Dinosaur Planet (Prototype)

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 fix 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 references to Fox have been removed, and are still trying to fix and 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 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 forth 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 was 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 in what we see in the prototype.

From the feeling of the lock-on combat and 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, 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 well 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

The first five or two hours of the Dinosaur Planet (with the latest fixes) goes 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 though 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 renames Krazoa Palace in the final game).

One fascinating thing about the world is how well connected it is, using 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, but 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 to what Nintendo wanted form 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

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.

action adventure N64 rare RPG