IF IT'S NOT GOOD ENOUGH, IT'S EXTINCT
TRASHSTORM IS NOT A REAL STORY.
IS NOT EVEN GOOD FICTION.
IS TRASH GAME REVIEWS.
ALL OF THE GAMES FEATURED WOULD CAUSE A PERSON DISAPPOINTMENT,
ANGER, FRUSTRATION, DEPRESSION, MONEY LOSS INCLUDED.
TO PUT IT ANOTHER WAY: DON'T TRY THIS AT HOME.
Ouch, this one hurts. Not just for the bad gameplay, but also since we're talking about a cherished, world famous, well known developer: Taito Corporation.
I know what you're thinking: ¿How dare you to pick on Taito? Well, I know the vast history of Taito's successful titles, even when they're obscure games. But this case is the black sheep of the company, since it is considered as one of the worst fighting games out there.
I'm talking about Dino Rex, or like Hamster released it on Arcade Archives: Dinorex.
Phat Dino-pimp of Tha 'Hood.
The plot of this game will take us to the ancient Amazon era. The reason of this is that the discovery of a statue showing a human riding a sauropod dinosaur implied that sometime in the past, humanity and dinosaurs co-existed on Earth. This is where the story begins as you take the role of a masked warrior who enters in a life or death annual tournament where men battles using tamed dinosaurs. The winner wins the right to stay with the Queen of the Amazons along with the title and throne as the master and ruler of their land, known as "Dino Rex".
Take command (if you can) of the greatest monsters of prehistory.
ALLOSAURUS FRAGILIS: For a dinosaur with a name that means "Fragile Different Lizard", the Allosaurus was the complete opposite of fragile. It was the apex predator of the Late Jurassic period, the large monster on top of the food-chain of its time. Its special attack in this game is the "Super Tail Attacking" (Up, Up-Left, Left, Down-Left, Down, Down-Right, Right + B) which performs a sweep with its tail.
TRICERATOPS HORRIDUS: This was the last of the herviborous dinosaurs of the Late Cretaceous, its name means "Three-Horned Face" and Horridus means "Horrible" ("Horrible Three-Horned Face" doesn't sound good). This dinosaur has low height making it kinda hard to hit and is capable of ramming with its frill and horns. Its special move is "Slapping" (Left, Right + B) which requires to push and hold left for a little time, then move right and tap the attack button nonstop to make the dinosaur stand on two feet and run like crazy while hitting with its frontal legs.
PACHYCEPHALOSAURUS WYOMINGENSIS: This dinosaur was the mountain sheep of its time. This was because it used its thick head to ram against other males of their species for earn the right to mate a female. Its full name means "Thick Headed Lizard from Wyoming". In Dino Rex, the Pachycephalosaurus special attack is "Dashing!" which utilizes the same input as the Triceratops.
TYRANNOSAURUS REX: With a name meaning "King of the Tyrant Lizards", it was the apex predator, the absolute terror of the food-chain and king of the Late Cretaceous. Mother Nature created the ultimate predator on Earth's history equipped with binocular vision and bone destroying jaws and teeth. In this game, the T-Rex utilizes the "Super Fly Attacking" which is a belly flop done with the same arrow input command as the Allosaurus "Tail Attacking", but pressing A instead of B.
CERATOSAURUS NASICORNIS: Its complete name means "Horned Lizard with a horn on the nose". Before the arrival of the Allosaurus, Ceratosaurus were the absolute predators until they're displaced. The horn on their nose was mostly used for display purposes rather than battle. In this game, the main attack of the Ceratosaurus is "Head Upper" which attacks using its horned head. The arrow and button input is the same as the Allosaurus.
STYGIMOLOCH SPINIFER: With a name meaning "Spiked Devil of the Styx River" anyone would think this is a predator, but actually is a thick-headed dinosaur (Pachycephalosaurid), one of the battering rams of prehistory. Like the Ceratosaurus, its main attack is the "Head Upper" with the same arrow and button input of the Tyrannosaurus.
Great idea ruined by terrible controls.
The concept of Dino Rex is a two-button fighting game where the premise is simple: Win two rounds to defeat your opponent just like Street Fighter II and ALL of its competitors of its time. However, there is a series of problems with this game, and one of them is the controls. You are only limited to do one thing: Bite with the A Button or use the B Button to use your tail as a whip. You can try to do a diagonal up-right+A for an upper bite or a lower bite with diagonal down-right+A, and this trick is quite useful when you're playing with the Tyrannosaurus as it bites and causes good damages while it walks forward before closing its jaws on your opponent's body, but not 100% useful at all in this prehistoric dysfunctionality, and brace yourself if you want to know why. If the dinosaurs are too close to each other, any hit is not gonna count as such, rather that inflicting damage and pushing them back like in Street Fighter II. Also, if the dinosaurs are in the opposite position (Player 1 on the far right and CPU/P2 on left), the game will force both opponents to return to their respective positions. This goes against any rule of fighting games, making it LESS functional in the premise. Jump is also fucked up. If you press up like in a normal fighting game, your dinosaur will start roaring, exposing it as a sitting duck (or should I say "Sitting Hadrosaurus" due to the duck-billed dinosaur thing?). Well, guess what? Jumping in this game is by pressing down, then up fast. Down is your "Crouch/Guard" since left is to retreat to your corner. Sometimes, some of the moves don't work perfectly, like the Triceratops slap. I know I'm not a fighting aficionado, but I know some of the basics like how to perform a Hadoken and a Sonic Boom in Street Fighter II along with the Sektor's Missile in Mortal Kombat 3, but here I held left and then right and B and it only gets on its two feet for one single slap, while the CPU can spam you with the whole sequence, being the Stygimoloch and the Triceratops the worst of all, and to make things worse, you can't "cancel" the Triceratops Slapping if you can connect a hit, so you'll just be delaying the innevitable: It will hit you. Fighting the AI is a calvary rather than a challenge, and making a fair Man-VS-Machine challenge that's something Capcom, SNK and others learned in this genre, but apparently, Taito failed in the execution. Also, why limiting the controls to only two buttons? If you know the fighting genre you'll perfectly realize these games have 6 buttons for strong, mid and weak punches and kicks. In Dino Rex is diagonal and either tail attack or bite.
Like every fighting game, the game will give you bonus points for the remaining time and how much life you had left, and if the planets, stars and the fucking galaxies are aligned in a specific way and you have God, Satan, Sett, Ra, Buddha and Tlaloc on your side, you can get 100,000 points if you win on perfect, a task easier to say than do due to the cheapness of the opponents and the irresponsive controls.
To be fair, there is some interesting innovations. First one is the implementation of Power Bars. Like Art of Fighting, Dino Rex utilizes the concept of the Power Bar to perform special attacks. While in AOF its one single bar, Dino Rex utilizes three of them and while you can burn one or two by pressing both A+B simultaneously. One interesting detail about it is that if you have three full bars and successfully connect the first hit, you will automatically unleash a triple attack that consumes all the bars. This also explains why holding up makes your dinosaur roar, the more it roars, the gauge will gradually fill.
Another concept was the use of items and weapons. Items appear as eggs which you can eat with the bite attack button.
WHITE EGG: Replenish your health, giving you some hope of completing a match.
RED EGG: Allows you to breathe fire, but apparently needs to perform a command input.
YELLOW EGG: Paralyzes your opponent.
There's also weapons that you can use to attack your opponent like wooden pillars and even an Ankylosaurus to slap your opponent. While in-field weapons were common on beat'em ups, on fighting games were rare or even unexistant, predating Samurai Shodown and Mortal Kombat 4. All of these could be fun if it wasn't for the horrible controls and the fact that if an egg isn't eaten, a raptor/dromaeosaurid (mostly the Deinonychus) will run across the screen and eat it.
Scenery is also a field for experimentation as they're not just the single screened background where you can move freely. There's levels where you can cause destruction on the field such as breaking part of the stadium if you or your opponent are thrown to the very end of the combat area or having irregular layouts like the waterfall stage, breaking with the common scenarios in fighting games.
The only real way to have fun with Dino Rex is if you're playing with another human being, because you're playing with someone with the same skill level as you and dealing with the same control issues of the game.
*In David Kaye's Beast Wars Megatron voice*
Unusual morning walk in a city of human scum.
What is this, Law enforcement? Looks like I'm doing what one of their songs said.
How did it go? Aaaah..."Breaking the Laaaaaw!, Breaking the Laaaaaw!" Ye-eeesss-s.
After two matches, you'll be on a bonus stage where the main goal is to reach the end of the level before the time reaches zero. This is also where the game pulls a twist on the plot by adding a silly side-story where your dinosaur falls from the heavens to destroy the empire of Ho Lee. The idea is that as you destroy his penthouse building or at least defeat people and destroy vehicles, civilization will collapse on each visit. The first level will put you against the police who's gonna be easy to pass through. The second level is the military which will try to stop you with Harrier jets bombarding you and helicopters will now fire rockets against your reptilian existence. Fortunately, you won't be taking damage from enemy fire or if you're halted by Ho Lee's excavator at the end of the stage. While it takes three regular hits to make the building collapse, you can use one Power Attack to take it down with one hit. The final level is the decayed civilization using catapults and spears. Ho Lee will try to stop you by placing gold ingots as if he's trying to pay you a tribute to calm the divine fury in dinosaur form. But you can decide to walk off or kick the ingots in a vulgar display of prehistoric fury and destroy what's left of Ho Lee's building.
BONUS FIGHT: Tamer VS Tamer
The loser gets eaten by the beasts.
After defeating the Tyrannosaurus, the evil Dino Rex won't be eaten like the other tamers. Instead you'll be in a "Man VS Man" battle and unlike the dinosaur battles this is more playable and functional, but it acts more like a beat 'em up than the traditional fighting game as you can connect quick combos with your fists and kicks and it doesn't take too much time to finish the fight.
YO, ADRIAN! I DID IT!!
In an unexpected turn of the events, after taking down the former Rex and witnessing how he became a prey for the Pteranodon, our masked warrior will take out his mask revealing to be no other than Rastan from the action-beat 'em up series of games of the same name. ¿Remember when he said he will told us more of his adventurous stories on his path to became a king at the end of the games of his saga? Well, this might be another of them, a wild story when he became a king of the Amazon jungle by sneaking into the kingdom that time forgot and ended up overthrowing a corrupt king becoming the new Dino Rex.
He finally became a king.
Unlike in Warrior Blade, we will never see Rastan telling us more stories.
*In "Ancient Aliens" narrator voice*
Ancient Astroanut Theorists suggests a completely different explanation.
After defeating the fat power-hungry Rex and seeing Rastan claiming the throne, the ending will show us that nothing, including Rastan's kingdom and the dinosaurs, lasts forever. As time passed, the whole tribes and the surviving dinosaurs disappeared from this world without a trace. ¿What happened?
- ¿Did they fell by the invading Conquistadores who killed them, slain the dinosaurs and left after they ransacked their resources?
- ¿Climate change wiped'em out just like the Mayans?
- ¿Did "Ancient Aliens" blew them up to death by a Cordium primed missile bombardment?
- ¿Belsar attacked Earth killing Rastan, his people and the dinosaurs?
The answer is none of them. The game's lore says that a man who claimed to be a descendant of the tribe only said "All became leaves of the jungle" leaving more questions than answers. It might imply a symbolic way of saying all of the dinosaurs died out in one way or another along with most of the tribe members, while Rastan survived and made his way into modern society where he became a wrestler on the Taito Prowrestiling league to earn his living. Whatever the reason, God was surely wearing a "Purple dinosaurs must die" T-Shirt that day.
That flying T-Rex looks like a complete joke.
Maybe its problems and subsequent failure were the reason why Dino Rex didn't made a debut on consoles like the Genesis or SNES who were porting the major fighting games of the time, resulting in an "extinct" game. It was until 2006 when Taito ported it on the PlayStation 2 as part of the japanese-exclusive Taito Memories II Jokan, and in August 2023 as part of Taito Milestones 2. On November 16th, Dino Rex got its standalone release as part of Hamster's Arcade Archives. ¿How did a mediocre game made its way to the library of "Masterpieces that built a generation for video games"? That blows my mind in so many levels, but guess what? This is Hamster's second strike after releasing another horrible fighter: Allumer's Blandia. Like all the Arcade Archives titles, Dino Rex features Hi-Score and Caravan modes where you can try to make as much progress as possible without continuing either if you die or your 5 minute limit runs out. Good luck on that. It is also a great thing to have a Save function in the Original Mode since making progress will require you to exploit that feature thanks to the controls, and to make things worse, Save State Abuse is HEAVILY REQUIRED to achieve the 1,200,000 point Trophy, requiring a succession of at least three or more Perfect wins, so this game is not for all players 'cos 99% will end up breaking the controllers before pulling the plug on playing this game.
"Ancient Lights Show"
Appropiate for the king of the dinosaurs.
While the gameplay is a prehistoric trainwreck, the redeeming quality of this game lies in the graphics. We all know the digitized, high detailed wonders Taito made on the Gun Frontier/Ex-Darius III games, and Dino Rex is no exception as they made an impressive graphic display for the game, starting from the scenarios, the dinosaur skulls and the dinosaurs themselves. The scenery takes the most part of the graphic aspect, especially the second and final days due to the epicity of the scenery such as the fight in the middle of an erupting storm and the disco-lights in the colliseum, implying the ancient tribes knew how to make colored lighting. For an overall game, it breaks with the military, science-fiction and even the use of human, alien or robotic characters. Something that was unexpected for a fighting game.
Unlike many other figthing games which uses humans and mutants as fighters, Dino Rex uses dinosaurs, which while this was a great concept, the designs look outdated with hilarious results. The Triceratops slap attack and the flying Tyrannosaurus look completely awkward. This use of outdated 50-70s styled dinosaur reconstructions are evocative of films such as The Lost World (the 1925 film) and The Valley of Gwangi, but the major offender is the Tyrannosaurus, which looks like a morbid obese monster and that purple color doesn't help him either, making it prone to Barney jokes resulting in a detail far more hilarious than the engrish within the game.
For a Taito game, Zuntata made a different approach to the game's soundtrack, as it focuses on tribal styled music with drumming and trumpets that evokes the ancient times of tribes, and for this game it works perfectly, ironically, the bonus stages have this calm, jazzy-like tune that sounds like a scene of an old detective movie which contrasts with the imagery of your dinosaur running rampant through a city destroying any police and military vehicle that gets in your way. We all know the question of "What kind of sounds made the dinosaurs" will be a mystery for a long time, but Taito addressed the question with very odd choices. The Allosaurus roars like a cheetah or a panther, Triceratops has a roar-growl-howl mix, both Pachycephalosaurus and Stygimoloch make an extremely loud and annoying bird-like screech and the T-Rex has a tiger roar that sounds like one of the roars used by Filmation for Battle-Cat in He-Man and the Masters of the Universe. Only the Ceratosaurus has a Kaiju-esque roar that barely fits on it.
TRIVIO-REX
So, Allosaurus were around 10's of meters tall and 20m long?
Either that or the humans in the game are Lilliputian-sized people.
- This is the third console port of the game and its first "standalone" release.
- According to Senba, the game was originally meant to be a helicopter shmup, but it was suddenly changed to a fighting game in order to cash in the popularity of Street Fighter II.
- The name Dinorex/Dino Rex means "Terrible King".
- In the opening scene, we can see the Allosaurus and the Triceratops were depicted in a much larger size than they're in reality.
- Another inconsistency can be seen in the opening as the intro depicts the Triceratops-Allosaurus duel with more "modern" looking dinosaurs rather than the 50-70's style used in the game.
- Aside from the sprite retooling, it makes sense that both Stygimoloch and Pachycephalosaurus make the same screech/roar as the Stygimoloch is now considered a juvenile Pachycephalosaurus rather than a species of its own.
- In the player select screen, the Stygimoloch skull is actually a retool of the (full grown) Pachycephalosaurus skull.
- Along with Stygimoloch Spinifer, other synonyms for Pachycephalosaurus Wyomingensis are Stenotholus Kohleri and Dracorex Hogwartsia.
- Recent paleontological discoveries implies that Pachycephalosaurus may include meat on their diet as scientists had found a skull with serrated blade-like front teeth, making them omnivorous dinosaurs.
- Of all the dinosaurs, the Allosaurus is the only one with two different roars: The "Kaiju" roar on the selection screen (Ceratosaurus in-game roar) and the cheetah roars in-game.
- The unplayable ceratopsian from Day 2 is the Monoclonius, which means "Single Sprout" or "One Horn". The name is a synonym of Centrosaurus.
- The curved forward horn of the Monoclonius implies that the species used in the game was the Monoclonius Flexus, now renamed as Centrosaurus Apertus.
- Due to the recycling of the Triceratops sprites, the head frill of the Centrosaurus was depicted as a solid frill while in reality it had holes.
- Like the Chasmosaurine ceratopsians (Triceratops), Centrosaurids were the rhinoceros of prehistory, but these were more rhino-esque as they were single-horned animals.
- While the game uses tiger roars for the T-Rex, the apparent truth was that Tyrannosaurus had a more sinister sound according to latest discoveries.
- The use of a purple Tyrannosaurus not only nods Barney, but also predates the Predacon leader Megatron from Beast Wars: Transformers who transforms into a purple T-Rex.
- Speaking of the "Robots in Disguise", the Tyrannosaurus outdated pose was also used on the Dinobot Grimlock from the 1984 cartoon The Transformers.
- The fact the former Dino Rex was a T-Rex tamer implies a very strong symbol of power, as no ordinary man would be able to tame and control the ultimate predator ever walked on Earth.
- The Ankylosaurus Magniventris was the "living tank" of prehistory. It was a heavily armored dinosaur with the most lethal weapon of all: A bone club on their tails capable of breaking legs or even ribs of large predators.
- Auyantepui, also known as "Auyán-tepui", "Auyan-tepuy" and "Auyantepuy" is a table top mountain located in Bolívar state, Venezuela.
- Auyantepui means "La Casa del Diablo" (The Devil's Home) in Pemón language.
- Auyantepui is on the UNESCO's list of World Heritage Sites.
- The game wrongly writes Auyantepui's name as "Auyantepeui". This error only happens at the end of the 1st Day.
- The human-riding-dinosaur clay sculpture from the intro and ending cutscenes was made by a staff member.
- After clearing the 2nd day, we can see a Bonehead tribe woman (Doot) with a Sabertooth Tiger skull as a helmet. This implies that Cenozoic mammals like the Smilodon survived and managed to co-exist with the dinosaurs in the ancient Amazon.
- During the cutscene, Rastan says "Due to the blessing wine, I dreamed a strange dream at that night" which can possibly imply he was drugged with the ingredients of the wine ("Spiked" as people said nowadays), ouch.
- In the 4th day, we can see that the tribe people were able to use dinosaurs as cattle as we can see the Parasaurolophus, Stegosaurus and Corythosaurus confined in corrals on the background. It is very likely they were used as beef as their large size might prove useful for human consumption (1 Parasaurolophus = Meat for 15 people or more).
- In the cutscene it is mentioned people used eggs of Ornithomimus as food, which sounds like a possibility that ornithomimids (commonly called "Ostrich Dinosaurs"), specifically Ornithomimus Velox, were used as poultry, this is heavily implied on the unaccurate hen-like crest on the Ornithomimus running away from Mor.
- The game wrongly calls Ornithomimus (which means "Bird Mimic") as "Ornitbomimus".
- Despite Mor was refering to the wiseman/witch doctor in the waterfall, the phrase "A devil was waiting in the river valley" makes a whole lot of sense if we consider who's the next dinosaur opponent: Stygimoloch. The reason of this is because its full name means "Spiked Devil of the Styx River".
- It is very likely that the waterfall in the 5th day is the Kerepakupai Merú (waterfall of the deepest place) better known as the "Angel Falls".
- If the waterfall is the Angel Falls, then the idea of placing the Stygimoloch there makes an Angel-Devil duality.
- Another Good-Evil duality can be found in Ho Lee, whose name is pronounced as "Holy", but he's a corrupt mayor.
- The idea of fire-breathing dinosaurs was repurposed on the creationist book Dinosaurs by Design by Duane T. Gish where the author proposed the Parasaurolophus was able to breath fire as a defense mechanism.
- The desert dunes background of the third bonus stage was recycled from Metal Black.
- Dino Rex is not just part of Senba/Gun Frontier trilogy, but also part of the Rastan saga.
- Its place on Rastan saga continuity is unknown.
- Rastan's sprite was recycled from Warrior Blade.
- Taito's post on twitter announcing Arcade Archives: Dino Rex as "Arcade Archives will find a way" is a reference to "Life finds a way", a phrase from Jurassic Park/Jurassic World.
Never in a million...
Never in a million yeeeeeaaaaars (Never in a million yeeeaaars)
Taito had the idea, but the execution was disastrous with terrible controls, mindless button mashing, bad detection, unfair difficulty and odd button layouts. Its no surprise why Dino Rex is among the worst fighting games out there along with Blandia. Unless you're a hardcore Taito fan or a Fighting game nerd you might want to give it a try, but honestly you'd be better off playing Street Fighter II: The World Warrior or Fatal Fury than this.
Also, Dino Rex's release in Arcade Archives just reinforces my predictions about Taito's releases. Its just a matter of time until we end up seeing Darius Gaiden, the Ray series there after their compilation releases and, why not, G-Darius. It's all about waiting for Taito's next moves in Hamster's library.
Eda's expression and AWACS Galaxy's words sums up the whole thing.
This isn't just "Calamity", is "Extinction" and this game is already extinct.
Can't believe he could be arsed for Warrior Blade! But then again, champs stay hungry! 
