N64 Month | Nintendo's Missing in Action - Part 2: Dinosaur Planet (Star Fox Adventures)

Where did it all begin?

 

What was it all about?

Dinosaur Planet’s original script was based around two anthropomorphic foxes, called Sabre and Krystal, that the player could switch between using two swapstones (giant rock creatures called Rocky and Rubble), set on a planet that the game got its title from. Sabre was the son of the great wizard Randorn and had an older brother that had previously been killed in battle. Following the death of his son, grieving Randorn disappeared, and an adult sword-wielding Sabre vowed to find his father with the help of his sidekick, Tricky the triceratops. Krystal was orphaned at a young age and was adopted by Randorn, presumably during the time he left Sabre. She, too, had a dino companion in Tricky’s brother, as well as a pterodactyl called Kyte which she could ride on and fought enemies with a staff throughout the course of the game. The story was split equally across both characters, with half of the game played as Sabre, and another half as Krystal, each with their own levels. The antagonist was General Scales of the SharpClaw tribe. It is believed the two protagonists would cross paths eventually, as the player continued to flick between them.

 

Why did it disappear?

Due to the shift of franchise, a lot of the original content from Dinosaur Planet was cut. About 1/3 of the levels were gone, and since Krystal had only a bit part role now, her levels were either transferred to Fox or removed entirely. The game featured many gorgeous and tropical locales, one of which was “Discovery Falls,” but this, too, was cut. After not long, the “Dinosaur Planet” subtitle was dropped, and it became simply Star Fox Adventures. Another twist in the tale cropped up when it became apparent that Microsoft wanted to buy Rare off Nintendo. With the deal looming, Rare had very little time to finish up their project, and once more the team had to chop parts to meet the deadline. The final battle with General Scales is one of the more obvious chunks to be trimmed out. In the end, it was evident that the final product was rushed, and a far cry from the designers’ original conceptions.

It is really sad to see what happened to Dinosaur Planet. It had the potential to be a really high quality title, and going off of Rare’s history, you could have placed a lot of money on it being one of the games of its era. It looked to be pushing the Nintendo 64 to its limits, and it is a shame that, even after moving the project over to the GameCube, they could not realise their original ideals, instead worming the Star Fox characters into it and cutting a lot of content. Interested fans have managed to locate a lot of unused text inside the files of Star Fox Adventures, revealing dialogue from both the original Dinosaur Planet and SFA storylines. It seems that Rare had plenty of ideas for the project, including time travel in order to save Sabre, and a pretty deep and dark plot that can somewhat be unravelled by researching some of the hidden dialogue online.