Return to Dinosaur Land - COMPLETE

WELL WHAT IF I DON'T WANT TO.


I picked up Return To Dinosaur Land on a search for SMBX projects on the site that looked as if they had some promise, but might not get a lot of attention on their own. And this title stuck out like a sore thumb on account that it appears to be little more than a SMW clone, but the screenshots seemed to communicate that a lot of thought and effort went into the game. I can attest that this is the case in some areas, whilst disappointingly lacking in the more important aspects.

STRUCTURE
Each level in the game is in essence a re-imagining of the levels in Super Mario World. I say re-imagining because they only share gimmicks and not identical level layouts. The first level on the right is in a forested area, like the original, but has you climbing up and down steep hills. The familiarity of the old combined with a fresh take on these older ideas is likely the game's strongest point.

The world map is set up as a nearly exact replica of SMW world as well, with the levels you journey to in each world being of a similar type as in the SNES game. However there are also a few odd levels which are completely new so as to add a bit of flavor that wasn't present in SMW. There's a level in World 4 that basically serves the role of a desert area, and a whole new world is added to serve as the ice biome. All welcome additions.

GRAPHICS
The graphic sets used are of good quality, using the same tiles from SMW or re-edits of said titles for the various worlds. Nothing new or exciting. Now the way the graphical choices in each level are implemented is what the game does well. I felt that a lot of attention was paid to how the tiles frame the level, particularly in the forests and ghost houses: The areas you travel to don't feel static, blocky, or amateurishly put together from a visual standpoint. Rather, they seem like places and establish a strong feeling of continuity, such as going on a journey. This was always a strong suit of the Mario series over it's competitors.

LEVEL DESIGN
This is where the game ultimately falls flat, falling into the usual problem I see with fangames of any sort: Much attention being paid to the graphical and stylistic details while missing the mark on very basic gameplay details. Let me give you an example:



*facepalm*

This little encounter happens in the very first level of the game. The Banzai Bill here is triggered suddenly and without warning once you jump over that first blue pipe. Now, that was the way things were in the original SMW too. But there's a key difference between the way they did it and the way it's handled here. First, these SMBX Banzai's are faster, so their sudden appearances also come with a smaller reaction time for players. Second, the terrain gently slopes upward wheras in the original it was basically completely flat all throughout with a few divots or raised patches that you could use to avoid the surprise attacks. The sloping terrain also means that new players are being guided upward and will naturally jump to clear the terrain faster: Carrying you right into the bill for an almost guaranteed hit.

This reeks of misunderstanding: Of how to gently ease the player into things through smarter enemy placement. On the contrary, you are more or less dropped into each level and expected to deal with whatever it throws at you.

Similar design issues pervade the game in different forms: re-sprites of enemies that subvert the player's expectations, certain enemies that are invincible from being killed by normal means with seemingly little regard to their placement, over-long switch door gimmicks, enemies clustered tightly together in great numbers, et cetera. The design of each level felt as if once the level got made, a bunch of enemies were dropped into it so as to "fill the space." I see a lot of SMBX devs, skilled and unskilled, guilty of doing this. As a result, a large majority of the levels feel cookie-cutter in their design with a larger cluster of these offenders occurring early in the game. I can tell you that the level design does get better around the second half, as it also marks the introduction of the more creative gimmicks, old and new.

One point in the game's favor is it's fantastic level length for the majority of the game: Most of the more irritating stages come in the form of caves and autoscrollers. The autoscroll moves far too slowly, and the caves usually mean a large number of enemies with little room to maneuver. However all stages end at the perfect time which alleviates a great deal of that frustration.

DIFFICULTY PROGRESSION
The difficulty is quite spotty throughout. Likely a result of two different developers with different design principles working in tandem: I can safely say that the first world is far harder than a first world ought to be. The 3rd level consisted of flying fish enemies with large hitboxes and spiky un-bonkable heads. There doesn't seem to be any true curve: this graph is more like a scatter plot with much of the difficulty being unintentional.

PRESENTATION


Holy ballistic bullets, batman!

Many visual quirks and interesting gimmicks are utilized here and there, to my delight each time I ran into them. Where it falls short in design, the game makes up for it beautifully in the pain-staking efforts to re-create features from SMW not present in the SMBX engine: Diagonal podoboos, mushroom platforms that sink with your weight, flying koopas that surrender a Leaf when beaten, and even fully functional Sumo Bros! That greatly impressed me. The game is worthy of a once-through for these technical oddities alone.


OVERALL
This game is more difficult than it presents itself as. It expects you to have played SMW and also be familiar with SMBX's mechanics to an above-average degree. I would not recommend this to casual players.

Although it has a lot of charm and care attached to it, far too many stages were boring to play through and had little replay value as a result of lacking purpose. Without which, you have only an assortment of platforms with an accompanying assortment of enemies to wade through. I wouldn't call this the hallmark of a terrible game - only a mediocre one.

I particularly enjoyed the athletic stages. The second and third ghost houses, and I believe my favorite level was Valley of Bowser 3.



There are unique and engaging levels here. It's just a shame that all of the good stuff is toward the tail end of the game.