Adventures of Dino Riki (Nintendo)

Adventurs of Dino Riki

Hudson Soft

Hudson Soft, 1987

By all definitions, the Adventures of Dino Riki is a shmup. The screen scrolls vertically and you manuever your character around the screen, destroying anything that gets in your way. 

I remember this game making me all sorts of frustrated when I was younger due to it's difficulty level. I recently sat down to play it again after a very long time to see if it was just me and my skills back then or if this game truly is a pain in the butt.

You take control of a little caveman, Dino Riki. He has the ability to move left and right, as well as up and down on the screen. One button lets him jump while the other lets him attack. You start off the game with rocks. As you can imagine these rocks don't offer much in the way of firepower and have a limited range. You can pick up icons in the game that will boost your weapon. The axe is the next weapon in line, then a boomerang and finally a torch. 

The axe flies forward like the rock, but goes a greater distance. The boomerang has a wider range of attack as it doesn't stick to a straight line like the rock or axe. The torch is the most powerful weapon and when used it covers an even great area, spread out in front of your character. Caution though as when you are hit you are downgraded one weapon. Get hit while you have the rock and you lose a life.

There are other items you can pick up in the game that will help aid you on your journey. Wings give you limited flight and speed boosts do just what they should. I never cared for the boosts however as it seemed as if the game already ran at a faster speed that I was comfortable with. Speed up your character too much and it's near impossible to control, especially if you have to navigate your way through a level by jumping.

The gameplay in itself isn't bad. Again, it's basically your standard fare vertically scrolling shmup game. What makes the game so difficult, at least to me, is the fact that there are sections where you have navigate your character by jumping on lillypads or ledges. Keep in mind the screen is always scrolling so you can stand still very long before you have to make your next jump. Get too close to the top of the screen and you can't see where you are jumping to, nor can you see the oncoming enemies or their bullets.

If you could take away the jumping aspect of the game I may find it to be more enjoyable to play, but as is it's very difficult. I'm sure there are Game Genie codes that you could use to make yourself invincible, but I've never checked. 

The game has 4 worlds, with the first three (thankfully) having checkpoints. The last level is very long and if you die at any point, you must start over from the beginning. At the end of each level is a boss, usually a dinosaur or other giant monster. If you have a controller with turbo, you'll find the game is a little easier. However this game should offer the best of gamers a real challenge. Not one of my favorite Hudson games, but still a worthy addition to anyone's NES library.