Color a Dinosaur

Name: Color a Dinosaur
Year: 1993
Publisher: Virgin Games, Inc.
Developer: FarSight Studios
Genre: Art/Creativity
Hours Played: Half an hour
Beaten: N/A

Color a Dinosaur is one of those games that's become infamous among NES reviewers.  If you've never played it, it probably doesn't sound so bad.  Maybe you've even wondered if it's poor reputation is due mostly to anti-kiddie-game sentiments among gamers.  Well, let me assure you that even the most die-hard dinosaur coloring enthusiast would be hard pressed to enjoy this game.

The best thing I can say about Color a Dinosaur is that it lives up to it's name - you do get to color a dinosaur.  Your choice out of sixteen different dinosaurs, even. And that's all you get to do.  Don't make the mistake of assuming this is a low tech Mario Paint - there's no blank pages, no freestyle drawing tool.  All you can do is click and fill using a choice of 3 colors and 7 eye-bleeding patterns.

The reason I've picked this game to review first is because its my prediction for worst game on the NES. It fails in every category - you could argue the screen-sized dinosaurs were impressive for the time, if the designs weren't so ugly and the colors so eye scorching.  Even in 93, this didn't deserve to take up an entire cartridge.

Graphics: 0 (Awful) - I do have to give the game credit for truth in box art - the colors and art style really do look as bad as the box suggests.

Music: 0 (Awful) - I think maybe the title screen plays a little ditty?  The rest of the game is completely silent, except for a couple of buzzy sound effects when you click stuff.

Controls: 0 (Awful) - I know what you're thinking - how bad could the controls in a coloring game be? The problem is that you can't move the cursor freehand.  First, you select which part of the dinosaur you'd like to color - and since the dinosaurs are covered in spikes and spots, that means manually cycling through each detail until you've reached the body part you would like to "color".  Then, you hit the B button, and the game slowly - slowly! - fills in the selected area.  You'd have more fun if you fired the game up in an emulated, did a Print Screen, and colored it yourself in Microsoft Paint.

Story: 0 (Awful) - It's not like I was expecting a plot or anything in a game called Color a Dinosaur, but even Mario Paint on the Super Nintendo had style, theming, and cut scenes.  I don't think this game even has a credits screen.

Length: 0 (Awful) - I dare you to play this for more then fifteen minutes. I dare you.  Sixteen dinosaurs to color.  That's it.  No mini-games.  Even a blank page with a free-style drawing tool would have given this game some replayability.  As it is, it's not even as good as the free drawing program that came on black and white computers in the 80s.

Total: 0 (Lowest Possible Score)