Larry The Dino makes extensive use of QBasic LINE and CIRCLE commands. Some of the explosions are pretty low in quality, as 100 concentric circles drawn inside each other make an explosion. Other explosions are very blocky, as in confined to a box and thus the explosions sort of exploded in on themselves. The backgrounds were not bad, but the desert scenes were not particularly well drawn and it looked like LINE and CIRCLE was used in some cases.

It is hard to time the jump part of jumping over enemies when you can't kill them because you have no ammo or you just shot. Also, if you finish an episode, you have to load another program. There's no cheat protection that disallows you from skipping to the last episode of the game, so if you really wanted to, you could skip playing the first two episodes of the game and run the episode that takes you straight to Xenophobe's lair!

The story builds as you go along, creating a feeling of continuing on. However, the story can be pretty darn long when Larry is talking to the other dinosaurs, plus I don't think he ever reveals his name to them. There is a "dramatic" scene with Steve, which I did not understand as to why Steve and Larry did not team up. The game terminates with a tough battle against Xenophobe, made tougher if you die with Xenophobe to the left because he's (or is it a she?) so fast you don't have time to react.

However, you rarely get enough ammunition to win a level, and some of the ball bearings that roll toward you are black and hard to see, so this game salvages a point. Unfortunately, those work against the game's fun factor.

Unfortunately, it contains gory death scenes, which for me happened all too often (to my delight). This game is not for children. This is too bad, for a children's platform game can be addicting (like kids playing Mario on their Game Boys. It's intended for everybody, but kids have the most fun playing it, or so it seems). Take out the gore and make it replayable and you've got a fine children's game.

On a different note, for me time is valuable, and sitting through scenes that take several minutes without any action except for a dinosaur's mouth moving (where's the story skip?) is not fun. Also not fun is jumping over a rock monster (where are the aliens?) when trying to shoot or when I'm out of ammo because you don't get enough and there's no reloads. Couple that with the strange collision techniques and Larry the Dino, in retrospect, is a promising game gone to pot because of its intended audience and several setbacks.

Larry the Dinosaur Reviewed by Diamond Titan