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If you've ever needed an excellent showcase of the Saturn's 2D abilities and real-time rendering, Dinosaur Island (known under the portmanteau of "Daina Airan") is one of Game Arts oft-forgotten gems. Known as an "interactive" anime, the game is the successor to their earlier titles, "Yumimi Mix" and "Yumimi Remix" (having main characters who are very similar personality-wise, a similar structure, and a few recurring characters). The art was done by the talented Izumi Takemoto, who did the art for the aforementioned games as well as "Click no Hi", "Rupupu Cube Lup Salad", "Tekipaki Workin'♥Love", "Twin Qix", and more.

The main story is that some time ago, explorers in Iceland uncover a secret cove leading to a warm tropical paradise where dinosaurs still live! You see, the dinos that survived the comet that was meant to wipe them out left the arctic and migrated to tiny islands near the equator where it's warmer and began to reproduce, but these dinos are good and, over time, coexist with a small number of humans. The protagonists are lucky enough to live on the picturesque "Dinosaur Island" where the power of music can soothe and help humans control the dinosaurs to do any number of tasks. The only problem? They need to be really talented if they want dinos of their own, so they are enrolled in a school which specializes on interactions between humans and dinosaurs.

The core of the game basically involves watching scenes and occasionally making choices that typically have minor differences but lead to the same conclusion, though a few choices do branch off into different scenarios and multiple endings (some things can only be seen by clearing the game at least once). It's worth picking all the different choices just to see the variety of hilarious outcomes as characters laugh, cry, and break the fourth wall while engaging the perverted narrator and thanking you for playing their promotional work (Yokoku Hen, which was a demo or "trailer" version of the game that was also combined with "Yumimi Mix" for Windows 95).

In the game, you follow the shenanigans of the primary protagonists, twin sisters Emily and Angie (or Ange) Ito, and their (somewhat mutual "interest") friend, Riron Mizushima. Emily is kinda shy and adores dinosaurs just as much as she secretly adores Riron, Angie is the feisty tomboy who is highly competitive and thinks of dinos as tools mainly to bring her fame and fortune, and Riron is a cute and intelligent boy who is a bit clumsy and isn't afraid to speak his mind (for better or worse) and almost always laughs and wears a smile on his face. The art and clarity is great, the music and sound is whimsical, and though the game is pretty short, only weighing in at about an hour or so initially, the multiple scenes, extras and ability to skip back and forward (illustrated once in the video) are novel additions that help make the game a little more accessible.

It's clearly aimed at kids and isn't complicated at all, but it's a cute tale that is sometimes almost painstakingly animated (at 60FPS) and doesn't suffer the terrible compression artifacts of FMV in so many other Saturn games (don't get me wrong, some had great movies and I don't mind Cinepak and TrueMotion, but the difference is night and day)... more Saturn games should have adopted this style and caliber of animation for cutscenes or interaction. Oh well. This is a video of the game in action. Enjoy.

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