Capcom, oh Capcom. There has never been a greater turnaround for a gaming company in the history of the industry. Once villified for a number of controversies, Capcom made a big comeback tour that has been going on since Resident Evil 7: Biohazard jolted the franchise back to life in 2017. Numerous excellent Resident Evil remakes, the spectacular Devil May Cry 5 and not to mention Monster Hunter and Street Fighter 6 – Capcom is on a roll. So why hasn’t a Dino Crisis remake happened yet? I wanted to get to the bottom of that question.
As it turns out, it’s a little more complicated than just saying “Capcom is neglecting the IP.” To a large degree, that is also true. When it launched on the original PlayStation, Dino Crisis was a game way ahead of its time – a dinosaur adventure deliciously coated in Resident Evil‘s intense survival horror atmosphere and mechanics. It was a pretty original idea backed by the dino-craze of the 90s thanks to Jurassic Park. Yet, Capcom still found a way to put a very unique spin on that formula to shockingly potent results.
Over the decades, other dinosaur-themed games have come and gone but none stuck the landing quite like Dino Crisis and its survival horror twist. Apart from some small indie studios and AA studios trying to rejuvenate that idea, there hasn’t been a notable attempt from Capcom, or any company for that matter, to modernise the formula on a AAA scale. Despite the outcry from fans after seeing the potential of a Dino Crisis remake following the Resident Evil 2 remake, Capcom has been radio silent.
As for why Dino Crisis didn’t explode in the gaming world as a juggernaut franchise on the level of Resident Evil, well, the answer is in plain sight. When it launched, Dino Crisis was understandably compared harshly to Resident Evil – some early reviews, while mainly positive, simply labelled it as a Resi clone. Back then when “clone” was a bad word and not a selling point for marketing, this didn’t help its chances of getting into the spotlight – especially if it meant sharing the spotlight with Resident Evil.
Dino Crisis sold somewhere north of 2.4 million copies so it was a pretty big commercial success for Capcom – enough to move ahead with a sequel to determine if the franchise had any legs. Dino Crisis 2 launched and it ended up selling 1.2 million copies, only half as much as its predecessor. From Capcom’s perspective, Resident Evil 2 just sold more copies than the first RE, but Dino Crisis 2 saw a decline in sales. The writing was on the board.
There would be a third Dino Crisis game but if it proved anything, it’s that Capcom really had no idea where to take the franchise next. Hell, it was set in space and didn’t even have dinosaurs, but mutated creatures passing off as dinos. The commercial failure of Dino Crisis 3 sealed its fate and put it to rest in an untimely grave back in 2003.
Capcom killed Dino Crisis before it had the chance to do something revolutionary a la Resident Evil 4. That wasn’t necessarily an evil Capcom move, but rather a decision driven by the obvious low sales and lack of interest in the franchise after it thought going to space would be the solution to all of its problems. I’m sure that worked splendidly for Jason Voorhees. Rather, Dino Crisis needed better hardware and to stick to its roots if it wanted to succeed as an IP. Again, Capcom didn’t give it that chance.
Was it because dinosaurs faded as a trend? Not really. Dinosaurs are cool. Dinosaurs have never stopped being cool. It’s the reason why Jurassic World was able to make a billion dollars at the box office and why, despite the degrading quality of those movies, audiences still flocked to see them. Unfortunately, the gaming industry was a place where dinosaurs simply could not find consistent success (see Turok or even Exoprimal).
Three Resident Evil remakes have only proven that with the RE Engine, Capcom has the opportunity to do something special and unheard of in gaming today: make a Dino Crisis remake that honours its survival horror roots with a visual and technical facelift. It’s not like the survival horror scene is short on remakes right now – in fact, business is booming – so the market is clearly ripe for an injection of something new, something players haven’t seen before, something that could give Capcom a few victory laps over the competition.
I’d argue that the desire for something like Dino Crisis is higher now than it ever was in the 90s. Nobody is shouting “clone” and pointing fingers anymore. It’s just a very vocal group of dedicated fans who would like Capcom to reconsider Dino Crisis as more than just a fossil.
