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Fun Club Restoration of Dinosaur Planet has really come far.

Mer.Saloon

Mer.Saloon

Chain Chomp
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This is just me marvelling at how far the Dinosaur Planet community has come in restoring the game to something approaching playability ever since the build leaked online. They got music working correctly, cutscenes, and levels are actually connected. I remember when most of the transitions were in an utterly broken state.

I mean, it isn't perfect, but this is the closest we'll probably get to seeing Dinosaur planet in a "complete" and working state as it was originally meant to be.

This game may have been coming too late in the N64 life, but damn it really does look so ambitious for the system.
 
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Weiss said:
Man, a complete Dinosaur Planet would be incredible.
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Watching it, yeah. These day and night transitions are honestly incredible. Like, the color palette and seamless level transitions are something that floored me with Jak and Daxter but this is on inferior hardware.

The models are great, and full voice acting all around even for random NPCs? That's nuts.
 
Thanks for sharing the update. I lived and breathed Rareware back in the day and Dinosaur Planet looked like their magnum opus on the 64. The change to include Fox really bummed me out. I'm excited to see what this team can do. I hope they can patch together something I can finally play. I'll even give SFA a shot one of these days (maybe).
 
Brannigan said:
Thanks for sharing the update. I lived and breathed Rareware back in the day and Dinosaur Planet looked like their magnum opus on the 64. The change to include Fox really bummed me out. I'm excited to see what this team can do. I hope they can patch together something I can finally play. I'll even give SFA a shot one of these days (maybe).
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SFA isn't a bad game. Albeit anemic in places due to it being stitched from the OG dinosaur planet and the new hardware recquiring a lot of design changes, and the looming buyout. But it does try it's best to honor the spirit of the original.

I'm sure it would have been better had Rare not been shortly being bought out. But alas.
 
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I'll have to give this a watch later, but what incredible work by the community.

Probably will just end up inspiring me to replay StarFox Adventures, but damn if it doesn't look pretty all these years later
 
It's nuts how far the N64 build actually got. The early 3D look helps give adventure games a sense of mystery and intrigue and Rare was always pushing the N64 to its limit. It's easy to talk about the unfulfilled potential of beta games as being would-be masterpieces, but hopefully this restoration gives us some idea.
 
Mekanos said:
It's nuts how far the N64 build actually got. The early 3D look helps give adventure games a sense of mystery and intrigue and Rare was always pushing the N64 to its limit. It's easy to talk about the unfulfilled potential of beta games as being would-be masterpieces, but hopefully this restoration gives us some idea.
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I gotta say for the system, this is more impressive than the GCN game was. Like yeah, the Gamecube game was good, but it's clearly got stuff missing. And by the time it came out it wasn't nearly as impressive as this would have been. This is approaching Dreamcast quality.

And compared to something like Starfox 2, it is not much worse framerate in the modern context. At least not worse than your average N64 game.
 
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I used to love just visiting the old Rareware website and looking at the screenshots and stuff Rare was posting on there. It was so impressive. It’s such a shame what it became. Not that I hate SFA or anything as it’s still a good game and actually holds up well enough (played it again a couple of years ago). But DP in its original form would have been so much better!

Glad and impressed by the work being put into this!
 
I'm not a big fan of Star Fox Adventures. I replayed it a couple of years ago and much of it felt quite dull. So I wonder if the original Dinosaur Planet would make me feel the same or if it was different enough to be a better product.

My bet is on the latter, because the Rare from those days always did it for me. Even Donkey Kong 64 and Banjo-Tooie, which are often accused of being bloated, are nigh masterpieces in my book.

Jet Force Gemini is the only one of the N64 games I'm not a big fan of, and that's just because of the ridiculous requirements it has for unlocking the final boss. Other than that, it's great.

Anyway, awesome job by all of those involved in this restoration! It's a sight to behold.
 
Congrats to all the people involved who are working on this project and trying to bring what could have been a swan song game for the N64 back to life!
 
This really shows how far ahead of the game rare was when it came to pushing n64 visuals. Even on the gamecube, starfox adventure still looks pretty great with good fur detail, pretty detailed texture work for the time, and awesome water. I’d argue that nuts and bolts on the xbox 360 is also similarly technically accomplished. It’s kind of a shame they are a sea of thieves factory now and possibly maybe everwild ( but probably not at this point)
 
Beanstar40 said:
This really shows how far ahead of the game rare was when it came to pushing n64 visuals. Even on the gamecube, starfox adventure still looks pretty great with good fur detail, pretty detailed texture work for the time, and awesome water. I’d argue that nuts and bolts on the xbox 360 is also similarly technically accomplished. It’s kind of a shame they are a sea of thieves factory now and possibly maybe everwild ( but probably not at this point)
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Rare has always pushed the boundaries of every system they’ve ever worked on. The DKC trilogy and KI on SNES, Conker and PD on N64, SFA on GameCube, Conker on Xbox, Banjo on 360, the insane water in Sea of Thieves. Always impressed by what they can accomplish and no doubt DP would have been just as great. I remember it going to be the first—and only game I believe, correct me if I’m wrong on any of this—on the N64 that would have hosted a 512MB sized cartridge!

Everwild is still fine.
 
Rareware said:
Rare has always pushed the boundaries of every system they’ve ever worked on. The DKC trilogy and KI on SNES, Conker and PD on N64, SFA on GameCube, Conker on Xbox, Banjo on 360, the insane water in Sea of Thieves. Always impressed by what they can accomplish and no doubt DP would have been just as great. I remember it going to be the first—and only game I believe, correct me if I’m wrong on any of this—on the N64 that would have hosted a 512MB sized cartridge!

Everwild is still fine.
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I can't imagine how much that would have cost had it been finished.
 
The restoration discord team is very nice and is doing an amazing work.

As a reminder, a mega ton of content was removed in StarFox Adventures
Drakkor was supposed to have dialog, motivations. The funny thing is that he wasn't the real final boss, after him the player would have to see the consequences of not letting him destroy the Krazoa since they unveiled their true nature (and were pretty much everything Drakkor said ; he was right from the start).

Also one of the main character DIES. The data even have dialog from what seems to be a good and a bad ending.

This game could've been insane.
 
Mekanos said:
It's nuts how far the N64 build actually got. The early 3D look helps give adventure games a sense of mystery and intrigue and Rare was always pushing the N64 to its limit. It's easy to talk about the unfulfilled potential of beta games as being would-be masterpieces, but hopefully this restoration gives us some idea.
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I played it back when it first leaked. Brokenness aside, I got the sense that they had built the world and story first but hadn't really ever nailed down what the gameplay was going to be very well. One of the most immediately noticeable things was that Dinosaur Planet had this attack/defense dynamic where instead of having a shield like in OoT there was a dodge button, but it didn't work super well because of how predictive you had to be since you spent so long locked into your attack animations. And then this idea is completely abandoned in Star Fox Adventures and you just button mash and can use the c-stick to do cool twirl animations if you want. They were experimenting at this point, but in the end they bunted to just get it out. That applies to things like the puzzles as well.

If you put it back together just according to what was planned at the time, it would be better and much more complete than Star Fox Adventures, but still carried entirely by its presentation. Discovery Falls was one of the more finished areas, and I remember it being visually impressive with great music, but marred by everything you do in it being very very tedious.

Combined with how late it would have released, I definitely see Dinosaur Planet as a relatively obscure cult classic if it had been finished. One of the less played Rare games on the system, but one that constantly comes up in discussions of the most graphically impressive N64 games years later. Like Conker's Bad Fur Day but without the notoriety that garnered for its M rating. My favorite detail is how they seamlessly load Cloudrunner Fortress by having a texture over the entrance that's just a low res still of the area ahead, and they hide this texture being replaced by the real thing when you get closer by swapping it out during a lightning flash.
 
That's why I miss what Rare was so much. The scope, the ambition are just insane for a N64 project. Somehow they always pushed to an unexpected degree the limit of the hardware they had.
 
Stilt Village said:
I played it back when it first leaked. Brokenness aside, I got the sense that they had built the world and story first but hadn't really ever nailed down what the gameplay was going to be very well. One of the most immediately noticeable things was that Dinosaur Planet had this attack/defense dynamic where instead of having a shield like in OoT there was a dodge button, but it didn't work super well because of how predictive you had to be since you spent so long locked into your attack animations. And then this idea is completely abandoned in Star Fox Adventures and you just button mash and can use the c-stick to do cool twirl animations if you want. They were experimenting at this point, but in the end they bunted to just get it out. That applies to things like the puzzles as well.

If you put it back together just according to what was planned at the time, it would be better and much more complete than Star Fox Adventures, but still carried entirely by its presentation. Discovery Falls was one of the more finished areas, and I remember it being visually impressive with great music, but marred by everything you do in it being very very tedious.

Combined with how late it would have released, I definitely see Dinosaur Planet as a relatively obscure cult classic if it had been finished. One of the less played Rare games on the system, but one that constantly comes up in discussions of the most graphically impressive N64 games years later. Like Conker's Bad Fur Day but without the notoriety that garnered for its M rating. My favorite detail is how they seamlessly load Cloudrunner Fortress by having a texture over the entrance that's just a low res still of the area ahead, and they hide this texture being replaced by the real thing when you get closer by swapping it out during a lightning flash.
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This sums up a lot of what DP could have been, an absolute cult classic that likely would have a flip flop reputation for years to come. And that's even if they managed to make their frankenstein's Fox McCloud the main character.

But damn if that presentation really isn't something, especially at this stage where it is stable.
 
I love Star Fox Adventures as it is, I truly do; I wouldn't trade it for anything else and I'm glad how it expanded the Star Fox universe.

But I would be lying if I said it's not exciting to seeing Dinosaur Planet 64 like this as an alternative universe vision. I hope it gets completed so it can be played from start to finish.
 
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Rareware said:
Always impressed by what they can accomplish and no doubt DP would have been just as great. I remember it going to be the first—and only game I believe, correct me if I’m wrong on any of this—on the N64 that would have hosted a 512MB sized cartridge!

Everwild is still fine.
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Assuming your MB means megabit here, I remembered Resident Evil 2 N64 used such a cart, and Google is telling me Conker did as well.
 
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