Turok: Dinosaur Hunter

aka: Jikū Senshi Turok, Turok: Cazador de Dinosaurios, Turok: Łowca Dinozaurów
Moby ID: 2203
Windows Specs
Buy on Nintendo 64
$17.40 used on Amazon
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Description official descriptions

The Earth is separated by an invisible barrier from the Lost Land, a realm in which time has no meaning, and which is inhabited by ferocious dinosaurs and aliens. For many generations, the mantle of Turok has been bestowed upon those who saw the protection of the barrier as their sacred duty. But an evil lord named Campaigner is seeking for an artifact that is capable of destroying the barrier, striving to dominate the entire universe. This artifact, known as the Chronoscepter, was broken into pieces which were then hidden away. Tal'Set, a Native American and the last Turok, must find the scattered pieces of the Chronoscepter, and stop the Campaigner from obtaining them.

Turok: Dinosaur Hunter is a first-person shooter with platforming and light puzzle-solving elements. Much of the game is set in outdoor environments, and requires the player to explore them by finding various paths, jumping, swimming, and climbing. The game's most notable enemies are dinosaurs of various sizes, though the levels also include human and demonic enemies, as well as wildlife. The player gradually gains access to thirteen weapons (plus the Chronoscepter, assembling which is the game's main objective); these include a knife, a bow, as well as high-tech firearms such as a rocket launcher and an atomic fusion cannon.

Spellings

  • 恐龙猎人 - Simplified Chinese spelling
  • 時空戦士テュロック - Japanese spelling

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Credits (Nintendo 64 version)

93 People (77 developers, 16 thanks) · View all

Reviews

Critics

Average score: 82% (based on 50 ratings)

Players

Average score: 3.7 out of 5 (based on 86 ratings with 7 reviews)

A console fps that rocks?? Yep. And it's made by Acclaim too!!

The Good
Turok is a living oddity, a good console fps? A good console fps by Acclaim?? Has the world gone mad? Have I smoked too much of that wacky tobacky? Nope, brace yourself man, because believe it or not, for as dreadful as it may sound... Turok is a blast!

Based on the now dead Acclaim comic of the same name Turok: Dinosaur Hunter casts you as Joshua, the latest in the line of "Turoks", ancient native-american guardians of the balance between our earth dimension and a wacky Lost World-like dimension where dinosaurs roam the earth and a wide variety of hostile humanoid creatures reside.

As usual some bad ass mofo nicknamed "The Campaigner" has decided it's time for earth to go boom by using a Chronoscepter thingie to rip the universes apart, so it's up to you to traverse the dino-world collecting the keys that will unlock the portal to the Campaigner's citadel and kick his ass for good.

Got that? Complex I know, but serviceable enough. The game progresses as a standard hub-based fps where you start from this portal node that takes you to different locations in the game world thanks to Turoks plane-shifting powers. This structure helps mask to a degree the linearity of what's basically a traditional shooter, and gives you the opportunity to re-visit each level in case you missed a health boost power-up or a key weapon.

The levels themselves are very impressive in their architecture, sure most consist simply of open areas, but even the simplest level in the game is filled with winding hills, strange structures, twisty underwater caves and all other sorts of imaginative landmarks. Believe it or not, it makes exploring the game a truly unique experience, as you explore every nook and cranny in search for a new weapon, or whatever may be in store for you with a true sense of interest and not just to see what the hell lies ahead or what monster awaits for you in that strange temple-like structure. Turok's world is one of the most visually interesting places ever conceived for a traditional fps and makes each location a gameplay bonanza of epic proportions as you dart through jungles and cliffs, or strike dark temples and imposing bunkers.

And speaking of monsters, Turok was one of the earlier fps games that included really amazingly animated beasts, featuring motion-captured moves on every humanoid creature that makes them run, attack and die in very realistic ways (watch what happens when you shoot someone in the neck!), and a collection of very imaginative enemies that can pose some serious challenges (the missile-launching triceratops that squashes it's rider when it dies and the T-Rex boss near the endgame take all the awards alone). And all rendered with a smooth, fully polygonal engine that sports such flashy effects as camera tilting, image distortion and particle effects, and even a pre-Max Payne bullet-time wanna-be effect which is caused by a power-up that makes you hyper fast and puts the whole world in slow mo!

Of course, no fps would be complete with a hefty dose of action, and Turok delivers by truckloads. You'll face hundreds of varied enemies in a wide variety of settings, and contend with challenging jumping puzzles as well as truly challenging boss fights (once again the T-Rex takes the award). And just how do you take care of those wackos? Rough language? Hell no, guns baby!! 14 of them to be exact!!! Turok was the first game that I could remember that had a truly massive arsenal, everything from an explosive bow (take that Rambo!) to a chaingun is here, complete with bitching sound and visual effects and some cool death animations and damage effects. Oh, and as demanded by international fps laws, you also have the requisite "ultimate weapon" that puts all other toys to shame... and what a weapon it is!! The Chronoscepter has to be assembled by collecting all eight of it's pieces around the game world and has only 3 shots, but once you fire it up you see why the baby kept you waiting! Launching all sorts of particle and lightning effects, the Chronoscepter causes shockwaves to ripple all over the screen as pillars of light emerge from the target area, the whole level shakes and comes alive with lightning bolts and everything that was even remotely in it's firing direction just dies, in a word? Kickass!!!

The Bad
The worst flaws in Turok come courtesy of it's console roots. First of all, as a way of maximizing the small save game space of the N64, the save game keeps track of your stats, items and unlocked areas, and allows you to save only in the hub area. So in essence we have 3D Megaman, as every baddie just comes back from the dead in the exact same spot as the game respawns every area over and over again. The game uses a live-based system that allows you to continue a level from one of their various checkpoints if you die somehow, but if you lose all your lives you have to start from the beggining and redo the whole thing until you get it right and save your progress...I don't know about you, but with counted exceptions I hate these sort of cheap-o systems, more reminiscent of an 8-bit famicom game than of a next-generation 3D game...

Then there are the jumping puzzles, they are quite a bunch, and they can pose some serious challenges, and they may rub you the wrong way if you don't get used to them early on. After all I don't need to point out the difficulties these puzzles pose when viewed from a first-person perspective.

And last but not least.... the fog....

THE FOG!!!

Let's see, you have an underpowered 64-bit console only good for Mario games and a game with lots of open areas, so what do you do??? You extend the draw distance about 12 feet from you and just obscure the rest of the world with a fogging effect... greeeeeeeaat.... And nevermind the fact that this is a conversion based on a much more powerful platform that can be upgraded, so why would they bother to rework their engine so that you could control the draw distance instead of hardwiring it to the lackluster N64 specs if it's much easier to just carbon copy the damn thing as it is?... bastards....

Oh yeah, there's also the fact that the game doesn't exploit the Turok character much. In the comics he's a witty Spider-Man like renegade hero that would rather weasel his way out of any responsability than be a superhero. In the game he's just a generic asskicker out to save the world... Oh well...

The Bottom Line
As you can see the game really shocked me when I got my hands on it a while after it hitted the PC platform. If there's anything I expected from a first generation N64 fps game believe me that it wasn't for it to be fun, challenging and imaginative. Sure, it also comes with plenty of console-related problems, but one can clearly see after giving it a go why Acclaim is still churning out sequels to this fantastic shooter. A definitive blast for action fans.

Windows · by Zovni (10504) · 2003

Turok: Dinosaur Hunter is just plain fun!

The Good
- Turok is filled with pure unadulterated, Doom-like fun. Shooting dinosaurs and bad guys is just a blast, and keeps you pumped up.

  • For 1997, the graphics in this game are excellent. At the time, most first-person shooters were Doom clones. There was Quake, but that was only on the PC when Turok was released.

  • The atmosphere in this game is excellent, and so is the music. You really do get the "jungle" feeling.

  • You are a magical Native American who yells "I AM TUROK!" Can we just appreciate that?

    The Bad
    - The platforming segments in this game are often tedious to play. This is because, in my opinion, controls for first-person shooters on the N64 are dated and a little difficult to work easily, and makes it hard to platform freely.

  • Fog effects everywhere!

  • Boss battles, or just battles against bigger enemies, are a little underwhelming.

  • Not a complaint from me, but the game is very repetitive. This is fine by me, and actually adds to the fun in my opinion, but I can definitely see why others would find this to be a problem.

    The Bottom Line
    Turok is just a fun game. It delivers fast action, and more importantly, dinosaurs. No, it's not perfect, but it's still a pretty enjoyable game.

Nintendo 64 · by Ian Dawson (7) · 2013

A Basic N64 Action Game

The Good
This game was one of the first action games to come out on N64. It was pretty basic none the less. Set in a different world, you are Turok who must defeat the bad guy at the end, with the minions trying to stop you. Set in a jungle setting, stages usually depict either some part of a jungle or a temple. Thrown into the seen are some modern aspects, such as present day weapons (and a hummer boss), as well as futuristic weapons like things they make you explode! This gives us the hint that Turok does not take place in our own world..

One thing to say for sure in this game: There were plenty of weapons. I mean dozens. Anything ranging from a pistol to a huge plasma cannon. It was pretty cool just watching the guys explode all over the place.

The sound was done extremely well. Guys made extremely funny sounds when dying, the weapons sound real, you can hear yourself swimming underwater, and you can hear footsteps and breathing when you, or the enemy, is running. Better than most of the games in its day. The music is composed pretty well, too. Tranquil music underwater, fast paced in the jungle, and creepy when inside the catacombs. This added to the atmosphere of the game.

The graphics are done nicely, with little details such as pigs and monkeys to add detail. However the graphics are brought down terribly by fogging that you may hardly notice this.

The AI is nothing to brag about. Basic "if they see you, charge you with a spear or club, or shoot you from afar." Bosses are basically the same thing too.

The Bad
The most major issue in this game is the lack of varying gameplay from start to finish. The main concept is to get keys from the prior world to unlock the next world. Now, sometimes you could choose between worlds from a nexus, but inevitably you would have to collect them all. Each world pretty much consisted of killing hordes and hordes of seemingly endless bad guys to find three well-hidden keys in each level. And then after about an hour of searching your completely tired of the game. There's 8 worlds of this, too. Not much of a game. There's just one word to describe this game: Basic. Run, shoot, run, shoot. That's really all there is to it. There's not much in puzzles except figuring out where to go and the occasional jumping puzzle. There's bosses, but the AI just makes them tougher enemies.

The other big problem with this game is that the graphics are brought down so, so much by the FOGGING that comes with most FPS games from the N64. The machine didn't have much power back then, and so the fogging was needed to be put in to preserve frames. This is a shame, because truly, up close the graphics are astounding for their time. No fogging could have redeemed this game so much.

Another problem this game had was its camera angles. It was in First Person view, but it felt like the camera was two feet in front of your face! Every time (I mean every time) you had to jump from cliff to cliff it seemed like you could walk on air for two or three paces on thin air before you actually needed to jump. Also, the camera leaned left and right and seemed to skew a lot from the game.



The Bottom Line
A game with nice sound, music, and graphics brought down by fogging, lack of story, and mediocre gameplay. This is THE basic shooter for the N64 with lack of story and typical run, shoot, run, shoot concept. Unless your a game collector, or this was your childhood favorite, it is probably not worth it to buy. There are better N64 shooters out there such as Goldeneye which makes this game seem...well...basic.

Nintendo 64 · by Matt Neuteboom (976) · 2005

[ View all 7 player reviews ]

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Neat! GAMEBOY COLOR! (1990) Sep 5, 2010

Trivia

Console Firsts

Was the first 1st-person shooter on the console. It was also the first third-party release for the Nintendo 64.

Was released well above the price of other games for the N64. $80 in the US, £70 in the UK, and $130 in Australia. Higher than any other game for the platform at that time.

German Censorship

The German version of the game was censored. All human opponents were replaced by robots - some of them were exclusively modeled for this release, others were just taken from the last level of the game and used throughout all the other levels as well.

Japanese Title

The Japanese title translates to Space-time Soldier Turok in English.

Memory Card Goof

In the United Kingdom, Turok: Dinosaur Hunter was the first N64 game released there to require an expansion memory-card in order to save your in-game progress. The only problem was, Nintendo had not yet made their official memory-cards available for retail sale in the UK. Scrambling to meet market immediate market demand, third-party accessory manufacturers were able to swoop in and fill the gap. A notable misstep by Nintendo which could have tanked the release of Turok for the UK.

Soundtrack

The soundtrack has only five original tracks from the game. There are also four official remixes included as a bonus. The soundtrack was released in 1997. 1. Technosaur Radio Edit 2. Deep Jungle Mix 3. Tyranosaur Club Edit 4. Rokozor 5. The Jungle 6. Boss Encounter 7. The Treetops 8. Lava Land 9. Campanier Boss Encounter

Songs from 1-4 are official remixes, and songs from 5-9 are general tracks from the in the game. The whole soundtrack runs just under 40 minutes.

Turok Origins

Turok: Dinosaur Hunter is based on a comic book series of the same name, and not the other way around as most people seem to think. The series is published by Acclaim Comics and written by the great Fabian Nicieza.

Iguana, who were owned by Acclaim at the time, developed the original Turok. A year or so later, Acclaim merged Iguana and Probe, one of the other developers owned by Acclaim, into one single developers' house, Acclaim Inc.

Awards

  • Electronic Gaming Monthly
    • March 1998 (Issue 104) - First-Person Shooter Game of the Year Runner-Up (Readers' Choice)

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Contributors to this Entry

Game added by Kartanym.

Additional contributors: Unicorn Lynx, Exodia85, Alaka, DreinIX, marley0001, Mok, Talos, WONDERなパン.

Game added August 22, 2000. Last modified March 13, 2024.