Canceled N64 Game, Dinosaur Planet, Released by Forest of Illusion

The Twitter account, Forest of Illusion, has released a playable version of the Nintendo 64 game, Dinosaur Planet. The game is a title by Rare that was stopped mid-development and moved to the GameCube where it was re-imagined as Star Fox Adventures.

Forest of Illusion’s Twitter bio claims that the people behind the account are “preserving Nintendo’s history.” To that end, they seek out Nintendo development cartridges. The files for Dinosaur Planet were allegedly contained on a disc that the people behind Forest of Illusion purchased from a private game collector. Because the files on the disc are from December 1, 2000, it is suspected that the build in question is from later in production.

At the moment, the game isn’t fully playable, regardless of what emulator people try to use, and it is likely that the current gameplay experience will contain instances of slowdown in addition to graphical issues caused by lighting. It is still possible to play the game to a degree, but a Forest of Illusion tweet does suggest that the hacking will be a necessary step before it can be called fully playable.

At the moment, a copy of the game is hosted on their website, but an influx of visitors has made the server temporarily unavailable. Dinosaur Planet can also be found on archive.org.

Forest of Illusion recently released a build of a Glover N64 prototype. This led to a conflict between them and the rights owner, Piko Interactive.