Cliff Notes – The 13 best dinosaur video games ever made
- Limited Focus on Dinosaurs: Despite their popularity, few video games centre around dinosaurs, often relegating them to enemy status rather than protagonists.
- Nostalgic Appeal: The enduring fascination with dinosaurs, particularly through franchises like Jurassic Park, highlights a missed opportunity for more engaging dinosaur-centric gameplay experiences.
- Diverse Game Genres: The list of notable dinosaur games spans various genres, from survival horror in Dino Crisis to platforming in Bonk’s Adventure, showcasing the versatility of dinosaur themes in gaming.
The 13 best dinosaur video games ever made
A lot of games have dinosaurs, but very few are about them (Metro)
Everyone loves dinosaurs, but with the new Jurassic World movie coming up why is it so hard to celebrated their awesomeness in video games?
Dinosaurs are one of those childhood obsessions that you never really grow out of. And yet, there have been shockingly few dinosaur related video games, even after the explosive popularity of the Jurassic Park franchise in the 90s and its resurgence with the modern Jurassic World movies.
Sure, there are plenty of games that have dinosaurs in them, usually as enemies, but they’re rarely, if ever, the focus. There are even fewer that let you play as a dinosaur, despite it being such an obvious power fantasy for games to take advantage of (and why it’s one of Super Mario Odyssey’s best moments).
So, with a new Jurassic Park movie – Jurassic World Rebirth – right around the corner, we’ve trawled through the last 40+ years of gaming to find and acknowledge the best games that are about, or at least heavily involve, dinosaurs.
3D Monster Maze (1981)
A lot of you reading this are likely too young to have heard of this game, since it was only ever made available for the ZX81 home computer in the early 80s, but not only does it feature a honking big dinosaur but it’s one of the earliest first person games of any kind.
Expert, exclusive gaming analysis
Designed here in good old Blighty, 3D Monster Maze drops you in a randomly generated maze that you must escape from, lest you be eaten by a prowling T-rex. It also predates the likes of Resident Evil and Alone In The Dark, as perhaps the first ever survival horror game, as ittinforms you of the dinosaur’s position with brief statements like ‘FOOTSTEPS APPROACHING’ and ‘REX HAS SEEN YOU.’
Ark: Survival Evolved (2017)
Ark: Survival Evolved made a strong first impression when it revealed you could tame and ride dinosaurs, but it’s also a solid survival game too. Waking up, barely clothed on an island populated by not just dinosaurs but other prehistoric beasties like mammoths and dodos, your attempts to survive are fraught with danger, especially at night, but well worth it once you start putting together your own menagerie of tame dinos.
Although official servers have since shut down, there are custom servers to join if you want to play with others, but there’s a single-player option too if you’d rather go it solo. Developer Studio Wildcard would rather you invest in the early access remaster, titled Ark: Survival Ascended, but the current consensus among fans is that the original remains the superior experience.
Bonk’s Adventure (1989)
Perhaps the closest thing the PC Engine (aka TurboGrafx-16) console had to a mascot, Bonk was a caveboy with a head bigger than Charlie Brown’s, which was his main weapon for dealing with the enemy dinosaurs he fought on his adventures.
While no Super Mario Bros., the Bonk games were consistently enjoyable 2D platformers and worth tracking down if you’re a retro enthusiast. Its last entry was a mobile game in 2006, but if Konami is willing to revive something as niche as Survival Kids, a modern Bonk game doesn’t seem too farfetched.
Fun fact: the Bonk games were renamed to B.C. Kid (or sometimes PC Kid) when brought to Europe, since the word ‘bonk’ has very different connotations here in the UK.
Dino Crisis (1999)
No true fan of dinosaurs would dare leave this PlayStation 1 classic off a list like this. While it is essentially Resident Evil but with dinosaurs, there’s honestly nothing wrong with that, since it’s just as scary and intense as its zombie counterparts.
The sequel’s a good time too, although it eschews the original’s survivor horror elements for more arcade-like action. The less said about the third game the better, but there is a half decent lightgun spin-off too.
Dino Crisis is playable nowadays either through the PlayStation Classics catalogue or GOG on PC. With any luck, Capcom will one day acquiesce to our demands for a remake.
Dinosaur Game (2014)
At least 3D Monster Maze has the excuse of being old (Google)
Chances are you’ve played this game at least once in your life. For any of you who may not be familiar with it, Dinosaur Game is a simple endless runner where you play as a T-rex; one designed to be playable on your Google Chrome browser, if your internet goes out.
For such a basic game, it says a lot about its popularity that there’s a dedicated app you can download from the Google Play store. Not to mention no less than four different websites that let you play it on different browsers and without needing to switch off your internet connection. It’s arguably one of the most iconic dinosaur games out there and proof that sometimes simplicity is best.
Exoprimal (2023)
We’re still not sure what was going through Capcom’s head when it decided to make an entirely new dinosaur themed shooter when it already has Dino Crisis. Designed to jump on the online shooter bandwagon, Exoprimal is incredibly derivative, but also enjoyably goofy in all the right ways.
It runs on old school Capcom vibes, as you pilot mech suits and unload your guns into the faces of swarms of rampaging dinos; a concept that should make it one of our favourite games ever – but in reality it’s only kind of quite good.
Capcom abandoned Exoprimal after only a year, but the servers are still up and the game can make for a fun afternoon session with the right group of dinosaur enthusiasts. Although we’re still salty they never even added any Dino Crisis DLC.
Honourable mentions
Lego Jurassic World (2015) – One of the weaker Lego games from Traveller’s Tales, this is still a charming enough time and getting to play as the dinosaurs is a fun novelty even though it comes too late into the game.
Goodbye Volcano High (2023) – This narrative adventure game isn’t quite what we’re looking for from a dinosaur game, but its story about a gang of anthropomorphised teen dinos dealing with their last days of high school, and an incoming extinction event, is compelling, and oddly relatable.
Jurassic Park: Survival – Although it was cancelled in 2001, what was shown of Jurassic Park: Survival looked impressively ahead of its time, as far as sandbox adventure games went, and for years it was a holy grail of PC gamers looking for the next big advancement in gaming tech.
There was no guarantee it would’ve been any good, but a separate game with the same name, by Saber Interactive, is in development, and will no doubt pay homage to it in at least some way.
Jurassic Park (1993)
There have been a lot of Jurassic Park games over the years, although when it comes to direct adaptations of the movies, the 1993 SNES game, based on the first film, stands out as the best.
One of the last big movie tie-ins by Ocean Software, this game is an interesting blend of a top-down adventure game and first person shooter. The 3D sections were similar to contemporary Wolfenstein 3D, making it one of the most technically advanced console games of the time.
The lack of any save function and map makes it harder than it probably needs to be, but those have been addressed in the Jurassic Park: Classic Games Collection, which was made for the film’s 30th anniversary and includes several other decent retro games from the 90s.
Jurassic World Evolution 2 (2021)
The first Jurassic World Evolution had a great foundation as a park management sim, where you get to run your own Jurassic Park and try to avoid the same disasters seen in the movies. But the 2021 sequel was a massive improvement in every way, easily cementing itself as the best Jurassic Park game ever made.
The campaign is frustratingly short, but its complex gameplay and Chaos Theory mode – that offers fun what-if scenarios for the various films – more than make sup for it. Anything that can make us feel nostalgic for even the bad movies is doing something right.
Hopefully Jurassic World Evolution 3 supplants it when it launches later this year. It’s looking promising, based on our hands-off preview, which highlighted adorable baby dinosaurs and greatly expanded customisation tools.
Monster Hunter Wilds (2025)
The Monster Hunter games may not feature dinosaurs per se, but… come on. A lot of the monsters are essentially dinosaurs, albeit often more fantastical and capable of doing things like breath fire or conduct electricity.
Monster Hunter Wilds is a perfect jumping on point for those looking for a new action game to sink hours into, but the last couple of entries – Monster Hunter World and Monster Hunter Rise – are also excellent and still have active player bases for the all-important co-op options.
Turok: Dinosaur Hunter (1997)
We wonder how many people are even aware the Turok games are based on a comic book. Regardless, the first two Turok games on the N64 were fun first person shooters and some of the console’s best-looking games.
The dinosaur hunter part is increasingly downplayed even in the first sequel, with invading aliens and other nonsense taking over instead, but the games are still entertaining time capsules, either through the modern remasters or the Nintendo Classics online service on Switch and Switch 2.
A brand new Turok titled Turok: Origins is currently in development and while it’s set to be a third person game, its brief showing at The Game Awards 2024 had us feeling optimistic.
Yoshi’s Crafted World (2019)
With most of the games on this list being made for adult audiences craving dinosaur related violence, there are very few options for the younger crowd. Fortunately, Nintendo just so happens to have a cute and cuddly dinosaur-like mascot for such players.
Yoshi’s Woolly World and its successor, Yoshi’s Crafted World, are both competent2D platformers that are too simple for seasoned gamers but perfect entry points for kids, especially given their charming visuals.
Although he doesn’t particularly look like a dinosaur, Super Mario World specifically states that Yoshi (and Yoshi – the name of the species is the same as the character) live in Dinosaur Land. Birdo is also officially a dinosaur, although only Yoshi has a scientific name: Yoshisaur Munchakoopas.
Nintendo’s ported almost all its other Wii U games to Switch already (Nintendo)
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