an educational dino game with fmv I remember from my childhood, sold for $6 with a bigger-than-nominal launch discount, so bought it as soon as it came out. it's from 1993, the golden age of multimedia cd-roms. runs through dosbox, and according to the store page it's the version packed with packard bell computers. 'oem' is still a thing, people get games with their gpu sometimes, but back in the day it meant only the discs and the manual with your chosen hardware, no big box and stuff, so all versions of this had voiceovers and the encyclopedia. mobygames mentions an [url=https://www.mobygames.com/game/21032/3-d-dinosaur-adventure-anniversary-edition/]anniversary edition[/url] from 1997, the only difference being a bonus disc with a standalone 'art-a-saurus' app for all your image editing needs.
you can navigate the park yourself with the arrows and enter, or by awkwardly moving the mouse and clicking stuff. there are also icons to click in the main menu to make walking automatic, and a shortcut above the icons for immediate access, but [b]cutscenes and voice lines are all skippable[/b]. manual navigation lets you find 'hidden' paths that are still highlighted when arriving at an intersection. [b]no settings[/b] is a bummer, separate volumes and subtitles would've been necessary, but [b]there are tooltips for most things[/b] and the park tour is offered in two window sizes.
[b]reference[/b] is an illustrated and fully voiced encyclopedia. there's a timeline, a globe to rotate, zoom in and find points of interest, there's some video, and words can be clicked as well. what's missing is mouse wheel support (understandable, seeing its age) and it would've been better to underline clickable words. dino and place names and such are your best bet.
I ran into a bug here on my first visit. some of another screen was in the background, even though I arrived via the shortcut. still clickable, making interactions with the encyclopedia problematic and I often ended up in another mini-game. leaving and coming back fixed it.
[b]photo safari[/b] has 35 questions that can be repeated by clicking the header on top. the answer is one of 4 pictures, but it's worth clicking on all the incorrect ones first for some extra trivia about other species.
[b]3d dinos[/b], just like the intro, makes use of 3d glasses if you have them lying around. you can navigate a small museum and zoom in on some exhibits.
the [b]storybook[/b] is disappointingly short, only a few sentences and pictures, but it's voiced like everything else and individual words can be clicked to repeat them.
the [b]movies[/b] section has 25 clips, ranging from a few seconds to a minute or so, and a mixture of cgi, stop-motion and animatronic dino models filmed in a museum or dino park somewhere.
[b]create-a-saurus[/b] is silly fun. choose the rotatable wireframe of a dino and one of the skins (rainbow, checkered, leopard, zebra, etc.) and listen to individually voiced dinos commenting on all of them. some are pretty amusing.
[b]name-a-saurus[/b] wants you to identify dinos only from their name. two rounds of 9 pictures each, no additional dino info here.
the [b]who am I game[/b] shows a close-up of a dino body part and you have to figure out which of the images it's from, do it 16 times to win. this also has individually voiced dinos and extra info when the correct answer is found.
[b]save the dinos[/b] is a first-person game where you have to find 15 dinos in 2000 seconds. you're in a museum, divided into 3 eras, just like the park itself, and first have to find the way out into the wild, then identify the dino based on its silhouette. there are hint machines on the corridors and the guide also describes them at the beginning of each round. [b]trial & error is not a good idea[/b], as each incorrect guess (and maybe running into a dead end, guarded by some 'evil' dinos) takes precious seconds away, but you get some back after correct identification.
this was where I also ran into a bug. at one point I had 700 seconds left, then was suddently down to a few and it was game over, the comet arrived, then I still got a 'you saved the 7th dinosaur' message. don't remember spamming incorrect guesses, nor was I aware at the time that it's a way to lose time, and if it wasn't for the other bug above, I would be less sure if this was a bug as well.
great voice work, surprisingly good music for the most part, but since it's 30+ years old, some of the info might be outdated. it's missing some basic features but in some ways works better than most games coming out today and it's [b]highly recommended for dino nerds of all ages[/b].
