Nothing screams “unc” more than dinosaurs, so why not talk about the Turok franchise?
During the 2024 Game Awards ceremony, Turok: Origins was announced for release on the PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X/S, and Steam. Developed and published by Saber Interactive, the game is set to be released this fall, with Nintendo announcing that Origins will also be coming to the Switch 2 during the February Nintendo Direct presentation.
I was a bit puzzled by the announcement, as I had only associated the Turok IP with the Nintendo 64. As it turns out, though, the Turok rabbit hole goes much deeper than this.
The Turok IP first began with one character in a series of comic books, with Western Publishing distributing the first issue with help from Dell Comics in issue No. 596 of Four Color Comics in 1954. Turok would get his own comic two years later in 1956, titled Turok, Son of Stone. The comic centered on Turok and his brother Andar, two Native Americans living in an isolated valley filled with dinosaurs who are trying to escape.
Some of the lead writers during the Western Publishing years included long-time Tarzan writer Gaylord Du Bois and Paul S. Newman, the latter of whom had written a Guinness World Record 36,000 pages worth of published comic books in his lifetime. Western Publishing remained as the comic’s publisher until the early 1990s, when Valiant Comics took over the reins.
Around this time, Turok became part of the Valiant Universe, which was created by former DC and Marvel writers Jim Shooter and Bob Layton. The Turok IP was featured in Magnus, Robot Hunter, helping to put Valiant into the limelight as a prominent superhero comic publisher. During the Valiant years, Turok and Andar were placed in the 18th century, ultimately becoming dinosaur hunters in the heart of the Lost Lands with the inception of the Turok: Dinosaur Hunter comic line. The Turok we see in these comics is not the same character from the Western Publishing era—Tal’Set, a warrior from the fictional Saquin Nation bears the Turok name, being the eldest male of his generation.
In 1994, Valiant was acquired by video game developer Acclaim Entertainment, who rebranded the comic book publisher as Acclaim Comics. Acclaim wasted no time in conceptualizing a video game based on the Turok comics, announcing a Turok game for the upcoming Ultra 64 console (later the Nintendo 64) that same year. With the help of Iguana Entertainment, who had recently been acquired by Acclaim, the first Turok video game began production in 1996.
Working with a 15-person development team, Turok: Dinosaur Hunter was released for the Nintendo 64 in March of 1997, with the companion title Turok: Battle of the Bionosaurs launching for the Game Boy later that year. A first-person shooter (FPS), Turok: Dinosaur Hunter has players scour each level in search of the ancient Chronoscepter before the evil Campaigner gets to it first. Despite Iguana’s challenges with compressing everything into an eight-megabyte N64 cartridge, Turok’s first home console adventure sold well enough to warrant a sequel, selling 1.5 million copies worldwide over the course of its life.
Turok 2: Seeds of Evil (tentatively titled Turok: Dinosaur Hunter 2 in early 1997) began development shortly before the first Turok title was officially released, featuring much of the same staff as its predecessor. Iguana had twice as much storage space to work with this time around, with game cartridges falling in price amidst the rise of CD-ROMs on competing consoles like the PlayStation and Sega Saturn. Seeds of Evil makes use of the Nintendo 64 Expansion Pak, which grants players access to an enhanced graphics mode that allows the game to be played at a resolution of 640×480 pixels, a technological marvel for the N64 at the time.
By the start of Seeds of Evil, the Turok mantle had been passed to Joshua Fireseed; Joshua is canonically the nephew of Carl Fireseed, who had assumed the role of Turok during the Acclaim Comics era. Joshua, the new Turok, is summoned by Adon, the Speaker of Forever Light, to defeat the Primagen and stop him from destroying the five Energy Totems. Adon’s presence at the beginning of the game helps to improve upon the storytelling from the previous game, giving players a larger look into their task in the game’s story.
Seeds of Evil was first released for the Nintendo 64 in December of 1998, with a Game Boy Color tie-in launching that same month before the N64 release came to Windows platforms in early 1999. The franchise’s second foray on home consoles proved to be almost as successful as the first one, with Seeds of Evil selling 1.4 million copies by the time it made its way to PCs. Building on the success of Seeds of Evil, Iguana had some more plans in the works for the Turok IP.
As this was happening, though, Iguana was undergoing some internal restructuring. Jeff Spangenberg, who had initially founded the company in 1991, was fired by Acclaim a few months before Seeds of Evil hit store shelves. Spangenberg sued Acclaim, Iguana, and Acclaim co-founder Greg Fischbach, the latter of whom allegedly persuaded Spangenberg to purchase stock options in Acclaim just months before his dismissal from the company. Shortly after being fired by the studio he had founded, Spangenberg formed Retro Studios in 1999.
Around the same time, Acclaim announced that all of its subsidiary development studios would be brought together under the Acclaim branding. Thus, Iguana Entertainment became Acclaim Studios Austin, having been based in Austin, Texas since 1993. From this point onwards, all video games developed by the studio would be credited to Acclaim Austin, including the next Turok title.
Turok: Rage Wars, the first non-canon entry to make it to home consoles, was launched for the Nintendo 64 in 1999. “Rage Wars was born out of knowing that we couldn’t flesh out all our multiplayer ideas in Turok 2 in time for the holiday season,” said Dave Dienstbier, the game’s creative director (via GameSpot). “Multiplayer games are what gives a game its ‘legs’ well after gamers have beaten the single-player game, so we figured that the time was right for an over-the-top deathmatch Turok experience.”
As noted by Dienstbier, Rage Wars was more of a spin-off title than anything else, focusing far more on its multiplayer experience than the single-player campaign. Rage Wars scored fairly well with critics, though not as well as previous entries, with several reviewers feeling that the single-player mode was lacking. Even still, Rage Wars appeared to accomplish what it set out to do, which was creating a solid multiplayer mode.
A year after the release of Rage Wars, Turok celebrated its last hurrah on the N64 with the launch of Turok 3: Shadow of Oblivion in 2000. In this game, players control one of Joshua’s younger siblings in the main story mode, choosing either Danielle or Joseph Fireseed as the new Turok, each with their own unique attributes to boot. Here, the chosen Turok takes on a monstrous being named Oblivion, whose original body was ripped apart off-screen near the end of Seeds of Evil.
The developers were quite creative with Shadow of Oblivion, creating a more intense story for the series’ third entry. “It’s a darker game,” said Dienstbier (via Nintendo Power). “We wanted the Oblivion creature to be very ominous, the kind of horrific stuff that dreams are made of.”
Throughout the title’s development, Acclaim Austin prioritized making a smooth-running game, relying less on the use of Nintendo 64 Expansion Paks than in years past. In the weeks leading up to Shadow of Oblivion’s release in August of 2000, developers worked 24-hour shifts to ensure that everything was in working order. These efforts helped to bring the original Turok trilogy to a satisfying conclusion, with another tie-in game coming to the Game Boy Color alongside the series’ final N64 release.
At the turn of the millennium, Acclaim Austin opted to make a prequel to the first game instead of doing Turok 4, starting the sixth console generation by returning to the series’ roots. The next entry, Turok: Evolution, revisits the Tal’Set character in the 19th century as he faces off against Captain Tobias Bruckner.
Though hopes were high for Evolution during its development, critics were not as pleased with it, giving the game mixed to average reviews across the GameCube, PlayStation 2, and Xbox versions. Evolution’s Game Boy Advance port scored a bit better with reviewers, but still received mixed reception nonetheless. Despite the highs of the Nintendo 64 era, recent Turok titles were having trouble selling one million units, and Evolution was no exception.
This would ultimately mark the end of the first chapter of Turok as a video game franchise, as Acclaim was in financial trouble during the early 2000s. In 2004, Acclaim officially filed for chapter seven bankruptcy, losing the Turok license in the process. Plans for future Turok games were effectively in limbo, as chances for a follow-up to Evolution were becoming very slim.
However, this was not the end for the dinosaur hunter franchise on home consoles.
In 2008, Disney Interactive Studios released a Turok reboot via the Touchstone Interactive brand, outsourcing the project’s development to Propaganda Games. The game centers on Corporal Joseph Turok, a Native American space marine who is sent to seize his former commanding officer, General Roland Kane, a wanted war criminal.
Turok’s fresh start on seventh-gen consoles proved to be a commercial success, shipping one million units worldwide despite its mixed reception from critics. Plans for a sequel were in the works, but this game never saw the light of day after Propaganda Games closed its doors in early 2011.
The future of Turok as a video game franchise was up in the air once again, with not much going on aside from remasters of the first two titles throughout the mid-late 2010s. A chibi-style spin-off, Turok: Escape from Lost Valley, made its way to PCs and consoles in 2019, serving as one of the finalists in a collaborative indie game contest held by Universal Studios and Unity Technologies. Unfortunately, Escape from Last Valley turned out to be little more than a short-lived jolt for the franchise, as it was delisted from digital storefronts in early 2022.
Two years later, Universal revealed a true Turok revival, announcing Turok: Origins as an upcoming release for PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X/S, and PC. Saber Interactive was put in charge of developing and publishing the project, bringing third-person gameplay to the forefront of the action. Origins will also be released for Nintendo Switch 2, with Nintendo’s announcement confirming a scheduled release for fall of 2026.
Sometimes, things that are considered to be unc come back into fashion, whether that’s the Turok franchise or dinosaurs as a whole. In my opinion, it’s a bit unfair to dismiss something as unc right off the bat. Things that we feel are unc may be really cool to someone else, so it may be best to give things another chance.
After all, one man’s trash is another man’s treasure. It’s a bit of a tired cliché, but it still holds true in some cases. Needless to say, I think Turok deserves another shot.
Featured image by Fausto García-Menéndez on Unsplash.
