apocalyptic Tokyo, even when they are supposed to be at the top of the food chain.
World of Warcraft: Mists of Pandaria‘s 5.2 content patch (2013)
Azeroth had dinosaurs before (just think about Un’Goro crater or Epicus Maximus) but the latest content patch took it to another level with the Isle of Giants.
Far Cry 3: Blood Dragon (2013)
Everyone wanted to hunt for giant dinosaurs in the vast jungles of Far Cry 3, and we finally got them in the standalone expansion.
Not enough dino craziness? Then you should post the most awesome ones you know from any video game in the comments below!
Sources: Wowhead, CGR, Frankomatic, MamePlayer, CosmicCheese, Retrojuegoschile, HardcoreGaming101
Comments
17 responses to “The Most Awesome Dinosaurs In Video Games”
UM EXCUSE ME BUT WHERE IS RADICAL REX?!
I remember when I was a kid, I’d watch my Dad play Jurassic Park on the SNES, and I always had to leave the room when he got up to one of the T-Rex sections because the music that played during those sections used to scare the heck out of me.
The top-down Jurassic Park game for the SNES was one of the first games I ever played. Loved it.
The Lost World on PS1 was pretty bad, but playing as a T-Rex or a raptor was kinda fun.
Operation Genesis was awesome. A Sim-Jurassic Park, basically, you sent expeditions to discover fossils, researched them in your lab and looked after them in the park, as well as the tourists. Although it was usually more fun to tear some fences down and recreate the chaos of the movie. 😉
Yeah, Operation Genesis is great. Probably one of the best Aussie games ever. Well, besides Radical Rex as @mdn mentioned.
Tomb Raider, Tekken, PS1 demo cd 1 yeah!
I loved EVO The Search for Eden, The mammal stage gets so ridiculous. Also, developed by Enix, not Square.
Chrono Trigger had some cool dinosaurs 🙂
http://chrono.wikia.com/wiki/Reptite
Why is there not a Dino Riders game? I wanna ride a T-Rex that fires lazers!
Tomb Raider!! That trex is still the scariest thing I can remember in a game
No love for Joe and Mac?
Was thinking the same thing 🙁
Needs more Conker’s Bad Fur Day.
Also one of my absolute favourite “random DOS game that I don’t even know where it came from”s when I was a kid was Designasaurus 2. Not that I even knew it was the second game til one day when I was older and noticed it in the splash screen.
I loved Dino Crisis 1 and 2. But then 3 was set on a space station or something?
I’m glad Primal Rage got a mention, I would have RAGED (cwatididthar?) if it had been left out.
It’s probably a bit of a stretch to call Lizzy from Rampage a dinosaur though.
As others have mentioned:
Jurassic Park on the SNES
Radical Rex
Jurassic Park: Operation Genesis
I’d like to throw in:
Jurassic Park on the PC/Amiga
Chuck Rock
The Lost Vikings 2
Starfox Adventures
Diddy Kong Racing
WHERE THE FUCK IS THE FLINSTONES GAME?
Blood……….DRAGON
No Secret of Evermore or Killer Instinct makes me a sad panda.
Killer Instinct? What? There are no dinosaurs in Killer Instinct nor its sequel, unless you’re thinking about Riptor, who wasn’t a dinosaur but a genetically engineered human/reptile hybrid.
Trespasser might have been terribly broken, but it was still awesome in its own peculiar way.
Some terrible game there but i guess we were only talking about the dinosaurs themselves
I thought that the dinosaurs in Telltales JP game were very well done
I would love a classic survival horror reboot of dino crisis Capcom make it happen!
Surely there were some decent games with dinosaurs between 1999 and 2011?
Tomb Raider (1996) famously has a T-Rex assaulting Lara. There are also the various Turok games, However, I’ve never seen the dinosaurs in either of these games, so they may not be worth mentioning.