DF Retro: Turok Dinosaur Hunter - How An N64 Classic Evolved The Console FPS
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- čas přidán 13. 07. 2019
- DF Retro is back with a deep dive into one of the most technically impressive console games of its period - Turok Dinosaur Hunter's reputation may have diminished in the last 20 years, but in some respects it challenged and even exceeded the mighty Quake. John takes us back in time, along with a special mystery guest star...
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I will never forget when I was in 4th grade in early 1997. My bus driver was so hyped for Turok, and he loved it.
I asked him if he was going to grab Doom 64 as well, but he said no as he didn't want his children shooting humans.
At the time I didn't realize it, but look back now I chuckle. Doom 64 has no humans while Turok does.
The Iguana entertainment logo was so amazing back in the days
Day. Days is German.
K3dev agreed! I’m 35 now playing this game back when it came out was amazing and can’t wait to get the 1st and 2nd one from limited run for switch!
it's actually still pretty impressive today. most games I play just have static logos flash up for a couple seconds than fade away. I honestly can't think of the last time I saw a fully animated 3D logo like that.
Than after Turok 2 everything went downhill. Sad we lost Iguana and Turok.
it was but i like the one from evolution because of the tomahawk kill.
John continues to impress me with his in depth yet entertaining analysis of another classic game. Long live digitalfoundry!
After watching this I couldn't help myself to play Turok, played the first 4 levels last night :)
Love the setup for ‘storytime with Alex’ with his luxurious red velvet chair and Crysis shine 😂
Oh you do? You like it? You enjoy it?
Turok 1,2 and 3 were amazing imo. I still love them
2 best things about 90s fps: the blazing speed of movement and the moody skyboxes.
My favourite : the crazy weapons.
I’m buying this on the switch. I miss the good old days of the 90’s when everything was bukkake’d with Terminator vibes
MIDI sounds too
You forgot to mention that Turok was also the first FPS to move the gun to the lower right of the screen (while the actual reticule in the middle). A seemingly small change that wound up opening the field of view and looking more realistic. Practically every FPS now does this, but Turok started the trend.
I appreciate the look at Club Turok at 32:19!
We appreciate you MarphitimusBlackimus! :D
Shake it baby!
yes
What's the song playing during Club Turok?
Edit: Duke Nukem Total Meltdown - Bar Music
Lens flare was THE cool effect back in those days. I remember loving them in 3Dfx games in 1997-1998.
But of course Alex has a Crysis shrine next to his chair. Why the hell not!
Tbh I would be worried if he hadn't.
@@bertoku nice
I was 15 Year One in 97.The First Pictures of Turok blew my teenie Mind. I was a huge Dino fan and there was a whole world with them to explore.
Hey there fellow '82 baby! Same here. I loved Turok. Had a lot of fun with the N64 back in those days.
Yep I was about the same age (am 36 now) and had never seen or played anything like it. I originally rented it from Blockbuster as I would usually do with new games, but I loved it so much I ended up buying it that same week from Gamestop, which was then a store called Funcoland. Recently I rebought it on Switch and had a blast playing. It works so well portably too. 15yo me would be amazed at what we have now gaming-wise.
Good to know there are others in their late 30's here - sometimes it feels I am an old man surrounded by teenagers, on CZcams.
Shout out to 82. This game was/is fantastic. I still remember the issue of Nintendo power? I think, with this game covered. The screen shot of the big green guy shot with the shotgun made me want this game bad. So many hours poured into this gem.
turok, shadow man and Soul Reaver are all deserving of a comeback right about now, the forgotten three musketeers of late 90's early 3d action gaming
One thing to note re: Quake (see 17:00) is that its animation wasn't made with a skeletal system... well, I'm sure it was ANIMATED with one in the 3D creation software they used at the time, but in the engine, it was stored and played back as a series of deformations on the entire model. I forgot the actual term for it. But since the game was originally designed to run on a software renderer, it allowed them to not worry about the cost of skinning vertices to bones and calculating the resulting positions, which was huge back then... just store the state of vertices of every frame of animation instead. But that comes with very interesting and funky looking artifacts if you interpolate the existing frames (like source ports do) since each vert will just linearly warp to its next frame :)
@Kay in a vague sense, you could think of the animation system back then as being made entirely out of blendshapes, yeah. (though blendshapes are additive by nature. Vert animation in quake wasn't)
Finally a proper DF Retro Video with clear narration and no "podcast-like" discusssions. And what a great episode that is! Amazing work! Love Turok!
I love DF Retro! Tho maybe you're referencing "DF Retro Play/DF Retro Extra" regarding podcast-like discussions?
Maybe I am mistaken but it seemed like clear, concise scripting for every standard edition since "Quake for Saturn" video.
Unless this was written during the MAJOR DF Retro lull where we got almost nothing but DF Retro Plays. Only suggesting if you haven't seen the earlier scripted DF Retros before this, I could not recommend them enough!
Turok on N64 blew my mind, spent many hours deep in that world
Nightdive's PC remaster is so good it made me love the game all over again.
I got shivers down my spine when you showed footage of Hexen. I completely forgot about that game and how engrossing it is.
I bought this game same day as Super Mario 64.
Not sure which was the 1st I played.
Both were GLOOORIOUS.😎
I got Turok INSTEAD of Mario 64 on the release day of the N64 which incidentially was my 15th birthday, everone else had Mario 64, so we could just swap games for a week or 2.
Still looks better than ARK on switch.
Rupert TheRabbit hah, digital foundary made it look like it was like a snes game but when you actually play Ark on switch, it’s just the resolution looks terrible. Other than that, the game isn’t bad for a shitty engine it was built on lol
IndianaRandy Shitty engine it was built on? Don’t blame Unreal Engine 4 for Ark’s Performance, blame the incompetent and overzealous developers.
@@zombiecowboy4946 UE4 isn't perfect bro...
@@Bongo2k Nor a disaster.
@@Bongo2k I despise Unreal Engine for the same reason as I despise Unity; it's too available and allows a lot of indie-trash-copy-paste titles. Plus just about every UE3 game ran and looked exactly the same. Like shit.
But when it comes to Ark, it's most definitely not the engine's fault.
I really love how Turok moves so fast and smooth, it feels like he's blitzing around on roller skates and it's so much fun.
Turok 2 blew my 6th-grade mind. I remember my parents hating me playing both Turok titles.
Turok is my favourite franchise of all time. Goldeneye was a masterpiece but Turok is what really set the bar high for fps on consoles.
True, at its time there wasn't any comparable Graphics/Game.
Never got so impressed again.
An unforgettable Masterpiece
Perfect Dark was hands down the best and most complete FPS game even by today's standards. A full story single player campaign with difficulty scaling that actually affects the gameplay. Voice acting. Full support for split screen co op. The rarely seen counter operative anti co op mode. And one of most customizable multiplayer modes with AI bots too.
Turok 2 was honestly the best. Best weapon in an FPS, Cerebral Bore.
@@Gruntvcbut the story was ridiculous- was this the one with the big head 👽 in the end? 007 was a masterpiece just like turok. Perfect dark never felt right to me a n I only finished it once.
The first Turok was very unique, at the time felt like the smoothest FPS I’ve ever played. Nothing like pulling some pud while listening to this music simply amazing
Turok 2 is in my top 10 favourite games of all time, Turok was awesome too
Do an episode on Conker's Bad Fur Day & Live and Reloaded. They were both the best looking games on both respective consoles.
This and goldeneye had some of the best gun bobbing movement...has not been done better since in my opinion
Those games were made by people just out of University, with no previous experience on developing a 3D game..... let that sink in.....its amazing how they got it so right on their first try
@@jhkuno88I think they had to use the observation rather than of shelf copying of what’s already there.
Turok 1 was a pure game design and Turok 2 was more ambitious s(with flaws) game.
I enjoy both of them.
"pure game design"
the purest. How do you think this game would look if it came out today?
main issue with second game is that levels where too maze like and the framerate was worse, the graphics and animation where good though. its nice theres a remaster of turok 2 that also improves it
I think that Turok 2 would be better if the levels were just from point A to point B, instead of from A to B, and also there's like several other things out of the way that you have to do or it's time to play the whole level again!
The music, platforming, and exploration elements remind me of Metroid Prime a lot.
Makes sense, since a lot of the same people were involved in both...
Turok was amazing at the time and I also loved the sequel that looked good with the expansion pack
Was a great atmospheric experience worth multiple plays. Seeds of evil was one of my fave N63 games.
The sequel was one of the most violent games on the system from what can remember
Mike Wade N63 huh? You must be from another dimension.
I couldn't afford the N64!
The River of Souls is my favorite level with music to match it's epicness.
I originally played Turok on a PC via a 3DFX card...this was a truly special time for the evolution of gaming.
John - from the bottom of my heart, thank you for the content you and your team provide. This is seriously my favorite channel on CZcams. On a side note, your appearance on the Genesis episode of Cane & Rinse was absolute magic. THANK YOU. PS: an episode looking back at Mean Machines magazine with Rich would be amazing 😊
That intro music tho, nostalgia overload
You had my like at "Chronosceptor".
Law of diminishing returns.
Been craving some new DF Retro these last few weeks and you completely delivered, as usual. I love this show so much, it's simply one of the best researched and presented series on CZcams.
It's quite shocking just how good a lot of the animations were on the N64, even compared to today some of the death animations are really fluid and detailed. I played Goldeneye not long ago and was amazed at the variety.
This was one of the games I bought N64 for back in the day.
YES!! Finally, ive been waiting for this thanks!!!
Turok 1 is a masterpiece and one of my favorite games. Thanks for this great video!!
DF Retro keeps getting better and better. One of the best episode so far ! You've got to admire the amount of work put in the making of this videos
Outstanding video John! N64 & Ps1 one hell of a generation.
no Ps1 mention any where in videı. also saturn was better n64 and ps1 in many ways. ps1 lybrary huge of course but dreamtcast was better shared tites. titles like star wars turok was need on saturn. ı never heard any playstation player complain about missing turok game. most of saturn games was on Pc and n64 turok and star wars on pc too so can be in saturn maybe some of these games. with these way ı will be happy back then. bacosue ı fucking not care finaly fantasy or any ps esclsuive or feature.
Couldent agree more ps1 and Nintendo 64 legendary consoles.
Great job as always :)
The fall scream *(Buue-uuah-OOAAHHHHAHHAHHH!!!)* & *"I. AM TUROK"* is the first thing that came to my mind whenever I see or hear the word "Turok".
I'm loving the DFR logo. WOOOW! This game sure is incredible. Thanks, John, for that insightful look into a game I didn't appreciate; und auf Wiedersehen, Alex.
The graphics blew me away...I used to just sit and watch the gold token pickups spin and shine...
Me too! The teeth on the dinosaurs also impressed me alot for some reason lol
Another amazing DF Retro video, these DF Retro videos should be in gaming history museums. I would love to see Turok 2 and 3 because it feels a little bit uncompleted without the sequels.
I LOVE THIS VIDEO. Turok Dinosaur Hunter on N64 was my first 3D game and man I fell in love back in that summer of 97. I was 10 years old and all I knew before that was NES, Genesis and other 2D consoles. The jump into 3D was indescribable at the time. Being able to dive headfirst into a deep pool of water, and emerge inside a hollowed out tree trunk with weeds and brush creating a canopy above for me to feel immersed under was just such an amazing feeling. This game will always have a special place in my heart and thank you so much for covering this one, John.
I’m a huge fan of DF retro. Keep up the great work John and the rest of the DF family. I can honestly say DF retro has me playing retro games now. I love it.
It's crazy to think how consoles used to be able to compete & even sometimes surpass PC games of the era (at least in some areas). Quake was a huge game at the time, and to have a game released the following year on a console do so many technical things better than it, is truly remarkable.
What? No console surpassed PC ever.
@@postscriptum8142 Uhhh, playstation 1 surpassed pcs at the time. Pcs couldn't do 3D right until the late 90s and 00s.
Great video. I do hope you continue the series. I also hope that Turok 3 some day gets the Doom64 EX treatment.
The most comprehensive cataloguing of turok on you tube. Brilliant video.
Thank you very much. It was and is a pleasure to go back in time. A time that i miss but i also look back with a big smile. thx
Turok 2 is still my favorite this is where I started on the FPS
I bought this new PC version of Turok on GOG a couple of days ago and immediately felt in love with it, and I can't wait to buy it again on my Switch!
It's nice to see an in depth look at a game I didn't play but heard about. Back then, as it is now, you play the games you can find time for or afford, playing every game you heard was good was not possible, you had to choose, but as much as I love when DF retro analyse games I played it's really nice to see what those I missed were about, makes me want to play them for the first time, which is quite the experience for a retro game, old gameplay and design for a new experience.
Been greatly anticipating this vid! Well done as always.
Love Alex altar for Crysis! ❤️
And PS3
I AM TUROK
WRONG! I AM! ;D
Thank you, Turok.
I'M BATMAN
I want Turok
Turn it down you say?
But all I gotta say to you is...
John you are a true gem. Right up there with Roo from 16 bit gems, i used to love his work. That's ancient history now, but you filled that void for me. Thanks for all the great content. You too Alex!
Fantastic video! The production value is top notch.
Turok was amazing but Turok 2 was phenomenal. I wish we could get a complete remake of both games
Dammit you’ve convinced me. Getting the Switch version of Turok now. ;)
Great look at this often forgotten game and clearly showing that there's more to it than just fog memes. I'm definitely going to get the remake now. Guest appearance from Alex also highly appreciated. Keep up the great work John!
Great episode.
I hope you guys catch on as many as possible of the retro classix
😎👍🏻
Shadows of Oblivion was skipped for me only because I didn't care much for the second one. Turok 1 was the best and always will be a childhood memory. One thing that has always derailed my imagination though is seeing how a game was designed, it not longer becomes believable.
I liked Turok 3 more than 2 but it wasn't as good as the original.
Waiting for the DF Retro: Turok 2 vid meow ;)
woof
Meow~
No more waiting
excellent excellent vid as always john, imagine a complete remake of this , mind shattered
On of the best episodes John, thanks.
DF Retro S.T.A.L.K.E.R. Shadow of Chernobyl. (I know it's not that old, but it's interesting)
Edit: Forgot to add "Please"
Also now I've watched it, great video! I didn't realise how crazy the tech was in Turok. (Wasn't allowed to play it). I lost it at the "Club Turok". Really makes the animations shine.
Ooooof, best game.
Well it's twelve years old already.
God yes.
I actually remember it had a global illumination mode which could be activated by console commands. It worked fairly well, most of the time. At least, until you went in to tunnels which were made insanely bright to the point where you couldn't see a damn thing! :P
@@garethfairclough8715 Yeah, I really don't know much about that. Could be cool to investigate. Sounds buggy but interesting
Actually I would love an episode on that game simply because of the engine. Supposedly its a real enigma of an engine. It would be great to have a bit of a look under its hood.
A game that's very much underrated for what it did for console fps games.
2022 hey all I’ve been watching so much DF lately and some true classics DF Retro (thank you John) I’ve learnt one thing we truly do not deserve DF you are so good and brilliant at what you do and the passion and attention to detail from you all is the best too. Thank you so much. The legendary Alex B too with the candles and Crysis brilliant. Thanks so much as always DF.
This video analysis is awesome. I wish all retrospective games were with such technical detail. great work here man
Turok needs to come back.
amazing when you realize n64 was the console pushing the first person shooter on home platforms.
Saturn even genesis had some
Nice one John, DF Retro always delivers.
Yet another fantastic DF Retro episode! Definitely, I'd say that Turok and Goldeneye are my two favorite FPS games on the Nintendo 64! It's nice that you covered this.
I love everything about digital foundry. I love how goofy and corny these guys can get while delivering in-depth technical analysis. Dog bless.
I would love to see a DF: Retro on System Shock 2
Great episode! That Club Turok scene had me cracking up.
The game looks like it has held up pretty well. I never put much time into it back in the day but I've been meaning to. This episode may motivate me to finally run through the whole thing.
That soundtrack still gives me chills, each level had such a unique and awesome sound track.
Fun fact: the team that made the classic Turok games went on to create the Metroid Prime games
The FOV in these games was always awful for me and I don't even get motion sick
Edit: holy shit, I forgot how fluid the animation was, it honestly looks miles better than most PS2-era games that I can think of.
It’s amazing looking at Turok nowadays, knowing that Metroid prime shares a ton of the same DNA.
Thanks for your awesome video, John! I don't know what's better, Alex with his Crysis shrine, or the introduction of "Club Turok". :D
Excellent video. Everytime you guys upload an episode on a FPS game from the 90s, it makes me want one covering Serious Sam
Shadows of the Empire PC vs. N64 would be a great comparison for DF Retro :) or maybe even add the entire N64 lineup
One of my favorites DF retro episodes so far. Hoping for a Turok 2 release on Switch and hopefully a DF Retro on T2 after that.
Edit: Loved the Club Turok segment lol
Night Dive made it known early this year that Turok 2 is headed to the Switch - hopefully before the year's end.
Corpseplower that’s fantastic! Loved T1 but IMO T2 its much better in every way :)
I love DF Retro, thank you for making these!
Great video! I've reminisced about how revolutionary this was at the time and no one else ever seemed to think so. Turok was a monster of a game and had some crazy boss battles
Still have my original N64 Turok 1/2/3 cartridges
Bring us a NEXT GEN TUROK GAME going back to the
Turok 1 and Turok 2 Roots with sick graphics! Thanks!
I'm glad a significant portion of this video covered the music and sound quality. I remember being blown away when I heard the gun shots and screams on the N64 back in 1997.
Great video as always John
Turok is the Metroid game we didnt get on the N64. Someone should re-skin the game to look like Super metroid.
That would be pretty cool. The steam version DOES have mod support
LORDY HECKING, WHY *HASN'T* SOMEONE ALREADY DONE THAT!?!? OuO
Let the word get out.
Eh? Jet Force Gemini was the Metroid game we never got.
"Your logic is flawless, but my brain detects a better idea:" Armorines Project S.W.A.R.M.
nthgthdgdcrtdtrk, the one code I can still reel off 20 plus years later at the drop of a hat
Yes! I still remember bewareoblivionisathand for the sequel.
Same here man, I have no clue what it is about this cheat but I've never forgotten it over 20 years late. oN THe eiGTH Day GoD CReaTeD TuRoK.
I love DF retro so much. Thanks again!
Thanks for this video.
The way you know your subject makes it fascinating.
One of the most interesting video i have watched in a while.
4 Player-Splittscreen Turok Multiplayer on N64 = FUNFACTOR OVER 9000!!!
Funny that the N64 version has the best soundtrack
That's indeed odd. The likes of Toy Story 2 sound awful on N64. That is an extreme example though, because that very clearly made poor use of the n64's sound capabilities.
HOW DARE YOU INSULT TOY STORY 2 ON N64!
(Plays the PS1 version)
Actually, I take back what I've said.
Just like Hexen.
Turok was a magical game. I'll never forget the first time playing it. The short draw distance never bothered me.
I counted at least two "bespokes" in the first ten minutes, though I didn't notice any after that. John is addicted.
its crude nowadays but I am always seriously impressed by the n64's anti-aliasing implemention
For me the N64's anti alliasing is a total nightmare... Getting a good picture out of original hardware without mods is a pain. Games like Goldeneye are extremely blurry on a modern display, even through S Video cables.
@@WH250398 oh god, I agree. I tried playing turok and Goldeneye on a 32 inch HD TV.
I could barley even make out what was going on.
Edge Antialiasing has nothing to do with how blurry N64 games looked. It was the blur filter that the signal out had on top of the rendered image that gave that look. N64 edge Antialiasing was similar to x8Msaa which was incredible for the time, not even high end PCs would do it until Vodoo launched later in the year (1996)