Dino Crisis for the Playstation 1

Dino Crisis: my first taste of survival horror

Dino Crisis for me was the first introduction to the survival horror genre of gaming, and one of my favourite games on the original Playstation. Being chased by dinosaurs in a video game is nothing new of course, as fans of 3D Monster Maze on the ZX81 will recall, but on Sony’s first console Capcom turned the idea into full-blown survival horror.

I first played Dino Crisis on my NTSC PlayStation while I was living in Bermuda in the late 90s. Living overseas on a tax-free income, I had a lot of free time and a bit of spare cash, so I invested in a few PlayStation games, and Dino Crisis was a no-brainer. A game that was basically like playing Jurassic Park was too hard to resist.

The plot doesn’t hide where it got its ideas from either, with a scientist accidentally bringing dinosaurs into the present day, this time through a rift in time and space opened by an experimental energy source, and you are sent in as part of a team to investigate the facility.

Facing a Velociraptor in Dino Crisis

The story: Regina on Ibis Island

It’s 2009, and you play Regina, an agent of S.O.R.T., the Secret Operation Raid Team, sent with three colleagues (Gail, Rick and Cooper) to the remote Ibis Island. The job is to recover Dr. Edward Kirk, a scientist reported dead three years earlier, who has actually been working on a weapons project using a new power source called Third Energy. Things go wrong straight away: Cooper is eaten by a T. rex before the mission has properly started, which sets the tone, and the team find the base overrun with dinosaurs. It turns out Kirk’s experiments have swapped a chunk of the island with the same spot millions of years in the past.

How Dino Crisis plays

Like another classic Capcom survival horror, Resident Evil, the game relies on lots of creeping around claustrophobic corridors, with appropriate creepy violin music to heighten the tension as you wait for the next raptor to leap out at you. The gore level is ramped up to 10, with lots of blood, and some great character deformation, your player limping when injured and dripping blood on the floor. That isn’t just for show: if Regina is bleeding she keeps losing health until you patch her up with a hemostat. Careful management of weapons and ammo is required to make it through the various stages in one piece, especially when faced with the Tyrannosaurus, with whom you fight on several occasions but never seem to kill.

The controls are an improvement over Resident Evil, allowing some quick movements appropriate for blasting fast moving lizards. You can turn 180 degrees in an instant, move with your weapon drawn and let the game pick the target, all of which you need when a raptor comes through a window.

The base itself is full of locked doors that need digital disk keys, laser barriers you can use to keep the dinosaurs out, and colour-coded emergency boxes for storing supplies, which are linked so you can get your kit back from any box of the same colour.

The game used a novel multiple ending mechanic, the ending you are presented with being based on certain decisions made towards the end of the game about when to leave, who to rescue and how to get off the island. There are three endings, and the game keeps track of which ones you have discovered, which adds a level of replay value, and there are bonuses to unlock and extend the life of the game.

Real-time 3D: not quite Resident Evil

Dino Crisis was directed and produced by Shinji Mikami, the man behind Resident Evil, and you can tell. But there’s one big technical difference. The early Resident Evil games used pre-rendered backgrounds, beautifully detailed still pictures that the characters walked around in front of. Dino Crisis built its environments in real-time 3D instead, on a new engine of Capcom’s own.

Capcom also tried to give it a different name: where Resident Evil was “survival horror”, Dino Crisis was sold as “panic horror”. Mikami described Resident Evil as horror in the fun house and Dino Crisis as more like riding a roller coaster, which is about right. Zombies shuffle; raptors run.

What the reviewers thought

It came out on the PlayStation in Japan in July 1999 and in the UK that October, and it was a big success, selling 2.4 million copies. Plenty of reviewers summed it up as “Resident Evil with dinosaurs”, which was meant as a compliment. Computer and Video Games and America’s Next Generation both gave it five out of five, and IGN gave it 9.2.

Dreamcast and PC versions followed in 2000, but they were less well received than the original.

Dino Crisis sequels

• Dino Crisis 2 (PlayStation, 2000): Regina returns alongside a new hero, Dylan Morton, in a much more action-packed sequel.
• Dino Stalker (PlayStation 2, 2002): a light gun spin-off from the Gun Survivor series.
• Dino Crisis 3 (Xbox, 2003): set in space in the 26th century, and generally agreed to be the low point.

After that the series went quiet, apart from Regina turning up as a cameo in the odd Capcom game.

Playing Dino Crisis today

The good news is that it’s easier to play now than it has been for years. Sony added the original to PlayStation Plus Premium in 2024, and both Dino Crisis and Dino Crisis 2 were re-released for PC on GOG in January 2025, updated for modern Windows with 4K and gamepad support, and then on Steam. Or there’s the original PlayStation disc, if you still have one.

Alone in the Dark may have started the survival horror genre, and Resident Evil will often feature on lists of the top PlayStation 1 games, but Dino Crisis was my first taste of survival horror, and it’s still one of my favourite games on the original Playstation.

Frequently Asked Questions

When did Dino Crisis come out?

Capcom released Dino Crisis on the PlayStation in Japan in July 1999, in North America in September 1999 and in Europe in October 1999. Dreamcast and PC versions followed in 2000.

Who made Dino Crisis?

Capcom, with Shinji Mikami, the creator of Resident Evil, as director and producer.

Did Dino Crisis use pre-rendered backgrounds like Resident Evil?

No. Unlike the early Resident Evil games, Dino Crisis used real-time 3D environments rather than pre-rendered backgrounds.

How many endings does Dino Crisis have?

Three. Which one you get depends on decisions you make near the end of the game, such as whether to go after Kirk alone or with Gail.

Can you play Dino Crisis today?

Yes. It’s on PlayStation Plus Premium, and the PC version was re-released on GOG in 2025 and later on Steam, alongside Dino Crisis 2.

Sources

• Release dates, staff, sales, reviews, the “panic horror” label and re-releases: Dino Crisis (video game) and Dino Crisis, Wikipedia