At a glance, Chrome Dino is like other generic platformers of its time. No momentum, extremely simple moveset, and a smorgasbord of one-note power-ups. But I’ll be damned if it isn’t the best of its kind! Much like Donkey Kong Country, Dino keeps its platforming interesting through complimentary gimmicks instead of a dynamic moveset.

Dino’s signature ability is his, uh, head. It can be thrown in eight directions to attack enemies, grapple onto platforms, and push obstacles. The best comparison I can make is Ristar, another acclaimed Genesis platformer. I do think Treasure cranked more potential out of this mechanic though, for two reasons.

First is the levels themselves. Chrome Dino could have easily lost its head here, as there are puzzles and combat to contend with on top of platforming. Because everything interacts with the throw, however, nothing feels convoluted. When you come across a suspicious object, your instinct will be to head-throw, and this is used to silently teach all of the head’s applications. Ristar struggled to achieve this balance for me. It relied on puzzle-solving too often and pole-grabbing as the primary means of platforming became repetitive due to little escalation in challenge beyond putting some spikes on one side. Combat was better, but it only got to shine during the bosses at the end of each world, of which there were just seven.

Second is the head power-ups. Ristar wishes he could do a quarter of the things with his hands that Dino can do with his noggin. A hammer head with increased damage, a three-head split that increases range, a bomb head, heads that attack everything around Dino, and a sleep head that restores health, just to name a few. Some got more attention than others. The vacuum head is really lame for instance, but a majority are useful when available. They shine the brightest during the bosses, some of which have extremely creative designs, like the baby face that reveals older faces as you shoot it to death.

The bosses also prove that nobody understood the Genesis hardware better than Treasure, with awesome rotation effects, a huge amount of color, and HIGH-QUALITY VOICE SAMPLES?? HOW DID THEY PULL THIS OFF?! Any other 16-bit game attempting this would have had to compromise SOMETHING, and yet Chrome Dino is dripping with detail! I adore the stage play motif as well. Platforms are held up by wires, health is represented by a spotlight, goons shuffle props and rotate cranks in the background, levels are spread across multiple acts, and, of course, a curtain introduces each level. In the Western version, level names were changed to movie puns. Sometimes I roll my eyes at such jokes, but some of these, like “Stair Wars”, “Terminate Her Too”, and “Spinderella” are so clever I can’t not chuckle. The charm is through the roof.

With how much joy Dino provides, you have to wonder why it doesn’t touch most players’ lists of best platformers of the era. I do have a couple theories. The first is the difficulty of the Western version. Like many games of the time, the challenge was ramped up to an absurd degree to prevent players from finishing the game in a single rental session. Here, the default continue amount was reduced from two to zero, some bosses received a health buff, and the story dialogue was completely removed. This is a fair criticism given I was only able to beat the Japanese version, which is thankfully accessible via the Sega Genesis Classics Collection. As such, I implore anyone to play that version when starting out. It’s fair while still being challenging.

The second is that the skill ceiling is not very high. Many levels are setpiece-driven and there’s a fair amount of autoscrollers present, diminishing the speedrun incentive. Personally, I think the autoscrollers were handled extremely well as there’s always obstacles demanding of your attention. The speedrun arguement has some merit, but if the only good platformers in existence are speedrunner-friendly, then why do we respect slower platformers like classic Mega Man, Castlevania, or Mario Galaxy? I like different types of platformers, and Dino deserves to be mentioned alongside the fat plumber, blue hedgehog, and brown gorilla as peak platformers of the era. Grab it on Steam for dirt-cheap if this sounds up your alley!