"No practical reason to ever play this game"

Adventures of Dino Riki is a shabby game with tedious gameplay, no story, unreliable controls and should not be played by anyone unless they are on some obsessive quest to beat every Nintendo game ever made.

This game is so hard that I probably could not pass even the first level without cheating, so I did and it was still really hard to beat with seemingly endless and tedious jumping puzzles. In the final levels I was getting hit non stop by creatures and projectiles, all while having to jump over perlious chasms and avoid instant death traps that open underneath and suck you into the bowels of the earth.

The game has absolutely no story and no ending, and when you play, you don't know why you are even there. When you finish the game, you finally see what horrendous creature has been terrorizing your village, and the trip is not worth it.

Story: 0
There simply isn't any.

Graphics: 6
The graphics are only slightly above average with three different settings which are recycled. The end bosses are large and detailed and the various attack graphics used by Dino Riki are varied at different power levels. The graphics did actually make me feel like I was in danger of falling into a chasm.

Sound: 5
There was nothing memorable about any of the music, however it did evoke a sense of dread that I was going to die by making another stupid jumping mistake while being attacked on all sides by enemies.

Control: 4
The control was good unless I had to make a precision jump, in which case I was usually SOL. I would have liked to be able to shoot in different directions and have some defensive attacks at my disposal as he is not very powerful. It is impossible to make precision jumps while dodging endless things at once from every direction aimed straight at you. It was not easy making the precision jumps in this game even while invulnerable and having all the time in the world.

Gameplay: 3
The Gameplay in this game is actually pretty simple which is a good thing. The only problem is you do the same things over and over again.

Ending: 1
This game seems like it was unfinished, as it just ends after defeating the decidely mediocre level 4 herbivorous end boss and starts over again. If I had not previously known that the game ended with level 4, I wouldn't have had the patience to finish playing.

Overall: 3
There is no real reason to pay money for this game, or even download the ***. I am sure there are people out there who could beat this game without cheating, but it doesn't really seem worth it.

Reviewer's Score: 3/10, Originally Posted: 12/27/01, Updated 12/27/01