Dinosaurs. Videogames. It has come to my attention (and probably the attentions of everyone in the industry by now) that recently there have been far too few videogames with dinosaurs in them. WHY!? What did Dinosaurs do to deserve this recent lack of respect and digital representation? Have developers forgot what makes dinosaurs and videogames such an important combination? Shame on us all for neglecting our cold blooded thunder lizards. This top 10 will hopefully revitalize everyones interest in our most scaly of post-humous friends. It is also likely to be front page on Time, and the subject of much debate on a special episode of Larry King Live. In other words, brace yourselves. This notice is on the cataclysmic, metoric extinction level.

Probably one of the more surprising elements of Earthbound, besides violent furniture and living bicycles, was the inclusion of dinosaurs! You're sorta kinda minding your own business and then, all of a sudden, you fall into this massive cave filled with prehistoric jungles and gigantic dinosaurs. These things are huge too! Way bigger than your characters. They're difficult to kill, brutalizing your team if unprepared. This part of the game was just awesome though. Not only was it completely unexpected, it also created the first ever scenario wherein a 13 year old boy is able to kill a tyrannosaurus by bludgeoning it to death with a Yo-yo and bottle rockets. Not to fear though. No REAL dinosaurs were ever harmed by Yo-yo's during the making of Earthbound, so it's all morally and ethically ok to whack away at them with your string toys. I am told a disgruntled sofa attacked some people in the developers office though. Apparently they sat on him wrong.

Oh yeah, this was one of the more defining parts of a game known at the time for little else than "That game's cover image has some huge...". Behold the expression of shock and horror on your face when you walk into a small jungle like cave, expecting some more rectangular bears or chunky jungle cats. Instead you found a five story tall Tyrannosaurus stomping around. Worse, this guy was more interested in food than sex appeal. Even Lara had to put those ballistics away. The only guns that worked on this enemy were the kind that required ammunition. This was just the first of many game defining moments in what was an incredible game. The second most defining was when you learned the nude code didn't work, and you would be forever robed of seeing the most triangular breasts in your life.

Although I suppose Jurassic Park is truly the first, technically this is was the first ever so called "survival horror" game that stared dinosaurs. Dino Crisis was SCARY... well ok maybe not really. Still, loaded to the brim with nothing but the most blood thirsty of lizards, you had little to nothing available to protect yourself with. It didn't end with Dino Crisis 1 though. Dino Crisis 2 turned dinosaur horror into pure asphyxiating awesome! You shot raptors, pterodactyls, mosasaurs (the evil underwater dolphin things), and you had a huge number of weapons too. Flamethrowers, laser cannons, explosives... This lizardlicious gameplay can't be out done. Well, it wouldn't be, if not for Dino Crisis 3 which gives us dinosaurs in space. 300 years in the future you too must defeat alien dinosaur hybrids, on a derelict spaceship, through the help of jetpacks and lasers. It's too much. The thought of so much dinosaur awesome in one series is making me light headed. I need to relax, do something soothing... I think I'll try get the Tomb Raider nude code to work again.

DYYYYYNNOOOO... WARZ! WARZ! WARZ! This game definitely requires a saturday morning cartoon title scream of some sort. Ok, so judging from the title this game must involve dinosaurs, wars, and the destruction of what sounds like an evil soup spoon. Very grave stuff. In reality, this game is about a man-made solar system being invaded by robot dinosaurs. Yes, I said a man made solar system. It must have taken months to decide on proper paint colors. To combat these terrible, steel scaled invaders, you hop into a robotic dino of your own and travel to the different universal planets to kill the cold blooded menace. Your dino suit has three lethal attacks: Punching with your right fist, punching so hard with your right fist that it flies off like a rocket and comes back to you, or launching fireballs approximately 1x1 pixels large. I won't lie: despite the combination of dinosaurs and robots, this game sucks. I just really, really love the title. The biggest casualty of Dynowarz isn't the gameplay though: It's the idea. Thanks for ruining what could have become one of the most amazing current gen console titles in the market. Now we'll never see a Mass Effect mod based on Dynowarz. Not until Bioware agrees to lend me the source code and $50 anyways. Those guys have no vision. Their next game is about freaking dragons. Woah! It's not every day a fantasy game stars dragons! Pffft. They clearly missed the boat on this one.

Barney! The friendliest dinosaur around! He finally got his own game too. The premise is intriguing: Find as many children who have hidden themselves from you as possible, grab them, hug them close to you, and tell them how much you love them. Creepy? Of course not! I mean you can do non-physical things too, like blow kisses at them slowly. While not cavorting about with young children and blowing heart shaped kisses through the air, Barney also employs magic to do thing like grow plants or help forest animals. This is a dinosaur so astute, he won't even cross magical moving platforms unless they are safely aligned with the current walkway. Barney is one super-dee dooper dinosaur, and clearly a benefit to the image of bloodthirsty thunder lizards everywhere. Shame on them for not being more sophisticated like Barney is! Children are clearly not dinosaur food. Barney knows how to REALLY treat children. They're meant to be loved, and hugged, and blown kisses... wait sec...

Quite possibly the first game to successfully allow someone to equip a dinosaur with machine guns and bombs, you just know Nanosaur has to be horrible in a good way. Surprisingly it's actually not horrible at all, just completely ridiculous. For whatever reason, in the year 4000 something a dinosaur was sent back in time collect the eggs of different dinosaur species because... He was lonely? Hungry? Needed really large Easter Eggs? Yeah i have no idea. Oh well. The point is that using modern technology, your limbs have been replaced with machine guns and other goodies. This is truly breaking beyond the realms of Dr.Evil's laser sharks and into something more enlightened. The only thing they missed out on was that damn jetpack. You don't arm a dinosaur with laser cannons ,and thermonuclear missiles, only to forget he seriously requires jet propulsion for jebus sakes. And bear spray. They forgot the damned bear spray! No one knows how to properly arm a dinosaur these days... nor apparently in the year 4000 either.

Probably the penultimate series of dinosaur based videogames. Jurassic Park spawned hundreds of different dino based titles. Some were awesome side scrolling affairs, letting you shoot dinos as Grant or munch humans as a Velociraptor. Others let you build your own dinosaur park. Then there are the arcade titles which were especially awesome. None, however, was probably as poignant as the one where you checked your own cleavage to determine your health. Yes, I'm talking about Jurassic park: Trespasser. The first ever FPS game to present the player with a physics based world and physics based puzzles, this game paved the way for titles like Half-Life 2. So it's unfortunate that the game is one colossal dino turd. That's ok though! The point here is that Jurassic Park games are sometimes good, sometimes crap, sometimes over reaching, but always a leader in dinosaur content. Here's hoping we see a Jurassic Park 4 that really is about Velociraptor mercenaries. I wouldn't mind playing a tactical shooter staring velociraptors on the Rainbow Six team... Why hasn't Ubisoft picked up the rights for this again?

A time traveling Native American must stop an evil cyborg from ruling the world with dinosaur armies and aggressive monkeys. Strangely enough, that is the plot of one of the most famous N64 shooters of all time: Turok. While the plot in Turok was certainly a bit Cretacious period in its writing, the gameplay stuck out, making it possibly the best FPS series ever to involve lizards on two legs. It's got cool weapons, chest bursting, explosive arrows, and enough leather skin to make an entire line of Death Race 3000 underwear out of. Turok is absolutely one of those titles that encourages you to put glow in the dark dinosaur stickers all over your college biology class binder, meanwhile eatting a whole thermos full of dinosaur shaped ravioli. My only complaints are the lack of space travel, man made universes, and Cadillacs. I think we can fix that last one though...

So, we've had Native Americans and Dinosaurs, Robots and Dinosaurs, and Dinosaurs in Space. What we haven't had, however, is Cadillacs and Dinosaurs! Moving into the only open game market left for dinosaurs, C&D is treacherous title involving FMV's and dino slaying. It was a fairly decent game with plenty of shooting, obstacles, and awesome deaths. Speaking of deaths, how many dinosaur games do we have where dinosaurs are the badguys? How is it that dinosaurs got such a bad rap? When is the last time you saw a Dinosaur eat a small child? If science is to be believed, then never! They don't steal purses either, and I've never seen one smoke indoors. Sheesh developers... Give dinosaurs a break! You need to treat them with a little more respect! Like for instance, check out this final title here...

If ever there was a Street Fighter staring dinosaurs, this was it. The best part? It's not half bad either. I don't really know what to say about Primal Rage. It's a fighting game staring dinosaurs, which is probably one of only two ever made (Jurassic Park: Warpath being the other). This one isn't lame though, and the game actually boasts a fairly robust fighting system. Heck, the game even has a faction of good dinosaurs. No mater your alignment though, every single dino warrior is worshiped by tiny, poorly dressed humans. Yes! Finally some respect for our leathery pals. Better yet, the game actually encourages you to eat your opponents human worshipers for health. See? Self-sacrifice, all in the name of that which is Dino. Primal Rage was pretty awesome. It was so awesome in fact, that some guy wrote a novelization for the sequel that was never released. Yeah. That's right. A novel based on a 2D dinosaur fighting game. See? Dinosaurs have even provoked original literature! Dinosaurs are truly a benefit to society and the arts. My great-grandmother swears she saw a dinosaur paint once.

Well there you have it. Dinosaurs have lost so much respect in recent years, which is a shame. Videogames and thunder lizards have been going hand in hand for ages, and yet all we see today is more Halo's and fifty Final Fantasy 7 spin-offs. Heck, even John Romero started off by developing Dino-Sorcerer for the Apple II. See how much the industry owes those lovable saurapods? Instead all we get lately is a crappy new Turok game, and two dino based, Pokemon rip-offs for the DS. So here's my message to the game industry: You're a meanie. Please license a good Jurassic park title? Please add raptors to Rainbow Six? PLEASE let me mod Mass Effect into a Dynowarz sequel? I hope this has improved everyone's views on the important synergy between gigantic lizards and digital entertainment. At the very worst, you now know John Romero actually did code something that wasn't Diakatana. You also know there are at a MINIMUM two dinosaur fighting games out there. See? You're welcome for the knowledge I have armed you with. Now go! Go and enjoy the most beloved of dinosaur based videogames. May our sunbathing serpents never be forgotten for their many years of beneficial gaming entertainment.

List by Chaotic_Fusion