Capcom has had many successful franchises over the years, with some of its most popular remaining relevant even almost 30 years after their debut. The Resident Evil franchise, for instance, is still one of Capcom's most profitable IPs, with it being well and truly back in full force following an awkward period in the 2010s. But there's one Capcom survival horror franchise that hasn't stuck around quite as long, and that's Dino Crisis.
Debuting in 1999, the original Dino Crisis was a pure passion project for Shinji Mikami, and was intended to be the spiritual successor to Resident Evil. Much like the original Resident Evil series, Dino Crisis is a survival horror game with a fixed camera perspective. Unlike Resident Evil, Dino Crisis pits players against an island full of ravenous dinosaurs. Though Dino Crisis never reviewed or sold quite as well as its predecessor series, it's gathered quite the cult following over the years, and fans are desperate for some kind of remake, remaster, or a fully-fledged sequel. Regardless of what's next for Dino Crisis, it should take a page out of Jurassic World's book.
The Next Dino Crisis Should Borrow Jurassic World's Hybrid Dinos
The Jurassic World series has been a mostly disappointing journey into a franchise that really should have stayed in the ground after its first outing. While the first Jurassic Park is a phenomenal adventure movie that broke new technological ground at the time, its sequels have never managed to live up to its high bar. At their best, the Jurassic Park sequels experiment with new and fun ideas, even if they're pretty silly, but at their worst, the Jurassic Park sequels can end up being weak and boring, and that's where most of the Jurassic World movies land.
The Jurassic World movies aren't without their fun moments, and there's one idea that would be perfectly suited for a new Dino Crisis game. Introduced in the very first Jurassic World movie with its central threat, the Indominus Rex, hybrid dinosaurs should be the big selling point of the next Dino Crisis. These hybrids are essentially dinosaurs that have been created by splicing together the DNA from multiple dinosaur species, taking all of their favorable traits to create one ultimate dino.
For the most part, the Dino Crisis series uses regular dinosaurs as its main antagonists. Unlike Jurassic Park's mosquito DNA method, Dino Crisis' dinosaurs come from a rift in space and time, albeit one caused by some mysterious science experiments. So, in most Dino Crisis games, the Velociraptors, T-Rexes, and Pteranodons are all just regular old dinosaurs with no special powers. Dino Crisis 3, however, shakes things up a little by jumping forward in time. In Dino Crisis 3, players take control of a specialized military unit in the year 2548, sent aboard a ship that's been missing for 300 years. On the ship, the player discovers a horde of dinosaur-like monsters, though they've been drastically mutated, giving them that classic Resident Evil tendril-monster look.
While Dino Crisis 3's mutated dinosaurs weren't quite as exciting as they sound, with hardly any variation among them, they were a nice change of pace for the series, and a notion that the next Dino Crisis game should definitely carry with it. Though facing off against T-Rexes and Velociraptors would still be fun, there's no denying that its lost its luster a little, with many games since 1999 allowing players to face off against dinos. Hybrid dinosaurs, however, could be exactly what the next Dino Crisis needs to stand out from the crowd, and keep its players on their toes.