Who likes dinosaurs? Who likes fighting with dinosaurs?

[Edgerock]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tdPriWGgJGA

Pokemon... Jurassic Park style!

New Trailer of Nintendo's new Fossil Fighters series. Comes out 8/10.

[Cuckooguy]

Doesn't Sega have something similar called Dinosaur King?

[Brazillian Cara]

There's just something wrong about dinosaurs with hair. Aren't feathers enough?

[Wombatwarlord777]

Digimon kinda satisfied my youthful giant-fighting-dinosaur fantasies. This really doesn't look near as interesting...

[Shadow Hog]

Funny, the last people I'd think of to rip off Pokémon would be Nintendo themselves.

[Dr. BUGMAN]

What the hell is going on with Nintendo lately? Is all this banal stuff coming down the pipe due to demand for more involving software? I mean, holy shit this looks like something Mattel of Bandai would put out.

I can't wait for those obnoxious-looking kids to start showing up everywhere.

[Edgerock]

I guess? To be fair it could be a good ripoff of Pokemon... and Spectrobes...

Though not everything new is from old stuff. Publishing the Professor Layton series had been one of their best moves.

[Green Gibbon!]

Isn't this a couple of years old?

[Arcade]

So, Digimon copies pokemon, who is selled by Nintendo, who copies Digimon with a dinosaur game... right?

[Zeta]

Actually, Disney copied Pokemon to make Spectrobes - a game in which you dig up fossils to clone them to fight, and now Nintendo is copying Spectrobes. So this game is a copy of a copy made by the original creators in the first place.

I'd be more excited about this game if the character line-up didn't seem to soley consist of various reskinned T-rexes and various re-skinned Triceratops instead of the true variety Dinosaurs and other prehistoric creatures were made of. Considering the "fossil" premise doesn't limit the idea to dinosaurs, they could easily toss in mammoths, pteranodons, plesiosaurs, ammonites, anomalocari and everything else that's extinct right now. But it seems it's just a reskin fest.

[Wombatwarlord777]

That's a shame. Just glacing at what little info there is about this game, fossil hunting sounds like the most... "creative" and intriguing feature. But, it sounds like there won't be that much variety though...

What the hell is going on with Nintendo lately? Is all this banal stuff coming down the pipe due to demand for more involving software? I mean, holy shit this looks like something Mattel of Bandai would put out.

Judging for their E3 showing, that's the last thing I'd say about Nintendo at the moment (unless you're also talking about the big-name sequels). More quick examples of said shovelware, please?

[Edgerock]

http://kotaku.com/5332425/why-did-ninte ... n-the-mail

Video of Nintendo sending the game inside an actual rock as a gift to Kotaku. They also provide a chisel, and brush. Also of him chiseling the game out.

I've received a lot of peculiar things from Nintendo in the past: A DSi cake, a call from Mario, a box of candies, but this is the first that made me work to find out what it was.

Inside today's package was a large white rock with the words Fossil Fighters cut into its surface. Digging deeper into the shredded paper that filled the box I also found a chisel, a brush and a large piece of brown paper.

To work then.

[Dr. BUGMAN]

(unless you're also talking about the big-name sequels).

Pretty much this. Except the Mario ones, which look to be in the spirit of what the franchise is about while still doing their own thing.

[Xyton]

Video of Nintendo sending the game inside an actual rock as a gift to Kotaku. They also provide a chisel, and brush. Also of him chiseling the game out.

That's pretty awesome, actually. They should sell a version of the game in a rock. :P Okay, maybe not, but that's still a cool promo idea.

[Yami CJMErl]

Considering the "fossil" premise doesn't limit the idea to dinosaurs, they could easily toss in mammoths, pteranodons, plesiosaurs, ammonites, anomalocari and everything else that's extinct right now. But it seems it's just a reskin fest.

I took a quick peek inside the Player's Guide for the game at the local Toys 'R Us--there actually ARE mammoths, sabretooth cats, pterosaurs, and aquatic reptiles and such in the game. I didn't check on the pre-dinosaur-era animals (anomalocaris and such), but it's definitely not just giant reptiles.

[Zeta]

I took a quick peek inside the Player's Guide for the game at the local Toys 'R Us--there actually ARE mammoths, sabretooth cats, pterosaurs, and aquatic reptiles and such in the game. I didn't check on the pre-dinosaur-era animals (anomalocaris and such), but it's definitely not just giant reptiles.

Indeed, as did I, and I'm highly releived. There are no pre-Dinosaur fossils like Trilobite, sadly. There are about 100 different "Vivosaurs" in the game - the storyline explains that reviving the prehistoric fossils gave the creatures superpowers, hence their fighting ability. The body-types for reskins are about 30 different distinct types. Some of them have lots of reskins representing related families of animals, while others have as little as one (kind of a waste, really).

The body types I can recall correctly, are thusly:

* T-Rex Type
* Raptor-type
* Plesiosaur Type
* Kronosaur Type
* Stegosaurus Type
* Ankylosaurus Type
* Megatherium Type
* Archeopteryx Type
* Compsognathus Type
* Mammoth Type
* Sabertooth Type
* Pterosaur Type
* Spinosaurus Type
* Statue Type (Shakkoudougi)
* Super Legendary Type (Dragons)
* Sauropod Type
* Ceratopsian Type
* Terror Bird Type
* Iguanodon Type
* Icthyosaurus Type

There are a couple of others I can't recall right now. The T-Rex type has the most reskins/recolors.

[Zeta]

Oh, and as an added bonus, all of the raptor-type Dinosaurs (as well as all of the small to medium bipedal carnivorous dinosaurs) actually have feathers. Impressive research. The reskins are all named after different but similar dinosaurs IE: T-Rex, Carnotaurus, Allosaurus, and Megalosaurus are all re-fitted versions of the same model.

Hope this gets a sequel so that more obscure extinct critters get added. No Trilobites, cavemen, or Dodos? For shame!

Oh, and just remembered that Wooly Rhinoceri are in there too, as a category.

[Zeta]

Has anyone else tried this game? It's pretty good.

On the tropical Vivosaur island, the Richmond archaeological foundation has built a fantastic resort. Using the brilliance of Dr. Diggums, they have developed a process to revive dead animals from fossil fragments. As a side-effect of this process, the dead animals are not complete copies of the creatures they originally were in life - they gain unusual appearances and best of all - superpowers. Vivosaur Island has become a playground for the rich where wealthy young dinosaur fanatics can revive extinct animals in the form of superpowered monsters and fight them against each other for glory and fame.

A (another!) Mons series from Nintendo, Fossil Fighters is a collection Mon RPG/paleontology sim for the DS. It is Nintendo's answer to Spectrobes and Dinosaur King.

The overworld is a lot like Custom Robo Arena. There is a single town that expands a bit as you play. There seems to be about 5 adventure fields that you revisit and that expand as you progress in the story as you get new items. At a dig site, you can fight NPCs, dig up Fossils, and go on story-related quests.

The gameplay flow consists of:
* Digging up a Fossil. Simple enough - use the radar to find the blips, hit the ground, and you get a fossil. Occasionally enemies will challenge you to a fight for a Fossil. Digging may get you a plain old rock (junk), a Gem Rock (sold for high value if cleaned), and one of four types of Fossil Rock (Head, Torso, Arms, Legs).

* Cleaning - a very intense minigame. You have about less than a minute to excavate the fossil. You get points for clearing away debris, and lose points for damaging the fossil. You only have one type of each Vivosaur in the game. Improvements on Fossil cleaning the same type of fossil add stats to already dug-up Vivosaurs. Completing Vivosaur skeletons unlocks new moves. Fossils that don't beat high scores are donated for points which can be exchanged for rare Fossil Parts.

* Battle - Battle plays a lot like a TCG. You have Fossil Points, which are you mana. You get a set ammount for each turn that you can build up for more powerful attacks, or spend on weaker attacks. There are four slots on the battle field - the leader, which does the most damage, can target all of the enemy slots except the escape slot, but also takes the most damage. Two support slots - they can target the leader, but not the enemy's support slots. Their damage taken is reduced, as well as their damage output (unless they're a ranged attacker like a flying Pterosaur-type or a charging Pachychepalasaurus type.) Each Vivosaur has 4 attacks that can be unlocked with each new piece of their skeleton. You gain levels via either battling or improving on excavating fossils. There's a simple elemental battle system in place, ala Pokemon. You can cause the Leader retreat to an escape zone for a few turns, which renders it unable to do anything, but it won't take any damage - and one of your Support Vivosaurs can be switched in.

The story is crap, the same old "Three Evil Goons want to steal monsters to commit crimes and you have to stop them and become a Vivosaur Master" that Pokemon has beaten into the ground, which is a shame because they could have had you fighting against evil humanoid Dinosaurs, or evil Cavemen, or time-traveling or anything more interesting. I'm told it gets better, though, and culminates with a fight against a giant robot in outerspace . . . somehow.

Oh, also, while you battle, two of the game's creators run commentary on the top screen that is VERY, VERY funny, don't miss it. They have some of the best dialogue I've ever seen in a videogame.

There's a shop where you can sell Jewels and fossil rocks to buy upgrades to your tools, but it's very, very expensive. There's also a museum mode that lets you view information on all the dinosaurs and prehistoric animals the Vivosaurs used to be.

All in all, I'm really loving this game, although I'm getting a bit tired of all of the T-Rex like carnivorous dinosaurs that dominate much of the early game. You'll find more carnivorous dinosaur parts early on than any other kind, which doesn't really make any sense (the prey should be more numerous than the predators) and all of the T-rex style dinosaurs like Shamshamsaurus (Sp?) kind of blur together.

All in all, a pretty good game and I'd really like to see a sequel with an expanded array of dinosaurs and more prehistoric and extinct creatures (I was a little dissapointed to find that you couldn't raise Trilobites, Anomalocaris, Dodos, or early hominids).

[Yami CJMErl]

So...it's Pokemon combined with Jurassic Park?

[Zeta]

So...it's Pokemon combined with Jurassic Park?

Yeah, pretty much. The battle system plays much more like the Pokemon TCG than the Pokemon video games, though.

I love extinct animals, though. I hope they continue this series and stuff in pretty much any animal that was ever in those "Walking With Prehistoric Animals" BBC CGI documentaries.

On the plus side, Andrewsarchus is in it. It is an ancient predatory mammal that is a relative of dolphins and was one of the largest terrestrial predators ever. And it had hooves. It was basically a dolphin-wolf-horse thing. Awesome.

Also, the writing, story, and dialogue are noticeably better than any of the Pokemon games (but it's still not exactly Final Fantasy or something).

[j-man]

Fuck man, whenever I try and tell people about Andrewsarchus they look at me like I'm simple. I'm glad someone else is all up in that.

[gr4yJ4Y]

Growing up, Mike Sterling thought it would be amazing to have an Andrewsarchus head for an arm... now, not so much.