Fan-made animated Dinosaur Planet series announced

We’ve all heard the story about Dinosaur Planet a million times, so I’ll keep it brief. Towards the end of the lifespan of the Nintendo 64, Rare (makers of Banjo-Kazooie, Goldeneye, Donkey Kong 64 and many other classics) were going to release a game called Dinosaur Planet. The game was rebranded in later stages of development with the Starfox license probably because the game would have been more recognisable and sell more units. This version is what we now know as Starfox Adventures on the Gamecube. With that out of the way, let’s get on with talking about the animated Dinosaur Planet series.

Over the years, Dinosaur Planet has suffered a similar fate to Twelve Tails or Project Dream it’s an early version of a released game that is very different to the final product. Not to mention that all three of these are made by Rare. Fans have been searching high and low for the ROMs for these games and as such they have become a sort of Holy Grail for people who want to preserve gaming history.

Animated Dinosaur Planet teaser trailer

Now that’s pretty cool isn’t it? It’s just a short clip but you can tell that there’s a lot of heart put into it. The style seems quite in line with the feel of the game so I can see this turning out well. The only issue I can see with the animation is that they seem to be cutting frames quite a bit (a typical issue with low-budget productions) so it looks a bit choppy with a strobe-like effect. If the authors can comine the style they have with the techniques used in a million Flash animations from the mid-2000’s, this can be a feast for the eyes and for our hunger for anything Dinosaur Planet-related.

Now, there has been quite a bit of talk recently regarding fan games based on Nintendo licenses recently. More specifically, it’s the remake of Metroid 2 and Pokémon Uranium. These were fan games that were based on the love and memories that people had for these franchises, and they spent countless hours building these up from scratch, only to be greeted with a Cease & Desist from Nintendo.

Now, I understand where they’re coming from with this. You need to make sure that everything that has your brand is faithful to the brand and when you have 3rd parties making decisions without consulting, it can damage the perception people have of your products.

Also, even if there isn’t any money directly involved, the argument could be made that some people who want to play a Pokémon game could get the free fan game instead of shelling out £40 on the latest game and are thus in direct competition for people’s free time. So in some sense, it can be damaging to their bottom line too.

What I’m trying to get at with all this is that there is a chance that the fan-made animated Dinosaur Planet could suffer from the same fate if it gets popular enough, since it does have characters from Nintendo/Rare/Microsoft games. Let’s hope that this one gets glossed over by the right people.

You can find out more about this by watching the video about the animated Dinosaur Planet series.

Articles across the web

Fans are planning on making an animated Dinosaur Planet series based on the unreleased game for the N64. Let's see what they have set up so far.
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