Remember the good ol’ days of gaming where you’d ask your parents for Super Mario Bros. 3, and on Christmas morning you got some educational Super Math Bros. shovelware they picked up at Walgreens instead? Yes, I’m talking about those days. But you should be thanking your parents. At least you didn’t have to submit to the horrors of what could be the worst shovelware that Nintendo allowed the sacred gold seal of approval to be graced upon it’s cover ever: Color a Dinosaur.
The game is exactly like it says; you color dinosaurs. That’s it. They literally thought a coloring book on your TV would be a smash hit. But that’s not even the worst part. You have to see the game in motion to really grasp the insane mentality that these so called “game” developers had when creating this monstrosity.
As soon as you push that power button, all hope for humanity is lost and replaced by the most ridiculous sounding names I’ve ever had the pleasure to read.
And then we come to the Title Screen. Greeting us is the worst colored dinosaur in the universe, accompanied by the game’s title with what apparently appears to be pencils behind it….I think.
Those are not pencils.
At this point, my still 5 year-old brain sneered at this abnormality to man, picked it’s nose and ate it’s contents, and said with arrogant pride “I could do better than that!” We all could my fat, shorter version of myself. And just look at all our choices of dinosaurs to draw obscene genitals on:
Gotta’ catch em’ all!
Let’s start with the Stegosaurus to begin our onslaught towards…coloring things or something.
Um…I’m not a dinosuar expert, but don’t Stegosaur spikes normally lop side like this?
”No, no your artwork is totes fine. Have some more cocaine?”
But it’ll probably be better colored in. Let’s try the first color:
Artsy?
Wow, that’s…pretty? It’s totally fine, we can just switch back to white…
Pixel filling pastels, what is this sorcery?!
I’m not even freeze framing that. It’s literally what happens when you apply a new color. It takes the game a full three to five seconds for it to delete an old color and replacing it, instead of, you know, pasting over the previous color? I know this is made in 8-bit, but come on, what is this s***? And at least give us more colors to choose from other than orange, light blue, white, and…polka dots and stripes.
Speaking of which, this is what happens when you paste polka dots over polka dots:
MIND = BLOWN
Holy s***, pasting polka dots over polka dots gives you polka dots shaped like a diamond! What style! It’s like an Easter egg just waiting to be discovered!
But why stop now? There’s still a whooping five (FIVE!) unbelievably textured patterns to experiment with!
Pictured: fun?
I guess it should be said now that pressing the Start button automatically takes you to the dinosaur select screen, so if you spent a good four minutes of your time painstakingly perfecting your polka dot diamonds or something, it’s best not to press that button. In fact, don’t press it at all; the game never saves your progress. That’s right kids, you can NEVER save your creations. Just have the TV on 24/7 instead if you want to share it with your family and “friends”.
It might seem that we’ve covered all we could about Color a Dinosaur, but we’re not done yet! Yes, by pressing Select you’ll gain access to even more color options!
I lied, it just makes your dinosaur flash and blink for some reason.
If this wasn’t picked for Game of the Year in ’93 we failed as a human race.
But wait…what’s this?! If you press Select again you get:
Also a message pops up saying “You’re Adopted!”, because at this point your childhood sucks.
Press Select and surprise, it starts blinking. Press it again and you get another one way trip to LCD world.
Scales were added for a more emotional art piece.
After another set of obnoxious blinking, we come to the last set of “color palettes” inspired not by Lite Brite, but most likely more drugs.
This whole game is literally a pre-paid DLC pack for marihuana.
Okay, I’m now entirely convinced that the making of this game revolved around putting unfortunate named color blind people together in a room with a table containing computers, dinosaur coloring books, and cocaine, and then locking the door until they created a “video game” under half an hour. I imagine these people grew up with only five Crayola crayons, and to curse the world for their misfortunate they created this video game to ruin maybe one kid‘s birthday or something. I can’t think of any sane reason why this game even exists.
But enough about that, let’s just have fun finishing up our Stego pal!
Just as soon as the background gets done loading.
Attempting to color in the eyebrows or pupils seemed to do nothing even with the bold colors, but at least eye color shows up (kinda?). Now to add the seizure inducing final coats aaaaaaaaaaand you’ve just experienced the entire game in two minutes.
These aren’t tears of sorrow- these are tears of joy.
But think of the amazing art techniques you’ve learned in that amount of time you can put into practice and perfect down the road! You could become an aspiring art student and pursue a sound career in dinosaur coloring street art! You’re ready for the big shot connect-the-dots and color-by-numbers my friend.
But…le Gasp! We just did only one out of the sixteen dinosaurs!!!! That’s ten more minutes of pure fun content!!!!!!
Why, look at those unfortunate looking f***s! With Color a Dinosaur you can draw such extinct reptiles including the left footed Velociraptor:
Maybe?
The buck toothed HumpbackIdontgiveaflyingcrapasuarus:
”I hate all of you.”
The high on crack Iapproveofeverythingasuarus:
”Waaaay cooool maaaaan.”
The also high on crack Dogondo:
This one likes smoke.
The post-crack addict Artistdrawsawfultailsondinosaurus:
Is it’s face melting?
Pregnant JarJarBanksasuarus:
At this point, evolution just gave up.
The EverstaringeyesBarneyasaurass Rex:
At this point I think we can all agree to set it on fire.
And the Whateverthef***thisthingisasuarus:
Ducky?
We sadly only covered nine of the frightful dinosaurs Color a Dinosaur has to offer. If you want to try them all out for yourself or maybe give it as a gift for one of your cousin’s birthday then….don’t, just don’t. Buy them a real dinosaur coloring book. Hell, buy him/her 50 dinosaur coloring books. You could go to a store and not find a worse deal than Color a Dinosaur. And for the love of Pete, get him/her some Crayola crayons and not what Color a Dinosaur offers as “colors“. Your cousin might’ve wanted a copy of Super Mario Bros. 3 back then and will probably toss your present aside at first glance, but remember, you’ve done a great deed for letting this game rot on store shelves. Maybe you should go thank your parents for buying you Bubsy: Close Encounters of the Fur Kind and Donkey Kong Jr. Math; because it could’ve been so, so much worse.
Verdict: Color a Dinosaur not only fails to deliver any form of stimulating coloring book simulation, but also prohibits drawing of obscene genitals in any form or size. Bottom Tier Awful.
What I’d rate it then: -3.5/10
DISCLAIMER: N5S does not in any way glorify dinosaurs taking drugs.
