Every N64 FPS #1: Turok: Dinosaur Hunter

[Every N64 FPS] The start of a new series and the birth of a classic trilogy.

The day has finally come and I am returning to my roots.

Those of you who have been subscribed for a long time will be familiar with what I’m going to say next: I started this Substack to talk about the Nintendo 64’s first person shooters with perhaps a few other reviews and opinion pieces on the side; at 412 subscribers and counting and more articles published than I ever thought possible, it’s safe to say I exited that particular niche long ago.

For the foreseeable future, once a month, I’m going to be writing a retrospective of this console’s FPS library: every last game, in chronological order. These will be more digestible pieces and focus on celebrating the games in question rather than reviewing them, though my general thoughts will be included, especially if I have strong ones.

Let me take you on a journey back through time and through history as we explore the foundational years of console FPS games.

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Year of Release: 1997

Platforms: Nintendo 64 and PC

Developer: Iguana Entertainment

Publisher: Acclaim Entertainment

Copies Sold: 1.5 million (5.8m N64 users in 1997)

Remastered: December 2015 (PC) Ported to Xbox One (2018) Nintendo Switch (2019) PlayStation 4 (2021) Updated for Series S/X and PlayStation 5 (2025)

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Background

Acclaim Entertainment, Turok’s publisher, was founded by 3 former Activision employees as a joint-venture in the late 1980’s with a focus on localisation and porting games for the American market. While Acclaim’s subsidiary: LJN, which it purchased in 1990, has gained some notoriety for the poor games released under its label thanks to The Angry Video Game Nerd, the WWF licence, Acclaim’s solid job with the Mortal Kombat II port as well as Double Dragon II earned them enough capital and respect to be considered a reputable publisher. By the end of the 2D era, with the Mortal Kombat, NBA Jam and more console licences under their banner, Acclaim found themselves in a position to expand.

In 1994 the seeds of Turok were sewn. Acclaim acquired Valiant Comics (renaming it to Acclaim Comics) which came with the Turok: Dinosaur Hunter licence and announced in August of that year their intention to adapt the 1993 comic series of the same name into a video game.

At this time, Iguana Entertainment: Turok’s eventual developer, was known only for some obscure solo efforts like Aero the Acro-Bat for the Mega Drive and for being Acclaim’s most prolific porting partner, so the publisher deepened their relationship with Iguana by acquiring them in December of 1994.

The mid-1990’s were the era of early 3D in video games and Acclaim’s reluctance to transition to newer hardware was wrecking their finances and lead to lay-offs as well as tumbling stock prices; before long, it became clear that Turok was the company’s last and best hope of survival. This was a time when video games were still considered distractions for kids and teens so Acclaim betting it all on a gory, expensive and experimental title in the foetal console shooter space is a risk that should be applauded and one that most publishers wouldn’t have the courage to make today.

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Development

An American print ad for Turok on PC.

Despite its announcement 2 years prior, development on Turok at Iguana only commenced in 1996. Turok was not only to be the first shooter developed for the Nintendo 64 but also the first major title by a third-party developer to be made for the platform making this game important to the history of the entire console.

Turok was developed by a 15-man team, most of them inexperienced and new to the industry, which is a trait it shares with a certain other best-selling, highly-regarded Nintendo 64 shooter. An inexperienced team dealing with new hardware and an ambitious new title sounds like a disaster on-paper, thankfully, Acclaim’s strong relationship with Nintendo and their commitment to console exclusivity afforded them much support and feedback from the Japanese giant. Throughout development there were suspicions that Nintendo would find the game’s gory and violent content (which went far beyond the level depicted in the comics) objectionable and push for changes but to Iguana’s surprise and to the delight of gamers, the fountains of blood and grotesque death animations made it into the final product unharmed.

Turok’s development was as chaotic as it was ambitious and Iguana were determined to create the best-looking, best playing game on the Nintendo 64 platform. Acclaim’s advanced motion capture facilities were used to animate all of the human enemies in the game and the team even planned to use the technology on emus and ostriches to animate the dinosaurs; more traditional methods were eventually used but the game’s Wikipedia page seems to imply that at least some data was gathered this way. Despite Turok’s ‘Boomer Shooter’ label: a label that used to mean shooters that followed in the footsteps of DOOM, Quake and Duke Nukem that has now been overused and encompasses virtually all FPS games more than 20 years old, Iguana actually cited Tomb Raider and Super Mario 64 as their biggest inspirations which is why Turok has its hub and world structure as well as a healthy dose of platforming and item hunting.

Those platformer roots run deeper than you might think, this game was originally conceived as a side-scroller until it was decided that a first person perspective would allow Iguana and the Nintendo 64 to flex their graphical muscles more and that the perspective would heighten immersion.

The headache of having to compress a game as big and as impressive as Turok onto an 8MB Nintendo 64 cartridge as well as a plethora of needed bug fixes forced Acclaim to delay the game from its original Autumn 1996 release date to the final March 1997 release date Turok ended up launching on, thankfully, healthy marketing and significant hype did wonders for stock prices and kept interest high.

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What Turok Gets Right

Art Direction, Premise And Atmosphere

All screenshots taken from the remastered version running on Nintendo Switch 2.

The premise of Turok is that you are Native-American warrior Tal’Set and the current holder of the mantle of Turok which makes him the guardian of the Lost Land: a timeless other-world where dinosaurs still walk the land, the terrain is coated with prehistoric jungle… and aliens, robots and other extra-dimensional terrors wage-war with awesome sci-fi weaponry. Among these weapons is the Chronosceptre: a staff of supreme power which The Campaigner wishes to reconstruct and use to escape the Lost Land and conquer Earth; naturally, your goal as Tal’Set is to introduce him to a premature death. If you explore each level thoroughly enough and gether up the pieces then Tal’Set can acquire the weapon for himself to use in the final boss fight.

I don’t think I need to explain how great the premise is, the very idea of the Lost Land opens up a limitless roster of potential foes and weapons (which certainly is not lost on the developers) and the mountainous jungle setting helps to explain away some of the original version’s technical limitations; that’s not draw distance fog, it’s water vapour, you’re in a jungle canopy!

To this day, very few games can boast an art direction as fascinating as the one to be found in Turok. Through the course of the game your crusade against The Campaigner takes Tal’Set through misty clifftops, Endor-style treehouse towns and eventually through robot factories and more, the gradual shift to pure science fiction is utterly compelling, you really feel as if you’re journeying to the heart of hostile territory, level by level.

Gameplay and Guns

A cloee-up of the weapon scroll bar.

Turok’s game structure and level-design are where the Tomb Raider and Super Mario 64 influences shine through the brightest.

There are 8 levels in Turok: Dinosaur Hunter but the first level: The Hub Ruins functions like a short tutorial before the player discovers the gateway chamber where you use keys to access the other stages, just like Peach’s Castle and Mario’s Power Stars. Akin to Tomb Raider, levels are vast and maze-like with things hidden throughout, they take quite a while to finish. Each level has keys to find, which unlock subsequent levels and there is also a hidden piece of the Chronosceptre in each of them. Because the levels are so lengthy it can be frustrating if you miss a key and have to go back but this is only an issue on original hardware; I imagine the overwhelming majority of you, should you choose to try Turok, will be playing the remaster, the draw distance fog is gone in the modern version so you’re only going to miss most of the keys if you really don’t pay attention and explore.

Levels are non-linear and feature a lot of climbing and swimming: much more vertical than the people who call Turok a ‘boomer shooter’ will let on. I can’t think of another shooter in this era that really made you feel like more than just a floating pair of hands in the same way that Turok did.

The enemy and weapon variety make Turok an absolute blast to play. You get to play with bows using futuristic exploding Tek Arrows, automatic shotguns with exploding rounds, big combat knives, an AK, a Plasma Rifle and more, better yet you’ll be fighting aliens, big mecha, velociraptors wielding their own guns and the cherry on top: a laser shooting T-Rex boss fight. If that doesn’t sell you on Turok then I don’t know what will, Tal’Set faces a mean foe with even meaner weapons.

A Technical Achievement

This might be lost on modern players picking up the remaster who are unfamiliar with the Nintendo 64 and its library but the goal of making Turok: Dinosaur Hunter the most impressive game around was met… and then some. While I used the remastered version for this article I beat Turok for the first time on original hardware not long before I started this Substack. I own quite a few Nintendo 64 games because it’s my favourite Nintendo console and even though Turok was released early in the platform’s life the only game I can think of that looks better is its sequel Turok 2: Seeds of Evil.

Turok is notoriously foggy on the ‘64 and its music was heavily compressed but that keeps the framerate at a tolerable level and it doesn’t mire the fantastic presentation; the remaster brightens things up a little bit too much for me, and adds rays of sunshine from above, it’s the most minor of nit-picks but I felt it worth mentioning.

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What Turok Gets Wrong

Platforming (Original Version)

A screenshot taken from a guide showing a difficult set of jumps.

Platforming on the remastered version of Turok can be tricky but mostly feels enjoyable, however, on original hardware? It’s absolute torture.

You have to make incredibly precise jumps with a framerate around 20FPS (all PAL Nintendo 64 games run about 10 frames slower than their US and Japanese counterparts) the inability to see Turok’s legs, in dense draw-distance fog and while using a controller with only one analogue stick. I fell to my death and lost lives to bottomless pits again and again and again. The sound of Turok screaming on his way down will be stuck in your head forever.

This is the game’s biggest flaw and the one that prompted me to revisit the Lost Land on Switch 2 instead of the original hardware.

Sound And Compression

Turok: Dinosaur Hunter and Turok 2: Seeds of Evil composer Darren Mitchell.

In this early stage of the Nintendo 64’s life Turok had to ship on an 8 megabyte cartridge necessitating some heavy sound compression to fit all the music and effects on the medium. You can hear this compression even more clearly than you might in other Nintendo 64 games but as well as that, many of the weapon sounds don’t lend the amount of impact and sense of damage that they should. It’s a shame when the arsenal on offer is this stellar.

There are a few stand outs in the soundtrack like the Underwater theme for those sections where you have to dive into deep lakes and submerged caves but in general I find a lot of Turok’s soundtrack blends together, it’s a trance inducing mix of tribal percussion and synth that provides a backing to the action and accents the jungle but not much else. Darren Mitchell is a talented composer with some excellent work under his belt but the full expertise didn’t shine through until the sequel. Mitchell’s work on Turok 2 is some of the best in the ‘64’s library.

Boss Fights

Turok’s famous laser-shooting T-Rex.

Turok doesn’t have many boss fights and of that scattered handful only the T-Rex is particularly fun or memorable.

You’d expect a boss at the end of each level but instead, Turok puts two of its five boss fights in the final level with the other three appearing sporadically. The boss fight with Longhunter: a camo-sporting, Humvee-driving military man was the game’s lowest point for me. To beat Longhunter you have to destroy his 2 Humvees while they drive at you wildly and fire projectiles; trying to dodge these while getting in your own hits, particularly on an N64 controller is a huge pain. Then you face him on foot and unless you keep up constant momentum or outgun him he will kill you again and again. I beat the other bosses on my first try and defeated The Campaigner on my second go but Longhunter took me about an hour to finally put in the ground.

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Turok’s Legacy And My Closing Thoughts

Metroid Prime’s Tallon IV clearly took heavy inspiration from the Lost Land.

If you haven’t picked up on my sentiment already then let me make this crystal clear: I think Turok: Dinosaur Hunter is a fantastic game and if it wasn’t for my preference for Turok 2 I would happily name it my second favourite shooter on the Nintendo 64. From the moment you first find your pistol to the final shot with the Chronosceptre, Turok remains a superb adventure.

Turok hasn’t aged well on original hardware but the remaster is so readily available that this isn’t an issue. I first played this game in late-2024 and was in awe of both how good it looked and how, despite coming out before GoldenEye, it was the first to bring to the table some of the innovations that game popularised like the signature Nintendo 64 FPS control scheme and a focus on open-ended level design and exploration rather than the narrow corridors of DOOM and Quake; Turok even surpasses GoldenEye in some ways, particularly with Tal’Set’s agility and the verticality of most levels.

You don’t have to take my word for it, Turok’s lasting effect on console shooters and on the trajectory of the Nintendo 64 speaks for itself.

This game was a massive hit, boosting N64 sales and spawning a trilogy of games and a multiplayer focused spin-off, when Rare were designing GoldenEye, Turok: Dinosaur Hunter was the game they wanted to be: the title they looked to for inspiration and as a reminder of where the bar was set. Years later, the beloved Retro Studios: a developer founded around a seasoned corps of ex-Turok developers looked back at the Lost Land and at Turok 1’s game structure as an example of the same first-person and exploration-focused design they wanted to bring to the table once again.

In 2026, few speak the name Turok and the trilogy has largely faded into memory but its contributions are plain to see.

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