Turok: Dinosaur Hunter - On this day

The first-person shooter genre in the 1990s was still underrepresented on consoles. The success of games like Doom and Quake opened up an opportunity to change that, and it was a bit strange when one such shooter was announced for Nintendo’s new console. Nintendo’s consoles were reputed to be a place where violent games are censored, and then we got a shooter called Turok: Dinosaur Hunter in which the main character slaughtered dinosaurs.

Initially, this game was conceived as a third-person title, like the then Tomb Raider. But developer Iguana Entertainment has concluded that it will better demonstrate the graphics capabilities of the Nintendo 64 console from a first-person perspective. Game development proved problematic as the whole thing needed to be folded into an 8MB cartridge. Turok was supposed to come out in 1996 but was eventually postponed to 1997.

Turok was based on a comic book series that has existed since 1956. The game put us in the role of Tal’Set, an Indian who gets the title of Turok - a defender who protects the barrier between our world and the lost land with dinosaurs and aliens. In a foreign land, Turok was looking for eight pieces of an ancient artifact that a villain named Campaigner was trying to get hold of.

The gameplay boiled down to shooting dinosaurs, demons, and human opponents through the jungle. Turok had 13 different weapons, from a classic knife to a shotgun to some fictitious shooters. The specificity of the game was that the enemies had different animations of dying depending on where you hit them. The existence of beings who did not attack the player but served to restore Turk's energy was also pointed out.

The best part of the Turks at the time was that the game took place in the jungle. Namely, most of the shooters at the time were located in closed spaces, ie corridors, and rooms, so Turok represented something different. Thus, Turok was one of the most popular games on Nintendo 64, and for half a year the most popular shooter until GoldenEye 007 came along.

The game has sold 1.5 million copies on the Nintendo console. That same year, Turok appeared on PC, where he did not have a warm welcome due to lack of multiplayer, forcing checkpoints, etc. Nevertheless, success on the Nintendo console resulted in the sequel to Turok 2: Seeds of Evil. The series later fell silent despite one prequel, only to return in 2008 and then disappear again.

As of 2015, Turok 1 and 2 game remasters are available. They can be played on all current platforms today.