Ok, straight up, Adventures of Dino Riki is not a Hudson Soft classic. It is BAD. No exaggeration. BAD. I can imagine all the unfortunately 80’s kids going to a video rental store, seeing Adventures of Dino Riki on the shelf, taking it home to play over the weekend, and just having their weekend ruined by it. I am so sorry if this happened to you. You have my sympathy.
Looking at the cover, you see a cool caveman character kicking Dino-butt. Like, wow, great artwork. Very exciting. You put the game in and power up your console. See the title screen and it’s a basic NES start screen. Like, ok, that has its charm. You push start and you’re thrown into an overhead auto-scrolling shoot’em up. Riki marches forward, no matter what. This caveman is on a mission. There’s no stopping him. These dinosaurs messed with the wrong caveman. There’s a price to pay and it’s Hell!
Enemies come at you relentlessly. It’s practically a bullet Hell. No problem. Nothing wrong with challenge. But then, the flaws start to come out. Riki is slow. You can get speed power ups, but then you become too fast. Speeding up Riki is a detriment. Why? Because of Riki’s floaty jumps. His jumps are a blind leap of faith every time you push the button. Your controls go out the window whenever you jump. It’s so difficult to land accurately, even when jumping straight forward. And the platforms are so tight. You have to be pixel perfect centered. or you will fall off. You soon learn how bad this flaw can be, once you reach the...
Lilly Pad Lake of DEATH!
The place where all 80’s kids' video game rental weekends come to DIE! No 80’s child was safe from the dreaded Lilly Pad Lake of DEATH!
NONE WERE SPARED!!
NOT EVEN ME!!
38 YEARS LATER!!
I SPENT 2 HOURS TRYING TO GET THROUGH THAT FREAKING LAKE!!!
OMG I HATE THIS GAME!!!
AAHGHHHHHH!!!!!
Adventures of Dino Riki is Terrible with a capital T. The controls are so BAD. And as it turns out, this game is really short. Upon further research, I found this game can be beaten around twenty minutes. So, that means the bad controls were likely intentional to make the game more artificially difficult to extend its game time. This can also be to punish 80’s kids who rented the game, instead of buying it. Yes, that is actually true. And what’s the worst part of this? If you actually manage to beat this game, there is no ending. It just loops. You get nothing. Not even a Congratulations. Don’t play this game! Stay away!