Adventures of Dino Riki (NES) Playthrough - NintendoComplete

A playthrough of Hudson Soft's 1988 platforming/shoot 'em up game for the Nintendo, Adventures of Dino Riki.

Adventures of Dino Riki was one of those games that I used to borrow all the time from a friend when I was a kid. You know the type - it was the game that you would borrow once you'd played through all of their other games. The fun, reliable fallback that you'd grab on your way home for dinner, not bothered that you'd already played it a million times before.

And I think what kept me coming back to it so often was that I wasn't any good at it. I understood how to play it, and each time I'd play it I'd make some small amount progress, but I never really thought about beating it. It was always a herculean effort to get just one stage further.

Looking back on it as an adult, I think that attitude was the only way I ever managed to "master" this one, and by master, I mean "barely survive the first loop." The game has no ending, and it was absolutely vicious until you learned it inside and out.

It's an auto-scrolling vertical shoot 'em up, and though it has a heavy dose of top-down platformer mixed in, it feels much closer to 1942 or Starship Hector than it does a traditional hop-and-bopper. Riki starts out with a basic throwing axe (what was with Hudson's obsession with cavemen?), but by blasting away at bushes, rocks, and random secret blocks hidden in each stage, he can upgrade to a wave of boomerangs or - the ultimate in caveman protection - a rapid-fire flame shot. Like any good shooter, he can also upgrade his abilities by finding items for flying and for increased speed. Just watch out with the speed-ups: it doesn't take too many to turn Riki into a magnet for pitfalls.

As a platformer or a shooter alone, Adventures of Dino Riki would pose an unforgiving challenge, but together.... oh boy. Many scenes in the latter-half of the game require absolute precision, and the waves of enemies and projectiles that you deal with as you make pixel-perfect jumps can be a huge test of patience, especially when dying means restarting a stage with no power-ups whatsoever. You don't die instantly when hit, but you do lose a weapon level, and when this happens, death is often an inevitability.

It's devious and maddening, and it's the sort of addictive action that old-school arcade gamers thrived on, and the sort of game that reduced controllers to piles of shattered plastic. If, like me, you're a fan of 80s Hudson Soft, it's a feeling that you know well: in many ways, it channels the spirit of Adventure Island and Milon's Secret Castle.

Although it's simple (the game appeared in the US nearly three years after its original Famicom release!), the graphics are fun, bright, and colorful, and the music is super-memorable. I doubt I'll ever forget that little ditty from the title screen.

Its design ethos and the feel of its gameplay is far removed from the more modern NES releases, but if you're hankering for a calloused thumb, Adventures of Dino Riki will gladly oblige with its excellent arcade-style shooter action.
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No cheats were used during the recording of this video.

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