Dinosaur Island

Dinosaur Island is an interactive story developed by Game Arts and released for Saturn and Windows 95 in 1997, created by Izumi Takemoto. The game takes place on an island inhabited by dinosaurs and follows three students learning to control the dinosaurs using music. After being discovered by a team of explorers, the island was colonized and the population there use the dinosaurs for jobs such as construction and as vehicles, similar to The Flintstones. An academy was established in order to train people to control the dinosaurs and this is where the main characters are enrolled.

The game can be described as an ‘interactive anime’. The story plays out and at different points the player may make a selection which can change the direction of the story. Some decisions made can steer the story in a completely other direction and thus there are many storylines and endings to be seen. All animation in the game is rendered entirely by the Saturn in real-time which creates greater control of the story, allowing the player to rewind and save at different points in the story.