Dinosaur Hunting ~The Lost Continent~ (X Box)

 Something that's interesting about Japan-only X Box exclusives is that the console sold incredibly poorly in Japan, meaning that these games must have been played by very few people before the advent of emulation. Werider still is that there are at least two Japan only games for which exist fully translated English versions that never got released: this game (also known as Dinosaur Hunting: Ushinawareta Daichi), and Rent A Hero. The case of Dinosaur Hunting is even stranger, since it really feels like a precursor to all of those games from the PS3/360 era, wherein Japanese developers tried to make games specifically to appeal to stereotypical western "ball and gun" players.

 

As you might have guess from the title, it's a third person shooter in which you hunt dinosaurs. But it's more interesting than that! Firstly, it can join Gungage and Cosmowarrior Zero in the ranks of third person shooters that don't use the generic twin stick controls. Though you do move your character with the left stick and the camera with the right, moving the camera and aiming aren't the same thing. You have three weapons: a pistol, a rifle (with scope, of course), and a shotgun, and all three work differently. The pistol will autoaim at any dinosaur in range, the rifle can only be shot through the scope, putting you into a first person view where you can aim, but not move, and the shotgun will just blast straight in front of your character when fired.

 

Adding to the idiosyncracies of the game is the fact that though you're hunting dinosaurs, you're only knocking them out, not killing them. At first glance, this seems like a mere aesthetic change, but it does tie into one of the game's more unique mechanics. Because you are actually hunting, and not just going to war with the dinosaurs, and each stage has some specific dinosaurs for you to find, which you do by following footprints and other clues. Furthermore, the standard ammo for your three guns is expensive, so in your investigations, if you find things like corpses, eggs, or poo, you and have a look at them to determine the perfect formula (mixed from unnamed red, green, and blue chemicals in different ratios) to create darts specifically to knock out a certain species. Not only do these special dart one-shot their targets, but they also don't use up any of your expensive regular ammo. 

 

In some cases, though, it does mean that if you haven't found the clues you need, then some of the tougher, more aggressive dinosaurs can be incredibly difficult to take down. Especially once you're a few stages in, and you encounter dinosaurs that gang up on you to trample you to death, or that inexplicably have the ability to turn invisible. But in general, I think the devs did a great job of elevating this above what could so easily have been an incredibly generic shooting game, but with dinosaurs. Even the setting has had more thought put into it than was really necessary: in the year 1910, an area in South America is found where dinosaurs still live, but an impending volcanic eruption threatens them. A group of elite hunters from around the world is sent in to capture and rescue as many of them as possible.

 

This is a really enjoyable, unique game, which makes even morre of a shame that so few people have ever played it. Adding to the tragedy of the cancellation of its western release is that it appears to have been the final game put out by developer Scarab. Obviously, this is just speculation, but it seems like this was a mid-budget game, and only being released on one console, and only in a country where that console had a tiny userbase seems like it can't have made much money back, and maybe the lack of a global release killed the company? Anyway, should you have the means to emulate X Box games, you should definitely seek out the leaked English version and give it a try. All the extra complications of tracking and making special ammo make hunting down big dinosaurs very satisfying.