Here's a piece of news we definitely weren't expecting.
Yesterday, Ratalaika Games and Shinyuden announced out of the blue on social media that they were releasing a new "restored" edition of Wolf Team's dinosaur-themed pinball game Dino Land on consoles & PC, and it's already available now across Steam, Switch, Xbox One, Xbox Series X|S, PS4, and PS5.
Originally released in 1991 for the Sega Mega Drive / Genesis and the Sharp X68000, Dino Land is a pretty straightforward take on the popular pastime. It has a total of four prehistoric-inspired boards to play through, backed by a cute, if somewhat insubstantial, story about a dinosaur trying to rescue his girlfriend.
Out of the two versions released, the Mega Drive/Genesis version was the only one to get an official release outside of Japan at the time of its original launch, and it didn't exactly get the greatest of reviews. Most reviewers, for instance, compared it negatively to Compile's Devil's Crush (otherwise known as Devil Crash or Dragon's Fury), with the Sega magazine MegaTech calling the latter "miles better" and "the best pinball game yet seen".
Still, seemingly undeterred by this, Ratailaika Games and Shinyuden have decided to reissue the game across various platforms, in the hopes that this time the reaction might be a little bit nicer, adding in the following improvements to try and make the package more attractive:
- Gallery: view images from the original game’s illustrations, posters, box design, etc.
- Jukebox: listen to any of the game music tracks any time you want.
- Rewind/Turbo function: repeat something until you achieve perfection, or speed things up
- Cheats function: activate cheats that will make your mission a lot easier (infinite lives, invulnerability, etc.)
- Save state function: save wherever you want to in the game, and restart from that exact point
- Screen filters: select from several filters to modify how the game looks (retro-style monitor, black-and-white, etc.)
The game costs £5.99/$5.99, with a 20% launch discount currently being offered.