Games of the Abstract: Cadillacs and Dinosaurs (1993)

 

Developer: Capcom

Publisher: Capcom

One to Three Players

Arcade

 

Among the many scrolling beat-em-ups of the late eighties and early nineties, naturally a few had licensed properties, which proves an issue with future licensing, but with the huge advantage before hindsight that many were by Japanese developers who really showed their A-game. Capcom are a great example as, even without their original licenses when allowed carte blanche to do whatever they want, like Battle Circuit (1997), they made beat-em-ups on very idiosyncratic choices, putting their mark on everything from the Romance of the Three Kingdoms, Luo Guanzhong's legendary novel-chronology of China's turbulent Three Kingdoms warring era of the past, to Dungeons and Dragons in terms of eclectic and acclaimed games in the genre. The following today however, from the world of Western television animation, is however not the 1991 Konami game based on The Simpsons, which is a weird license but based on a legendary franchise, but an intellectual property which was lost to time.

I remember the 1992 Cadillacs and Dinosaurs animated series, a Canadian-American production cancelled after only thirteen episodes. It is one of those childhood memories shrouded in time of vividly, being aware I saw a piece of it, but as someone entirely unable to remember seeing an entire episode, the same fate once of Ultraforce (1995), the tie-in for Malibu Comic's roster of superheroes which got a tie-in for the Sega CD in terms of beat-em-up videogames. Cadillacs and Dinosaurs, based on the comic book series Xenozoic Tales by Mark Schultz, had its animated series co-created with Schultz by Steven E. de Souza, screenwriter for Die Hard (1988) among other films, alongside being the director of the 1994 Street Fighter film with Jean-Claude Van Damme and Raul Julia. As a tie-in arcade game to the animated series, this and the premise of Xenozoic Tales in general is a fascinating and cool one, in that this is a Mad Max post apocalypse, where roaming thugs dominate the world after civilisation has collapsed and the survivors have to pick themselves up. Mel Gibson and Tom Hardy however did not have to contend with a tyrannosaurus rex, as in a period just by the huge success of Jurassic Park (1993) in the cinemas, this apocalypse envisions that dinosaurs have returned from extinction and are now a part of the society to contend with.

The premise, Americana meets b-movie film, gets an applaudable level of aesthetic from Capcom here, an American comic book (and animated series) given love in look and style with pops out. It has even a little edge you would have not gotten in the series as, if you get TNT or a rocket launcher, you can cause enemies to explode into pieces including with their eyeballs flying out. The world's cartoon logic is found in that you have enough petrol to power Cadillac cars, fossil fuel aptly made from dinosaurs that have come back to life, but the dinosaurs in the game itself also play part of the three player game. Taking leads Jack Tenrec, female love interest Hannah Dundee, Mustapha Cairo and Mess O'Bradovich as playable characters, Mess not a main character but here to round up the numbers of the heavy, the enormous reptiles are as much the set dressing in the world mostly consisting of thugs being the real problem, aptly so, including one boss who aptly rides a motorbike for his fight. Dinosaurs still can be a hazard, and you can punch a pterodactyl, even if you do not maim them whatsoever, merely knock them out of their moment of rage, wandering off, if they are incensed or if you let a grunt hit them into a rage originally.

Sadly, you do not get to ride one, or have many set pieces involving, barring avoiding the feet of a giant one off the top of the screen for one section, but you do get in Level 3 to rampage through the desert in a Cadillac for its entire length, so you win in some way. Eventually as well, the game brings in body horror as your main antagonist, a mad scientist, is splicing humans with dinosaur DNA, leading to one boss battle where a parasite attaches itself to various grunts and morphs them into horrible monstrosities, ditching the bodies for a few times to the next. These can be hard, as expected for a beat-em-up alongside the final boss, but it adds a cool edge midway through a solid adventure before.

It looks gorgeous, which is not an understatement. Considering the high bar to these games from others developers, let alone Capcom themselves, the American pulp comic aesthetic here stands out, even as far as having the To Continue... screen cutting to a gun waiving thug who, if you put a new coin in, gets a fist to the face. Only the main cast themselves seem conventional to this idiosyncratic mix of Saturday morning cartoons, dinosaurs and Mad Max, and even that is in mind to the likely influence ye old pulp literature probably has on the source material, if you look at its square jawed male protagonist, a world with a surprising amount of watches to pocket for points from beaten grunts, alongside food like baked doughnuts for health being plentiful, thus proving too that culinary arts thankfully survived the apocalypse.

The lack of a release on consoles sucks, and the issue, like the really good Bucky O'Hare arcade game from Konami released in 1992, comes with that the intellectual property is obscure, making it a license you need to acquire to be able to release the game, but with the IP too obscure to sell, something to bear in mind in how the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, which has lasted with a nostalgic legacy and many versions over the decades, has had its games from Konami re-released in 2022 with the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: The Cowabunga Collection, let alone a new 2022 scrolling beat-em-up called Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Shredder's Revenge from Tribute Games. I am still glad, in the past, Japanese developers like Capcom still got their hands on an IP like this, and were allowed this creativity, especially as they still retain the aesthetic and tonal values of the source, but were allowed their own flourishes. The game is still solid in terms of its gameplay, that in mind to the challenge to these games, this does feel like it was in the hands of developers who knew this genre like the back of their hand.

This disappointment, especially as this is a good game, comes more so knowing there was one console adaptation of Cadillacs and Dinosaurs was a Sega CD game called Cadillacs and Dinosaurs: The Second Cataclysm (1994). This is a very different game, a Full Motion Video on-rails shooter by Rocket Science Games, a company founded in 1993 by Steve Blank and Peter Barrett who came in during the FMV craze under the belief, as many did then, that it would revolutionize the genre. Alongside the bizarre knowledge Elon Musk was once an employee¹, their biggest and most ambitious game was Loadstar: The Legend of Tully Bodine (1994), another Sega CD game eventually released on MS-DOS PCs in 1995 which cost $3 million dollars to make and roped in Ned Beatty, character actor from films like Deliverance (1972)², a game which did not do well at all, and would be one of the only few before the company sank. That game, of interest for me as a morbid curiosity, is an FMV game where, just looking at clips of, involving a lot of FMV and the gameplay just of a Cadillac going forwards into the screen and firing at objects with a crosshair to clear the path, which in honesty is a step down in ambition if a comment that like kicking Rocket Science Games in the gonads when they were already on the floor from how the games did not sell well. It proves a delicious irony, that game for another day, another review to judge it fairly on its own terms, that whilst that was the console game made to sell, Capcom with true and tested arcade sprite work made this beat-em-up which, whilst not the best of beat-em-ups from that, fires the mind up in terms of the imagination onscreen. It is one of the many of this genre, a more well known title alongside obscurer ones like Guardians: Denjin Makai II (1995), which came at the time, never got home conversions and are lost beyond emulation, but should have rightly had their day in the sun decades on with their virtues.

 

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1) FLASHBACK: Before Twitter And Tesla, Elon Musk Made Video Games, written by Damien McFerran, and published for Time Extension on November 18th 2022.

2) Loadstar: The Legend of Tully Bodine, the Bad Game Hall of Fame retrospective by Cassidy, published by March 19th 2019, which is nice to include as a reference for this review as, if you want to see someone who has influenced these reviews and hopefully improved them tenfold, this full blown epic for one game, as detailed as you could get in its history including the Cadillacs and Dinosaurs connection, is as good as you can get. So good, I hesitate to cover any of the games with main articles on the site, as a fan, because I feel mine will never be as good or detailed as Cassidy's will be.