Dinobasher: Starring Bignose the Caveman (Prototype)

"Join Bignose in a zany, prehistoric race to catch his dinner! Club your way through hoards of dinosaurs across four huge islands, collecting bones and rocks and trade with the natives Fly between the islands using your club as helicopter rotors and become the first flying man! Great cartoon graphics, brilliant music and, most importantly, excellent fun!!"

Is it Captain Caveman? No It's Bignose the Caveman first seen on the C64 in a vertical platformer and then the Nes as a horizontal platformer with a new look that continued on the 16bit platforms. Now it's Sega's turn with a Master System port as well as a version for the Game Gear although neither would get official released to reviewing badly.

The Game has you traversing four islands to recapture your thanksgiving dinner from the Pterodactyl. Each island is made up of six levels with some slight gameplay differences mixed in. Most islands start off with you running across the surface collecting bones that can be spent in the shop stages. You can choose from three shops, each having different items and you cant back out to try another. Items include, invincibility, extra lives, extra firepower as well as spells for high jump, quake and extra speed amongst others. Some stages have hidden areas highlighted by a bone over a gap. Not always useful to take but you can avoid some enemies this way.

Some stages have you being pushed as the level scrolls so you need to be careful with your platforming and watch out for enemies coming from both sides. Each level has an end of stage boss usually only requiring a few hits especially when fully power up but you can use spells such as light or quake to insta kill them as they act as smart bombs. At the end of each island is a flying stage as you travel from one island to the next. The game starts you in the bottom left corner so it really easy to lose a life here in the first half second of the stage. Complete all four island to win the game.

Overall, it's typical Codemasters game. Colourful, cartoony with upbeat blippy bloppy music. But the gameplay is a bit to basic by late 1993 and the 8 bits are on the way out, although it lasts a little longer on the handhelds. There is at least one game breaking bug where if you fall down specific holes looking for a secret area, the game will crash. Maybe a shop should show here as is the case in the game gear version. The maps used for the islands also get re-used multiple times with different colours which comes across as lazy.

00:00:00 Title Music
00:01:33 Paradise Island
00:12:55 Monster Island
00:26:05 Terror Island
00:38:35 Chaos Island