Rare dev would love to bring back Dinosaur Planet

Speaking to VideoGamer.com at last week’s Develop conference in Brighton, Rare senior software engineer Nick Burton revealed that one Rare title he’d love to see released on today’s hardware is Dinosaur Planet – an N64 title that never saw the light of day.

Although some of the ideas eventually made it into gamers’ hands through the GameCube title Star Fox Adventures, Burton would love to be given the chance to bring the original game back to life.

“… I would have loved to have seen Dinosaur Planet see the light of day as Dinosaur Planet, because I had so much emotionally invested in that because it was my first game,” said Burton. “It was strong in its own right. Undoubtedly it was commercially more successful because it had Star Fox in it. Anybody who says it was any other way is delusional in my mind. But it was a very strong IP.”

He continued: “On the N64 at any rate, technically we were pushing it too far, even more than Conker did, so much so that it would have been too slow in some places. But it had a wonderful ambience that only the team have ever seen, almost this haunting mythical ambience to a lot of it, especially to the snow and ice worlds, that you could capture so well with today’s hardware but unfortunately it’s probably one of those things that’s locked in limbo.”

Burton also acknowledged that in today’s gaming climate Dinosaur Planet might not necessarily fit, but would still love to see it happen.

“Whether it’s the right kind of game for today as well, it probably isn’t. But if you were to say sales don’t matter and the team says it doesn’t matter, just make the game you want to make, and it was going to be a big project, I think it would be something like that,” he concluded.

For more from Nick Burton head over our week-long interview.