The game loosely follows the story of the film, starting with Aladar, Zini, Suri, and Plio on the Lemur Island. The island is destroyed in a meteor shower, forcing Aladar and his friends to flee to the mainland, where they encounter a herd of dinosaurs led by the ruthless Kron.
Gameplay
All versions of the game are played from a third-person top-down perspective. Most of the game consists of puzzles. The player's goal on each level is to complete tasks, such as defeating all enemy dinosaurs in an area, or locating and leading lost dinosaurs back to a herd. Enemies include Velociraptor, Oviraptor, Albertosaurus, Dryptosaurus, Spinosaurus and Carnotaurus. The PlayStation and Dreamcast versions of the game both feature 12 levels. Checkpoints are featured in most levels. The PC and console versions allow the player to separately or simultaneously control three characters: Aladar, Zini, and the Pteranodon that took Aladar's egg to the lemur island in the film, here dubbed Flia. The PC and console versions feature clips from the film, which play before and after each level. The Game Boy Color version supports use of the Game Boy Printer and features 27 levels, as well as six playable characters from the film: Aladar, Eema, Url, Zini, Plio and Suri.
Reception
Blake Fischer reviewed the Dreamcast version of the game for Next Generation, rating it two stars out of five, and stated that "Not as bad as most movie tie-ins, but still not a very compelling game." The game was met with very mixed to negative reviews upon release. GameRankings and Metacritic gave it a score of 51.62% for the Game Boy Color version; 51.89% and 44 out of 100 for the PlayStation version; 49.20% and 53 out of 100 for the Dreamcast version; and 45.75% for the PlayStation 2 version. Adam Cleveland of IGN gave the PlayStation version of the game a 3 out of 10 and said, "The game isn't exciting, the levels are drab, and the graphics are outdated. Dinosaur's objectives can be accomplished quickly, and the levels speed by. Before you know it, it's all over." Anthony Chau of IGN gave the Dreamcast version a 5.8 out of 10 and criticized it for "horrible collision detection, tedious fighting sequences, and an overall gameplay experience that just isn't fun." Marc Nix of IGN gave the Game Boy Color version a 4 out of 10 and criticized the game for "an unfortunate lack of good puzzles" and gameplay that "quickly becomes droned and boring." Nix also criticized the game for bad collision detection and controls, as well as three of its playable lemur characters: "You end up playing most of the game with a leaping monkey. That may be fun elsewhere, but I want to stomp, to swim, to fight. If the game box says 'Dinosaur', I want Dinosaurs. Even Aladar, the film's star, sees little screen time in this game."
