Esse jogo é uma porcaria mal feita e feia e eu me diverti imensamente com ele. Desde a tela de introdução comecei a ter uma crise de riso que perdurou por quase toda a jogatina. É uma mistura de low effort, ridículo e over the topness que beira o insano.

Tudo começa pela premissa, em que você assume o papel de um domador de dinossauros de uma tribo esquecida da América do Sul num campeonato para decidir quem vai ser o rei. O dinossauros têm modelos extremamente toscos que devem ter um máximo de cinco frames de animação, e a lutas 1v1 são uma cacofonia de gritos e rugidos que não é ajudada pelos controles vagamente funcionais.

E é lindo, de uma forma desastrosas e não-intencionalmente hilária. Apesar de todo o sofrimento que foi desenvolver esse game, acho que em algum momento os devs devem ter jogado tudo pro ar e começado a fazer algumas coisas de zoeira mesmo. Lances como o pterodáctilo que aparece do nada para comer o domador perdedor vivo, estágios com terreno inflamável em plena idade da pedra ou o atual rei que você quer desbancar ser um cara extremamente obeso que nem cabe no próprio trono (e que controla um dinossauro igualmente rechonchudo e, só para completar, dourado) não podem ser mero acidente. Alguém na equipe do jogo estava se divertindo, mesmo que não tenha sido o líder do projeto, Takatsuna Senba.

The lead developer of Dino Rex, Takatsuna Senba, has a blog. Despite being entirely in japanese, it's one of those blogs that is pretty interesting even with machine translation, with anecdotes and tidbits that really give an insight to the way game development was in early 90s japan.

In what is probably the saddest blog post of his, he details a few things about dino rex - how he knew it was bad, the hit detection was terrible, and how he was denied even a single month's delay to fix it in order to capitalise on the fever surrounding street fighter 2 and the introduction of Taito's upcoming F3 arcade board.

In the end, Senba delivered the game's final build and his resignation the same day. He hasn't made a game since.

Dino Rex is a tragedy through and through. Originally concieved as a Shmup, which were games Senba and his team actually knew how to make (having made the exceptional Gun Frontier and Metal Black in the prior 2 years), Taito heads demanded a fighting game following the success of street fighter 2. In like, 6 months.

It's shit.

Dino Rex is just a very good example of what not to do with a fighting game. Terrible readability, bad animation which doesnt convey windups/etc, and worst of all, controls which feel barely functional. It really ends up feeling like two dinosaurs just wailing at each other without a drip of nuance, and gameplay boils down to staying out of range and charging up your special attack because literally everything else you can do is a complete crapshoot.

It is at least, pretty cool. There's an extremely distinct style to the three games Senba lead at Taito, characterised by sprites with harsh black outlines, extreme use of parralax backgrounds and foregrounds, and use of surreal visuals - as well as a distinctive UI/font. Dino Rex's look, with its use of digitized dinos, sadly does look a bit cheap in comparison to GF/MB, but there's some bombast in watching dinosaurs throw each other into stands and cause general carnage that is caught well here. Honestly, Dino Rex isn't a bad game to watch a video of, it's just irredeemably bad to actually play. Still, it is never even close to as cool as the space-western Gun Frontier or as beautiful as the fever dream that is Metal Black. And those are actually also fun!

Mechanically, Dino Rex is probably the worst fighting game I've ever played. It's only very slightly redeemed by some neat visuals which themselves are a massive step down from the creator's previous games. And the career of one of Taito's brightest developers died for transgressions that were mostly out of his control because of it.

Dino Rex, today, is just a footnote to stories. The end of one promising development teams, one of many failed SF2 imitators, a ridiculously awful game that some extremely talented people also happened to be involved with. And that's pretty much it.

I'm going to review Senba's other games, and despite it being his last, I felt compelled to do Dino Rex first. Because this isn't the shit anyone involved with taito in the 90s deserves to be remembered by. The two games he was most involved with prior - Gun Frontier and Metal Black - are the ones that deserve the last word.