In general, dinosaurs have proven to be an attractable theme to focus on, while horror-themed games have made a strong revival in recent years, especially among independent developers. All the ingredients seem to be in place for a gaming climate ripe for a Dino Crisis remake.
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In the realm of survival-horror games, Dino Crisis 1 and 2, while generally successful, never saw quite the same stardom in both sales and enthusiasm as Capcom’s other survival-horror series, Resident Evil, which is what it is most often compared to. Given the similar gameplay and control style of the original games of both series, many fans often described Dino Crisis as being mostly similar to a Resident Evil game in terms of its overall formula, but with dinosaurs instead of zombies.
The first Dino Crisis sold 2.4 million copies on the original PlayStation, while Dino Crisis 2 slumped down to 1.19 million copies sold and did not receive quite as remarkable gaming reviews as its predecessor. While both were a success, normally a sequel should gain more growth in attracting more players, selling a higher number of copies. To compare, Resident Evil 2 sold 4.96 million on the original PlayStation, while the first game sold 2.75 million copies.
Dino Crisis 3 sold even less copies than its predecessors, at around 580,000 copies by the end of 2003, and consolidated mostly mixed and poor reviews. Dino Crisis 3 deviated from its original formula, with a more action-oriented approach to gameplay that was plagued by a very flawed camera system, repetitive environments, and a storyline very much removed from the universe of its predecessors. This threequel took place hundreds of years into the future as dinosaurs ran amok on a space ship. Suffice to say, many fans were not on board with the Dino Crisis 3’s overall concept, and Capcom has not made a game for the series since its third installment.
However, there is ample room to make the case that the time is ripe to remake the Dino Crisis series, for a few reasons. First, Resident Evil 2’s remake has been extremely successful, selling over 5 million copies already, which is more than the original Resident Evil 2’s 4.96 million copies sold on the first PlayStation.
The timeframe is important to consider in looking at these numbers, as Resident Evil 2’s remake has not even been out for a whole year. While the remake certainly brought back long time fans of the Resident Evil series, most certainly the remake also attracted new fans as well, possibly from a younger generation of gamers who never played the original.
If the original Dino Crisis was remade and turned out to be a high quality game, there is certainly potential to surpass the 2.4 million copies the original sold on PlayStation. Just as Resident Evil 2’s remake demonstrated, there is plenty of room to draw sales from new fans, and not totally depend on the fans of the old.
Though Dino Crisis may not have quite the legacy of the original Resident Evil series, people never become tired of viciously hungry dinosaurs in storytelling. This has the opportunity to attract new players who may not even be familiar with the original Dino Crisis games. Most importantly, it is not as if there is an abundance of quality dinosaur-themed action-adventure or horror games over-saturating the market, similar to the many medieval-fantasy role-play games out there, for example.
When the original Dino Crisis came out in 1999, already two years had passed since Jurassic Park’s sequel, The Lost World, was released in movie theaters, and The Lost World did not reach the level of enthusiasm and acclaim that the original film garnered. However, the current entertainment and film climate is in the midst of nostalgia for dinosaurs, as fans wait for the third Jurassic World film to come to fruition in 2021, off the heels of its two successful predecessors. It would seem that the gaming industry is in need of dinosaurs, and that there is a void to be filled.
Perhaps one of the main attractions which dinosaurs offer horror fans, and which fosters the fear-factor within people so easily, is the way in which their conceptualization more easily crosses the line from fiction to reality in ways that other types of monsters and creatures can not always achieve. After all, dinosaurs were real beings that existed and lived in our world.
If we merely imagine what it would be like if humans and dinosaurs managed to co-exist the same timeframe together, it can very much orchestrate a more vivid and horrifying picture of what may transpire within our reality, as opposed to other monsters and creatures which, for all we know, never existed at all and are just notions of the imagination.
The only element separating humans from the razor sharp teeth of a hungry T-Rex is time, and with technological advances in real world genetics research, it is more easily viable to paint believable stories of real life dinosaurs being brought back to life from the past. This is perhaps what makes dinosaurs among the most believable monstrosities in horror and fiction, and why fans will typically be strongly receptive to dinosaur themes.
There will always be a liking for dinosaurs in creating believable and fear-inducing stories for fans of science fiction and horror, and storytelling in general. And clearly, there is a current nostalgia for dinosaurs in gaming, as Battlefield 5 has previously teased the possibility of dinosaurs in the game, the creators behind Sea of Thieves originally considered using dinosaurs before pirates came to mind, and Runescape also added dinosaurs in its July update.
While the Jurassic Park universe fulfills the desires of film and dinosaur enthusiasts in the realm of films, there is presently a void within video games which a Dino Crisis is clearly in need of filling, if Capcom takes initiative. There has been a number of independent and lower budget games in recent times which enshrine dinosaurs within its core concepts and world-building, most notably ARK: Survival Evolved. None of them present an overall game design which appeals to mainstream audiences that can attract a diverse array of casual and assertive gamers from across the gaming spectrum, however.
ARK: Survival Evolved is an action-adventure online survival game, which is a very niche genre that is normally attractable to a narrow base of enthusiasts of this genre. However, the fact that such a survival game has grown to such an unexpected level, having amassed a whopping 9 million players across all its platforms, despite mixed reviews, may be a clear statement that dinosaurs are a very attractable theme in gaming. A certain segment of Ark’s players may have been attracted to the game due to its dinosaur theme, instead of online survival games, but were willing to approach a new type of game as a result.
Given ARK’s success and the nostalgia for dinosaurs in current film and games, perhaps the time is ripe to revive Dino Crisis. The original game did not utilize the pre-rendered graphics such as those that were used in the original Resident Evil games, but it can be argued that Dino Crisis needed 3D rendered environments in order to create more interactions between the dinosaurs and their environmental surroundings as the player traversed the maps.
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While pre-rendered graphics typically looked more beautiful back in the day, their inability to easily change shape or be viewed at different angles limited the versatility of their interaction with moving objects within the environment, in this case dinosaurs. Given the advancement of artificial intelligence among enemy designs in modern gaming, current technology would allow developers to establish seemingly real-life carnivores designed to make the player feel hunted and outsmarted. The design of Alien: Isolation’s creature, for example, and the way in which it traverses large environmental maps in stalking the player could be a very compelling source of inspiration.
Some game designers, such as those at Capcom, may be worried of the stigma that Dino Crisis 3 may pose, and its overall failure. On a positive note, the entire game could easily be written out of the Dino Crisis timeline or simply not be addressed at all, given that it takes place hundreds of years into the future anyway. If a remake of the first Dino Crisis game was successful and a remake of the second game followed, perhaps there would be a future for an all new Dino Crisis 3 that does not take fans into space.
The overall enthusiasm for horror video games in general in recent times also makes a clear statement. For example, Frictional Games has exclusively developed simulators geared for gaming fans that want experiences which ensnare them into uncomfortable environments and situations of anxiety-inducing immersion and dread.
As such, few monstrosities offer the believably real-life terror that dinosaurs bring to the table. It seems merely a question of when, and not if, a dinosaur-themed horror game is released at some point in the future, in regards to consumers’ tastes and current trends. The question is whether Capcom will capitalize, and if Dino Crisis will consolidate itself as the one that fills this void first.
There’s no known Dino Crisis game is in development.
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