Out of all the games I played in my grade school days, Radical Rex was an old standby. When I didn't get to go to Blockbuster and get a game to play throughout the week and I still couldn't figure out how to get past that 3D ship puzzle in Super Mario RPG this was my go to. This intro accompanied with a hot Rap song should explain why...
What kid wouldn't want to play a game that features a fire-breathing dinosaur who knows how to skateboard?! Also he had attitude, which was real important back then. If your character didn't seem like a knockoff of Bart Simpson, people weren't going to take you seriously...
Rex was on a mission to save his girlfriend from an evil wizard, but I never got that far. In fact, I'm not sure I made it past the games first four levels because it was so ridiculously hard! Everything would come at you at high speeds and there were plenty of "instant death" moments that would require you to immediately go back to the beginning or a checkpoint if you were lucky enough to find one.
None of that mattered. I loved watching the cartoon dinosaur karate kick, skateboard and incinerate his enemies. One level in particular that I still remember because it used to gross me out to no end is where you had to battle your way through a dinosaur that ate you! It was pretty intense for a game with a lighthearted tone...
For awhile I wondered if everyone had wooden exit signs in their butts. Perhaps the reason for the game's obscurity lied within the fact it sucked as a search of reviews gave it an average of 4/10 citing an unfair difficulty curve. I will agree that the game was unnecessarily hard at times for really no reason. For example, you could flame enemies...but they wouldn't die unless you then karate kicked them when they turned to stone from all the fire. I never questioned it as a kid, but now looking back I wonder what the logic was behind that?
Even with it's flaws it still remains one of my favorite SNES games...so here's to that.
