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Looking back at Turok: Dinosaur Hunter

It was 1997, the Nintendo 64 and competing console Playstation had just dropped in price to $200. I only found this out once I got to a local K-Mart (Bonus!!), ready with a wad of cash to blow on the Nintendo console and a copy of Turok. If it wasn’t for that that price drop I wouldn’t have been able to afford the RF Adapter that I would need for the system, so I got lucky.

I got everything home, setup, and began playing the game that would ingrain the southpaw control style into my gaming soul. What a joy I remember this game being, the graphics were sweet the analog took some getting used to but it was equally nice. Go back and play this title today, if you still have the means, and I promise that the “auto-center aiming” feature will drive you bat-shit nuts! But back then it was all new so you didn’t know or care about stuff like that. Fog surrounded you at nearly every moment in this game and although it’s primary function was to cover up the eyesore known as “pop up” it helped create an eerie atmosphere where the enemy could jump out at you from any direction, at any moment. I can’t remember another FPS that I played from beginning to end, with no cheating, before Turok. How far we have come.

The controls in this game became a staple in every N64 shooter, yes even GoldenEye had a southpaw layout and the many other iterations of Turok (2,3, and Rage Wars) stuck with this layout. Even first party developer Rare adopted this scheme in Perfect Dark.

To further etch this control style into my mind as the one and only way to play an FPS, Sega released the Dreamcast in 1999 and with it came countless hours of split screen and online Unreal Tournament. Years later the XBOX was released and the first game I played was Halo and OF COURSE this game had southpaw and Legacy schemes so after years of playing southpaw on the N64 and Sega Dreamcast you know damn well I was sticking with the tried and true control style. Good times.

This entry was posted on Monday, January 21st, 2008 at 5:35 pm and is filed under Classic Gaming. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.