While it hasn’t been officially confirmed, the current rumor swirling around is that Capcom isn’t done remaking the older Resident Evil games. The current word on the street says that they are already hard at work with a remake of Resident Evil 4. I myself have some personal reservations if this is true. I don’t think the game does need a remake as of this moment as it still holds up even by today’s gaming high standards. I just believe the resources they have for their upcoming “remake” titles can be put elsewhere.

One suggestion may be to update Resident Evil – Code: Veronica. But why should the next remake be another game from the Resident Evil franchise? Why shouldn’t Capcom pick another game that took a lot of inspiration from Resident Evil? Well, there is such a game.

That game is the first Dino Crisis.

Now, there are some of you out there who are thinking, “What the heck is a Dino Crisis?” Well, long story short, it’s basically the Resident Evil games but, instead of facing off against zombies, you have dinosaurs as your main foes. That’s the simple answer but, like pretty much everything in the world, things aren’t as simple as that.

Dino Crisis was released on the PlayStation in 1999 and it was a massive hit for Capcom. While many just think of Dino Crisis as “Resident Evil with dinosaurs,” they made some significant updates. The game didn’t use pre-rendered backgrounds and it was more focused on the action element rather than “survival horror” but still had the same trappings as the franchise it drew inspiration from.

You control Regina, a special forces soldier. She and her squad has been assigned to locate a certain scientist on an island. When they arrive on the island, they find the facility the scientist is supposed to be holed up in infested with dinosaurs. Regina now, along with detaining her target, must find another way to escape the island.

So, what makes Dino Crisis special? What makes it worthy enough for Capcom to spend resources to make a Remake of it? Well, there are several reasons, of course!

For one thing, Dino Crisis was a good game. It doesn’t have that big of a legacy thanks to future installments in the series (we’ll get to that) but the first game was really fun. It definitely upped the fear factor as, well, dinosaurs are faster and less braindead than zombies! In theory, anyway. After all, zombies are fictional and we don’t really know how actual dinosaurs moved. But you get the idea.

The first game was a huge success for Capcom, both critically and financially. Dino Crisis was released to rave reviews and it sold really well. This means that it did acquire a fairly big fanbase and you can include me in that group. This alone should be incentive enough for Capcom to, at the very least, consider updating the first game for modern gamers.

Another reason why a Dino Crisis Remake would be a good move is because there are several ways Capcom can seriously improve it. Regina would basically encounter the Velociraptor enemy for something like 90% of the time. As scary as it would be facing a real velociraptor would be in real life, by the time you face-off against your tenth one, you crave a little more variety. You do face off with the flying pteranodons and the obligatory Tyrannosaurus boss fight but it’s mostly Velociraptors. I blame Jurassic Park for this because they had to make the dinosaur super cool-like in the film.

I think the biggest reason why Dino Crisis used a ton of Velociraptors is because they couldn’t really program more monster varieties. Well, if they do remake the game, it would be a brilliant opportunity to add a few more dinosaurs into the mix. Heck, just by watching Jurassic Park movies, I would love to see something like the hard-headed Stygimoloch or the deceptively tame looking Dilophosaurus appear in the remakes to add some more scary things to encounter throughout the game!

An updated version of Dino Crisis could also benefit from more detailed environments than what we see in the original PlayStation version. It may have been groundbreaking for the game to use fully polygon backgrounds and environments on the aging PlayStation hardware, there was a certain “blocky” feel to everything. The same thing can be said for the Resident Evil games that came out on the same system and look how the updated Remakes made them look!

Capcom can also really dial in the story and tone of the entire Dino Crisis franchise since they messed it up so bad. I already mentioned that the first game was good but they were really schizophrenic on how they should proceed with their later installments. The second game in the series pretty much forgot the entire “survival horror” element as it was more a run-and-gun game, which really threw fans of the first game for a loop. Capcom then made a spin-off game, Dino Stalker, which is, in essence, what Gun Survivor was for Resident Evil.

The worst offender was Dino Crisis 3. This time, you didn’t control Regina but a soldier named Patrick Tyler. Oh, and the entire game is set in the future as well as in space. Naturally.

Now, this is probably my biggest reason why I would love it if Capcom would develop a Remake for the first Dino Crisis game. Not only would they make a new kickass version of a fantastic game, it would also serve as a reboot to the entire franchise!

Since there is an element of time travel in Dino Crisis (that’s how the dinosaurs appeared in the first place), Capcom can make it so Regina does something that inadvertently erases the events of the succeeding entries of the series, rendering them non-canon. Especially Dino Crisis 3. Capcom can even make some major changes to the entire Dino Crisis series by integrating it into the Resident Evil world! It would be fantastic if they just so happen to exist in the same universe since they do share the same DNA for the most part! Heck, modders have already seen this way before I had the idea to write up this post!

Honestly, the thought of a Dino Crisis game using the Resident Evil Remake engines just seem like a natural fit. And the changes they could make to it, such as making the two franchises share the same world and it being a reboot of a dead franchise is just too good. It’s definitely a huge opportunity for Capcom and I really hope they capitalize on it.

Make a Dino Crisis Remake, Capcom! I mean, you want money, don’t you?

Do you think Dino Crisis should get the Remake treatment? What other games do you think needs a modern remastering? Let me know in the comments section below!