Zombie Dinos

Overview

Zombie Dinos from Planet Zeltoid is an educational adventure game, released in 1992 for the Philips CD-i. The game stars Cam Clarke as Dexter the Dinotroid, and the player as "Rocket Scientist" in a quest to save earth from time-traveling zombie dinosaurs, who have been brought to the present by the evil Harry the Harrier, and his "Brain Blobs." This makes Dexter's catchphrase, "Let's kick some brain" far more real than one would initially think. It's up to Rocket Scientist and Dexter to travel through time, defeating Brain Blobs, saving humans, and locating dinosaurs in each time period.

The game is fairly well-received from fans, garnering a perfect ten, according to four user votes on GameSpot.

Gameplay

Zombie Dinos from Planet Zeltoid is a point-and-click game, where the goal is to rescue dinosaurs from each time period that is visited. Players are able to select a time period to go to on the time machine interface, and then presented with a playing field. The playing field is a small grid, where the player guides Dexter to each square in search of the dinosaurs. Squares that don't have a dinosaur will waste time (minuscule amount) or will have a hazard (causing even more time to be lost).

Each action that the player does takes up an amount of time, as the "time limit" is not a real "time limit," per se. It doesn't operate in real time, instead it is more turn based. In order to more quickly discover which dinosaur is threatened by zombification, the player must employ the usage of the Grunt-O-Meter. This device gives the player a reading and direction in order to easily find the dinosaur based on the grid (especially effective when used in conjunction with given hints).

One advertised feature in Zombie Dinos is the Dino Encyclopedia. While it takes up time during missions, in between missions it can be freely used. It contains any clues obtained up to that point. Once enough clues have been obtained, the player can guess which dinosaur is in danger. If the player guesses correctly, it leads to a showdown between the dinosaur and a Brain Blob. This results in some dinosaur trivia, where three correct answers save the day (and three wrong answers result in failure).

This, however, is just one "round." In order to completely finish the game, the player must complete three similar rounds in a row. Once all three rounds have been completed, Dexter and Rocket Scientist have effectively saved the world from the Brain Blob invasion.