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Turok: Dinosaur Hunter

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Turok: Dinosaur Hunter
North American box art
North American N64 box art
Developer(s)Iguana Entertainment
Publisher(s)Acclaim Entertainment
Platform(s)Nintendo 64, Microsoft Windows
ReleaseNintendo 64:
Windows:
Genre(s)First-person shooter
Mode(s)Single-player

Turok: Dinosaur Hunter is a first-person shooter video game developed by Iguana Entertainment and published by Acclaim for the Nintendo 64 and personal computer platforms. It was released on March 4 1997 in North America and Europe and March 28 in Japan. Turok is an adaptation of the Acclaim Comics comic book series of the same name. The player controls a Native American warrior, Turok, who must stop the evil Campaigner from conquering the universe with an ancient and powerful weapon.

Turok was Acclaim's first exclusive title for the Nintendo 64 and was part of a strategy to develop games internally and license merchandise; Acclaim acquired the rights to Turok when it purchased Acclaim Comics (né Valiant) in 1994. Suffering from cash flow problems and falling sales, Turok became Acclaim's best hope for a financial turnaround. Iguana pushed the N64's graphics capabilities to its limits, and were forced to compress or cut elements to fit the game on its 8 megabyte cartridge. Bugs delayed the game's release from holiday 1996 to 1997.

Critical reception of Turok was highly positive. Becoming one of the most popular games for the console on release, Turok won praise for its graphics and evolution of the genre. Complaints centered on graphical slowdowns caused by multiple enemies appearing on the screen and occasionally awkward controls. The game sold 1.5 million copies and boosted sales of the N64. Turok founded a video game franchise that currently includes six sequels.

Gameplay

A dinosaur attacks the player character who is armed with a shotgun. Distance fog limits visibility to a small radius around the player.

Turok: Dinosaur Hunter is a shooter game, with gameplay taking place from a first-person perspective. The 3D computer graphics and style of play combine elements of the run-and-gun computer game Doom[4] with exploration mechanics of Tomb Raider.[5] Players begin the game in a central hub level, which contains portals to seven other stages. Keys, found on all the levels, enable access to the other stages of the game. When enough keys have been inserted into the lock mechanisms of a hub portal, the level is unlocked. Players explore the large, typically jungle-based levels by jumping, swimming, climbing, crawling, and running.[6]

The player's main objective is to find pieces of a relic known as the Chronoscepter, one on each level. In exploring the levels the player must fight various enemies such as poachers, gunmen, indigenous warriors, dinosaurs, demons, and insects.[6] Turok features 14 weapons, ranging from a knife and bow to high tech weaponry. All weapons save the knife require ammunition, which is dropped by dead enemies or else picked up in the levels.[7] Because items dropped by fallen enemies rapidly disappear, players must engage foes in close quarters.[8]

The player character's health is shown as a number at the bottom of the screen. When the player is at full health, the meter reads 100, while dropping to 0 subtracts one life. Gathering "spiritual points" scattered across the levels increases the player's life count by one for every 100 points accumulated.[6] Players restore their health by picking up powerups, which can increase their health above full. Players may also gain health points by shooting deer or non-threatening wildlife.[5]

Plot

The player assumes control of Turok, a Native American[9] time-traveling warrior. The mantle of Turok is passed down every generation to the eldest male in the Fireseed family. Each Turok is charged with protecting the barrier between Earth and the Lost Land,[7] a primitive world where time has no meaning.[10] The Lost Land is inhabited by a variety of creatures, from dinosaurs to aliens.[11] An evil overlord known as the Campaigner seeks an ancient artifact known as the Chronoscepter, a weapon so powerful that it was broken into pieces to prevent it from falling into the wrong hands. The Campaigner plans on using a focusing array to magnify the Chronoscepter's power, destroying the barriers that separate the ages of time and rule the universe. Turok vows to find the Chronoscepter's eight pieces and prevent the Campaigner's schemes.[12]

Development

Turok was the first video game for Nintendo's N64 to be developed by a third party.[13]

Turok originally appeared in comics from Western Publishing and Dell Comics in December 1954.[14] Valiant Comics revived the series and published the first issue of their Turok series in 1993. Video game publisher Acclaim Entertainment bought Valiant for $65 million in 1994[10] and acquired developer Iguana Entertainment for $5 million plus stock a year later,[15] part of a strategy to develop games in-house and make money licensing characters in different entertainment media.[16] Turok was announced in August 1994 as an exclusive title for Nintendo's planned "Ultra 64" console, which would eventually be called the Nintendo 64 or N64.[17]

Development of Turok commenced in 1995. While loosely based on the comic book, Iguana made the game much more action-oriented. In early discussions about the project the developers decided that a typical side-scrolling presentation had become tired. Iguana considered a third-person perspective similar to Super Mario 64 and Tomb Raider, but decided to make the game a [[first-person shooter] instead. According to project manager David Dinstbier, the first-person perspective was a natural way to showcase the 3D power of the N64.[18]

The N64 platform had superior processing capabilities compared to most personal computers available at the time, but also came with challenges. "The [N64] is capable of doing a lot of stuff," Dinstbier said. "If you want to handle fancy particle lighting, and transparency effects, and you want to throw around huge amounts of math [...] or geomtery onscreen, it's got the processing power to do that, and yes it's a fantastic machine. However, calling it a developer's dream kinda gives you the impression that it's easy to crank out a game like Turok, and it's definitely not." While Nintendo was supportive, Iguana had to produce all its game development tools internally. Fitting the game on its 8 MB cartridge was difficult; ultimately, Iguana had to compress everything and reduce the quality of the music to meet size requirements. Despite system constraints the developers were interested in producing the best-looking video game for the system:[18] the game used real-time lighting effects and particle systems for added realism.[7]

At the time, Acclaim Entertainment was in financial jeopardy. The company's sales suffered as it was slow to migrate from older game systems like the Sega Genesis and Super Nintendo Entertainment System to next-generation platforms. The company lost $222 million in the 1996 fiscal year due to sales falling to $162 million compared to $567 million the previous year;[16] in the first quarter of fiscal 1997, the company lost a further $19 million. The company laid off 100 of its 950 workers since March 1996 and its stock had dropped from a high of $13.875 a share to as low as $3.[19] Turok, Acclaim's first N64 title, became the company's best hope of a turnaround, as there were only ten N64 games on the market,[20] and Turok was the only shooter.[8] Alex. Brown Inc analysts figured that selling one million copies of Turok could bring Acclaim as much as $45 million.[20] Due to cash flow issues, much of the money planned for marketing Turok was contingent on strong sales of Magic: The Gathering: BattleMage.[21] Endangering Turok's sales was its high price—$79.99 in the US, £70 in the UK, and $129.95 in Australia[10][11][22]—and Entertainment Software Rating Board's "mature" rating, which suggested lower sales as parents would not buy the game for their children.[20]

Originally slated for a September 30 1996 release in North America,[23] the game was intially delayed to January 1997. Acclaim explained that the game had not reached the desired quality level; Nintendo maintained that the delay was to "add more depth to the gameplay."[24] According to The New York Times, the delay stemmed from computer bugs in the program.[19] Acclaim heavily marketed Turok on the covers of video-gaming magazines and in television commercials for the N64.[21] Acclaim gave media outlets such as The Mirror customized Turok-branded N64s to give away.[25] Responding to positive pre-orders and advance sales of Turok, Acclaim announced on January 2 1997 that a sequel, tentatively titled Turok: Dinosaur Hunter 2, would be released in late 1997.[26] Acclaim declared the March 4 release date of the game "Turok Tuesday", reporting that pre-sales at Toys "R" Us had exceeded expectations.[1] Acclaim stock increased in anticipation before the game's release, up $0.62 to $5.94.[16]

Reception

Turok was a critical and commercial success, earning rave reviews from gaming magazines[27] and becoming the most popular title for the N64 in the months following its release.[11] On the aggregate review web sites Metacritic and Game Rankings, the N64 version of Turok has an 85% and 86.6% rating, respectively, each figure based on scores from thirteen contemporary and recent reviews.[28][29]

Turok was often called a "Doom clone" for its similarity to the id Software title. Douglass Perry of the multimedia website IGN compared Turok favorably to Doom, saying that the title distinguished itself from other clones by allowing a level of 3D movement not possible in its predecessor.[6] The Australian's Steve Polak wrote that while Turok was highly derivative, the game was evidence of the evolution of the genre, offering more graphics and gameplay options.[30] Video game magazine Edge said that Turok contradicted the prevailing notion at the time that only Nintendo could create superior games for the console.[31] In contrast William Burrill of The Toronto Star wrote that Turok offered nothing new if players had tried a "first-person action blaster" before.[32] Speaking to Shacknews in 2007, Propaganda Games's Josh Holmes said that while GoldenEye 007 is commonly considered the standard-setting console shooter, Turok pioneered the console shooter first by deviating from the "corridor crawler Doom [clones]" that were the standard until then and offering open environments.[33]

Reviewers found that Turok's controls generally worked well. Perry noted that while many players would not intially like using the N64's analog stick for weapon movement, they would eventually become adept at the control scheme.[6] Polak wrote that the joystick let players aim with a remarkable amount of precision.[30] George Mannes of The Daily News found the controls to be easy to learn and simple to keep track of in comparison to PC shooters, but said the joystick control could be disorienting: "the only problem is when you look up in the air and make the slightest twitch to the left or the right, you can end up like a tourist staring up at the Empire State Building and whirling like a dervish," he wrote.[8] Reviewers found that the game's included tutorial helped players adapt to the controls.[9][11][8]

Critics lauded Turok's graphics; while giving the rest of the game a tepid review Burrill rated the visuals highly.[32] Polak said that the game proved the supremacy of the N64's graphics in the console market.[30] Translucent water, destructible trees and lens flares were among the graphical details praised by reviewers.[10][31][34][35] The Washington Post's Tom Ham said that "equally impressive" as the environmental detail were the "true-to-life" animations; "blow away a baddie and he'll grab his throat, blood splatting, and then fall to the ground, still convulsing," Ham wrote. "How can you put a price on that?"[36] The level of gore and blood in the game lead reviewers such as The Times's Tim Wapshott and The Washington Times's Joseph Szadkowski to caution against letting children play the game.[10][11] GameSpot's Jeff Gerstmann noted that the graphics came at a price; if more than a few enemies appeared on screen at the same time, the game could slow. Gerstmann wrote that the distance fog used to reduce the slowdown was a "neat effect" as enemies would appear out of the mist "fangs first", although it masked the N64's limitations.[37] Perry commented that the inability to look into the distance forced players to rely on the game map.[6]

Worldwide sales of Dinosaur Hunter surpassed $60 million in late June 1997.[38] The game also held the top spot for video game rentals for seven weeks consecutively.[38] Acclaim re-issued the game for the 1997 holiday season due to its sales potential for the increased N64 player base.[39] Turok was later named a Nintendo "Player's Choice" title in 1998—the only third-party N64 game to be featured at the time,[40] and ultimately sold about 1.5 million units.[41] In addition to Turok 2, the Turok franchise includes six other games: Turok: Battle of the Bionosaurs (1997), Turok: Rage Wars (1999), Turok 3: Shadow of Oblivion (2000), Turok: Evolution (2003), and Turok (2008).

References

  1. ^ a b c Staff (1997-02-03). "Acclaim Announces Turok Tuesday; Acclaim launces its PR campaign with news of Turok:Dinosaur Hunter's upcoming arrival". IGN. Retrieved 2009-06-07.
  2. ^ Staff (1997-06-16). "Turok Goes to the Top Spot". GameSpot. Retrieved 2008-12-25.
  3. ^ Soete, Tim (1997-12-23). "Turok: Dinosaur Hunter Review (PC)". GameSpot. Retrieved 2009-08-14.
  4. ^ Constantides, Alex (2001-08-15). "Turok: Dinosaur Hunter; Get medieval on some prehistoric ass". Computer and Video Games. Retrieved 2009-08-05.
  5. ^ a b Atwood, Brett (1997-03-22). "Reviews and Previews: Turok Dinosaur Hunter". Billboard. 109 (12): 83.
  6. ^ a b c d e f Doug Perry (1997-03-11). "Turok: Dinosaur Hunter Review". IGN. Retrieved 2007-11-10.
  7. ^ a b c Iguana Entertainment (1996). "Weapons and ammunition". Turok: Dinosaur Hunter manual. United States: Acclaim Entertainment. p. 12-14. Cite error: The named reference "instruction manual-making of" was defined multiple times with different content (see the help page).
  8. ^ a b c d Mannes, George (1997-03-09). "Lost for new games? Hunt this down". Daily News. p. 38.
  9. ^ a b Hellaby, David (1997-04-21). "On the trail of the dinosaur". The Daily Telegraph. p. 65.
  10. ^ a b c d e Szadkowski, Joseph (1997-03-22). "Plugging into comic world". The Washington Times. p. B4.
  11. ^ a b c d e Wapshott, Tim (1997-06-07). "Computer games and pastimes". The Times. {{cite news}}: Cite has empty unknown parameter: |1= (help)
  12. ^ Iguana Entertainment (1996). "Introduction". Turok: Dinosaur Hunter manual. United States: Acclaim Entertainment. p. 4.
  13. ^ Polak, Steve (1997-03-08). "Nintendo's New Offensive". The Weekend Australian. p. S05.
  14. ^ Chan, Daniel (1994-12-30). "Indian Heroes". New Straits Times. p. 17.
  15. ^ Rogers, Dan Lee (2004-03-03). "The End Game: How Top Developers Sold Their Studios - Part One". Gamasutra. Retrieved 2009-08-04.
  16. ^ a b c Mannes, George (1997-03-04). "Seeking acclaim from game". Daily News. p. 45.
  17. ^ Brandt, Richard (1994-08-29). "Is Nintendo a street fighter now?". Business Week. Retrieved 2009-08-05.
  18. ^ a b Staff (1997-01-15). "Interview with the Creator of Turok". IGN. Retrieved 2009-02-18.
  19. ^ a b Goodfellow, Kris (1997-03-03). "For Acclaim, the road back is rocky". The New York Times. p. D5. Retrieved 2009-08-05.
  20. ^ a b c Gross, Neil (1997-03-03). "Can dinosaurs save Acclaim?". Business Week. p. 44. Retrieved 2009-08-03.
  21. ^ a b Kirkpatrick, David (1997-01-15). "Acclaim Entertainment Posts Results Far Below Expectations". The Wall Street Journal. Retrieved 2009-08-06.
  22. ^ Staff (1997-03-17). "Super Mario setting the pace for N64". The Daily Telegraph. p. 65.
  23. ^ Szadkowski, Joseph (1996-06-01). "Smell of money". The Washington Times. p. B4.
  24. ^ IGN Staff (1996). "Turok Delayed Until January". IGN. Retrieved 2006-11-03.
  25. ^ Parker, Fiona; David Hancock (1997-03-08). "Love tug; I'm hooked on UK says Tristan; Mega Mirror Articles for Children". The Mirror. pp. 2, 21.{{cite news}}: CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link)
  26. ^ Staff (1997-01-02). "Turok 2 Confirmed for 1997". IGN. Retrieved 2008-10-12.
  27. ^ Holland, Kelley (1997-03-10). "Dino-Mite!". Business Week. p. 40.
  28. ^ "Turok: Dinosaur Hunter (n64: 1997): Reviews". Metacritic. Retrieved 2006-12-18.
  29. ^ "Turok: Dinosaur Hunter Reviews". Game Rankings. Retrieved 2006-10-30.
  30. ^ a b c Polak, Steve (1997-04-05). "Prehistoric combat in 3D / COLOSSEUM". The Weekend Australian. p. S07.
  31. ^ a b Staff (1997). "Turok: Dinosaur Hunter". Edge. Future Publishing: 76–78.
  32. ^ a b Burrill, William (1997-03-17). "More 'Doom' and gloom". The Toronto Star. p. J1.
  33. ^ Bergfield, Carlos (2007-10-30). "Interview: Propaganda's Josh Holmes on Turok". Shacknews. Retrieved 2009-08-15.
  34. ^ Tanaka, Jennifer; N'gai Croal (1997-03-10). "Die, puny human". Newsweek. p. 10.{{cite news}}: CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link)
  35. ^ Staff (1997-05-14). "Games review". The Scotsman. p. 11.
  36. ^ Ham, Tom (1997-03-14). "Fast Forward; Screen shots". The Washington Post. p. N66.
  37. ^ Gerstmann, Jeff (1997-03-04). "Turok: Dinosaur Hunter for Nintendo 64 Review". GameSpot. Retrieved 2009-08-03.
  38. ^ a b "Acclaim Entertainment And Golden Books Family Entertainment Announce Licensing Agreement With Playmates Toys Inc. To Produce Turok Toys". Business Wire. 1997-06-25. Retrieved 2006-12-18.
  39. ^ Staff (1997-08-04). "Acclaim Re-ships Turok for Holidays". IGN. Retrieved 2009-08-10.
  40. ^ Staff (1998-01-08). "Acclaim's Pride; Turok joins Nintendo's six as the only 'Player's Choice' title from a third-party publisher". IGN. Retrieved 2009-08-06.
  41. ^ Staff (1998-11-14). "Mega Mirror: Turok's still on a roll in the fight against evil". The Mirror. p. 40.
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