8- Bit History - Episode 2 - Turok The Dinosaur Hunter

Turok The Dinosaur Hunter: Origins and development story!

Video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rgHj-3Nzy-Y&t=106s

By: Jose R Cordero Ladner (Joey 6'1'')

Turok The Dinosaur Hunter is one of those games that impressed all of us when it came out. And for an excellent reason. Not only is it a delight to play, but it has the uniqueness, distinct visual appeal, and features that make it so interesting and rewarding right off the bat. This is a very goodgame and it manages to easily integrate all the features that you would want to have from a dinosaur game!

The beginnings

The character of Turok was initially a part of the comics published by Dell Comics and Western Publishing. He appeared in one of their comics in 1954. Valiant Comics soon ended up revamping the series, and they brought the character back in 1993, also in comic format. But as you can imagine, this was set to become a game, and that’s what made it so unique, to begin with.

Acclaim Entertainment ended up purchasing Valiant in 1994, and they also acquired Iguana Entertainment, a developer, a year later. Acclaim was focused on creating great content and video games based on comic books. So, it was only a matter of time when Turok was announced to be released rather soon. The announcement took place in August 1994,and the game was set to be an exclusive for the Ultra 64 console, which ended up being called the Nintendo 64 in the end.

What made the game distinct was the fact that they wanted to bring in the full array of powers and stories from the comic books inside Turok The Dinosaur Hunter. And that was hard to pull off, especially with the technology at that time.

Development

The development process for Turok The Dinosaur Hunter started in 1996. At its core, the game was based on the comic book, but Iguana Entertainment went ahead and tried to make the game a lot more action oriented. This was a great idea and one that would ultimately bring in front a multitude of nice ideas.

At first, Turok The Dinosaur Hunter was supposed to be a side scroller. However, the idea did wear off very fast, as the developers knew that there were too many of those already. They did want to create something in third person similar to Tomb Raider and Super Mario 64, but in the end, they decided to go for a first person shooter. It was the only way to showcase the power of the Nintendo 64, so opting for an FPS was the right pick.

Most of the developers working at Iguana at that time were inexperienced, and that did show. Even if they have complete support from Acclaim, it was clear that the gameplay ideas weren’t 100% going to stick, so trying to find another approach.

Since there was a lot of violence in Turok The Dinosaur Hunter, this game was pushing the limits of that console, but Nintendo didn’t want to check the console nor did they want to focus on anything for the time being. But once Iguana started to talk with them. Nintendo was supportive in the end. However, Iguana still had to create all their development tools, and that was certainly very time-consuming in the end.

The primary challenge during the Turok The Dinosaur Hunter development was the fit the game on the 8 MB cartridge. The game was larger than that. So they had to find some creative ways to deal with that sort of problem. They ended up reducing the music quality, and they also compressed everything.

Yes, some specific measures and issues weren't exactly helpful for the development team. Yet despite that, they did use particle systems, real-timelighting, and many other features., They even used the motion capture studio at Acclaim tomake the humanoid characters more convincing and entertaining.

The problem they encountered was that Acclaim had some major financial issues later during the game’s development. Even if they were publishing lots of 16-bit games, they did want to focus on something else other than SNES and Genesis. People were not ready, and obviously this did come as quite the shocker.

And while the game development process ran well, albeit, with its challenges, the reality is that the marketing for it ended up being extremely hard to do.In fact, Turok The Dinosaur Hunter was the major hope that Acclaim had at that time, and a lot of pressure was on the development team to deliver. Based on the cash flow issues, the marketing was weak.

In fact, Acclaim relied mostly on the sales of Magic: The Gathering: Battlemage. The lack of a good marketing was indeed a problem. And then you had a very high price for Turok The Dinosaur Hunter, which was $79.99 in the US, around 130 dollars in Australia and 70 pounds in the UK. Obviously, the addition of a Mature rating also meant that the sales would not be good, simply because parents would not get this for kids.

The game was initially set to appear in 1996, but they pushed the release date to January. As soon as the title started to get close to its release, presales started to show that Turok The Dinosaur Hunter did entice a lot of people and people were very positive about the idea of a dinosaur hunting game. In fact, they announced a sequel that was set to come later in 1997 as well.

Closing thoughts

Thankfully, the reality is that Turok The Dinosaur Hunter was and still is one of the best dinosaur hunting games, and it was remastered so new generations can play it too. But the legacy of Turok The Dinosaur Hunterstill remains, and it shows that even a very violent game can still have a chance on the market. It all comes down to the way you approach it and howopen your audience is about things. It’s certainly one of the most interesting things to note is that the new concept and incredible graphics managed to make the game a success and a cult classic. In fact, the game even received a sequel, and a few other games inspired by it appeared too, a legacy of its success!