Star Fox / Dinosaur Planet

[neatoman]

Found out a ton of information about Dinosaur Planet, the game that became Star Fox Adventures, floating around on the internet. Most notably this series of voice recordings, which oddly enough refers both to Fox and the character he replaced, so it's either a mix of recordings from different points in development or from a version where Fox was added in without many other changes. From what I can tell, the most notable differences is that Krystal and Scales would have been more active, more characters would have been running around, the Krazoa would have been less ambigious and that random cyborg dragon boss towards the end would have been the secret villain instead of Andross. Beyond that though, the world and tasks seems like they would have been mostly the same, it's really just the story that was tweaked to make sense as part of Star Fox in the final game. Even if doesn't seem all that different, one might still wonder what might have been. Maybe Nintendo should call up Playtonic and ask them to do a remake?

[Leo656]

I still haven't played that one yet, but I probably will soon since I've been playing the "real" Star Fox games.

I expect to like it fine. A lot of people sh*t on it for being retrofitted into a Star Fox joint rather than an original IP thanks to Miyamoto flexing on Rare, but who can even say "Dinosaur Planet" would have gotten over, anyway? Rare didn't exactly hit a lot of home runs after they got out from under Nintendo, anyhow. I think almost 20 years later that whole mess is a dead conversation. My gut tells me that it all probably worked out for the best.

As Zelda rip-offs go, it's supposed to be one of the better ones. So I look forward to checking it out. I've just been lazy. But I'm certainly more inclined now than I've been in a while.

[neatoman]

I replayed Star Fox Adventures recently, which is why I went ahead and looked up Dinosaur Planet stuff. It's not a bad game, there is plenty of fun stuff in there and nothing can really be be called broken.

The main issue, aside from just stuffing Fox into a game he was clearly never meant to be a part of, is that there seems to be a lot of beta elements left around. Texts tend to use a placeholder fonts, the character models for Peppy and Slippy don't look right (thank god they're barely in the game), some events are triggered even after they wouldn't logically happen anymore, some challenges are either too easy or slightly too hard, sometimes it feels like there's a missing cutscene, the money (though mostly unused) is obtained in an unbalanced way, etc.

There's nothing that is so bad it spoils the funs, but it's obvious the presentation needed a bit of work.

As for why Rare sucked under Microsoft, from what I understand, Microsoft expected games to be made way faster than Nintendo and as such they were rushed a lot more under Microsoft.

[Leo656]

I can buy that.

I remember SFA getting really good reviews when it came out, with the asterisk next to it stating "Keep in mind, folks, that it's not a 'real' Star Fox game." And then over time, the "asterisk" overtook the entire conversation and now it's commonly dismissed as a "bad game". I haven't played it yet, but following the conversation over the years that always seemed weird to me. Happens with a lot of things, but it often befuddles me.

Can't be too bad if it gave the world Krystal, right...?

[neatoman]

Considering only two Star Fox games were released before Adventures, one might raise a few eyebrows over the sudden shift in gameplay and setting. If there's suddenly a Mario game that is an RTS or something, I don't think anyone would care given how many "normal" Mario games there are.

... Then again, Mario and Star Fox might both be bad examples. The international version of Super Mario Bros 2 is a huge departure from Super Mario Bros 1 (and the backstory to that isn't too dissimilar to Dinosaur Planet and Star Fox Adventures). Hell, Super Mario Bros 1 is itself a noticeable departure from Donkey Kong and Mario Bros. And on the topic of Star Fox, Assualt, Command and Zero all make some clear changes as well.

[sdp]

I would've loved to have played the N64 version, it was Rare as they were falling from their peak but were still very solid and I would've loved to have seen their Zelda clone. You can see plenty of cut content of N64 dinosaur planet on youtube. From what I read plenty was cut and retooled to have Fox make sense so I do think a tighter game would've released on the N64 since it was nearly finished.
Changing it to game cube and adding fox and rushing it to release it before the buyout really hurt the game. Star Fox Adventures was ok but you could tell it was rushed, it looks great, some parts are great fun, the collectathon aspect is annoying and by the time it released too much, had it been out before it would've been considered a classic for N64 instead of a blacksheep of the star fox games.