Fossil League [DS] p.1 - Gameplay & Story

Contents:

1. The game begins... | 2. More about the gameplay | 3. The plot again (spoilers ahead!) | 4. End/postgame | 5. Personal notes and the score

Around early 2019 I played a rather obscure Nintendo DS game released in the West in 2007 (according to the Fandom Wiki), similar in gameplay to Pokemon. It was Fossil League: Dino Tournament Championship (Jap: 恐竜王者決定戦 恐竜グランプリ). Yeah, the full title is quite long. It was developed by MTO (in 2006) and localized by D3Publisher of America. Any other information is really scarce on the Internet, but MTO's website still has a page for this game (link). And it looks like they have yet another, and even more obscure, DS dinosaur game in their record... Hmmm, tempting.

But anyway! About 7 months have passed since I played Fossil League, and it's time to write about it, till I still remember what it was about. This post will focus more on the gameplay elements and the plot. The next one will be about the dinosaurs themselves.

Some screenshots were taken during my original DS playthrough, while others were taken via DS emulator to supplement the text.

Fossil League box art: Japanese and Western (US). Shows a quite change from the Japanese release, doesn't it?
I enjoy the clipart quality.

Reviews of Fossil League can be found on the net, and from what I've seen, all accurately describe the game: a Pokemon-esque basic & bland RPG, but with dinosaurs. And thus this post won't be a proper, usual, review. Instead, I wanted to dig into the plot, which I found rather odd (in a good, hilarious way) for a game like that, especially when you compare how tame other child media are nowadays. I mean, who else is going to write about this obscure title in more detail? I simply love such odd games! I don't expect people to play this game for the story, but just in case: parts 3 and 4 will contain a lot of story spoilers, so you can skip these walltexts entirely if you feel like it.

The game put some effort in the dino department though: the animals are trying to be accurate, and the Dinopedia (Pokedex) isn't that bad, for what you would expect. It has whooping 105 entries to fill!

Your usual view in the Late Cretaceous...

1. The game begins...

The game starts with your father being ill and dying in bed. With his final breath, he asks you to take his mysterious fossil and keep it safe. If you think about it, that's a quite traumatic way to greet a young player... But anyway, 2 years passes, and now you (or the boy named Taiga - the main protagonist you control) are 12 years old. That's a very important age in this world, because every child who reaches 12, can time travel and enter The Dino Championship Tournament! And thus you receive your own Dino Battle Licence. With it, you can go back to the Mesozoic and take some innocent animals from their habitats, so you can use them in cockfighting in your time against other Dino Battlers. And 12 years old is a perfect age for doing that. Hmm, I wonder if car licenses work the same in this world?

[As a side note, the game has Dinosaur Graveyard placed in the Early Jurassic. It is literally stated that dinosaurs fallen in battles are buried there (regardless of the time period the bodies originally belonged to). With that, the game confirms the animals are being killed in fights. Whoa, that's some edge right here.]

There are a few characters introduced in the beginning, and one of them is Dr. Smith - your and your passed father's best friend. He asks you to accompany him in the Early Jurassic, where he can pick up some Jurassic Herb. This is where the gameplay starts...

Hub world, with all available locations unlocked! The time travel. And the three dimensional dinosaurs. The dinosaurs share a few overworld models, much like earlier Pokemon games did with their overworld 'mon sprites.

2. More about the gameplay

There are two periods available: the Jurassic and the Cretaceous, which are split into early-middle-late sections, referred as "Periods" (epochs would be more accurate, but that's just a nitpick of mine). This makes up 6 Periods to visit in total. Think of them as of locations, which are unlocked as you progress through the game.

Each location has its respective dinosaurs, which are time-placed quite accurately (so there's no Stegosaurus fighting T. rex! Yay!). You start from the Early Jurassic, and end your journey at the end very of the Cretaceous period, during some sort of "nuclear winter" shortly after the asteroid impact.

The future (present? It isn't really explained what year it is) is totally 2-dimensional. All human characters are flat sprites. The past, however, is in nice 3D and every dinosaur is a fully-fledged model as well. Hmm, maybe some 12-yo messed a bit too much in the past, and made all humans flat? Still, the sprites are pretty cute, if you ask me!

The dialogue/conversation illustrations aren't as charming though... (the Western box art is very faithful here).

As far as the 3D locations go, they feel a bit bland, if not empty, with giant textures. Yet, they are still clear enough to navigate through. The worse offender here is the camera - uncontrollable, and way too close to the player. There are no random encounters in this game, but you will stumble upon a foe dino a few times by accident, simply by not seeing what's before you.

What I found nice about this game, is that you can actually re-battle and even recruit the bosses you fought on your quest. They are hidden in the locations you have visited, so it's like a reward if you like exploring!

Music isn't really something to write about (not to mention I don't consider myself musically sensitive...). Maybe aside from that, it feels lackluster and repetitive. Each location has its own unique music, so that's one nice thing. But the loops are darn short, and all consist of very same-y sounds. There is just not much variety here...

It's a DS game. Where are my gimmicks?

This is how you
"crack the safe".

The touchscreen minigames, which you play just a few times (6 in total, I think), are shallow and feel silly. And maybe that's for the best because they are really short, and as such, they aren't really bothersome. As far as I know, once beaten, they aren't replayable in any way, even if your performance is evaluated with a score. Once you won, you retrieve a fragment of the fossil your father gave you, and the next task is to clean it by swiping your stylus around. The cleaned remains automatically float to the right place, filling a missing spot. There are only 3 types of these minigames, so let me describe them here.

• The first and second minigames ask you to poke at your screen, in an attempt to find and dig out the burried fossil fragment. This fits the tone of the game. The only hint is how large the falling ground pieces become, and some sound effects. It's similar to Pokemon D/P/P's mining in the Underground (or, similar to various dino-related Android games...), but with almost no penalty.
• Another 2 minigames ask you to guide your character around a narrow, labyrinth-like, cavern full of traps. That one is more challenging. And more annoying too. You tap at the place where you want Taiga to go, hoping he won't touch any sharp spike.
• Last type of minigames is about connecting similar object with a line... Apparently, that's how the passwords in this world work.

Battle

The battle itself is turn-based and follows the usual rock-paper-scissors formula. The dinosaurs (and other prehistoric animals too) are assigned to 4 elemental types (Power Groups): Fire, Earth, Wind, and Water. Plus there are dinosaurs that don't belong in any group, and thus always receive Neutral damage.

Fire → Earth 

↑           ↓

    Water ← Wind 

The animals fight with Skills (just like Moves in Pokemon), and you can have up to 4 in their moveset. To fight, a dino uses a common SP Bar - which depletes when a Skill is performed.

By using a Skill in battles, you level it up. Some Skills, when leveled up enough, unlock other strong moves. You still need to level up your dino though, to unlock its full moveset :P

There's the publisher's Walk-through, which is archived on the net (link), with the complex explanation of the Skill system. If one is curious enough to learn about the available movesets, it's all there. You can read about the ingame items from it as well.

Elasmosaurus floating above its portable water puddle. I think that's a great detail.
Left: that tiny dot under its chin is Lesothosaurus. Right: against Sordes.

Stumbling upon an overworld foe dinosaur starts the battle. One encounter can spawn up to 5 dinos in the enemy's team. You can recognize the general "family" of the dinos by looking at the icons on the upper right corner on the bottom screen (see the Elasmosaurus screenshots!). There are 10 "families" in total which vaguely follow the taxonomy. Vaguely. I will explain these in the next post. The icon's colour changes as the enemy dino's HP depletes. I'm mentioning that because somehow it took me a really long time to connect the colour with the HP bar... Your team can have up to 5 dinos.

The battlefield is in 3D, and that makes Fossil League stand out a bit. There are downsides, however. The battles take forever, and they can't be fast-forwarded in any way. They become really tedious, especially when you want to grind up your level a little.

The models are rather nice - each extinct animal is unique (although, they obviously had to use a few bases, so some dinos look very alike). Yet, besides that, the whole game has that 'early 3D' vibe to it - the unsaturated colours, and ugly textures.

The battle animations are repetitive as well: the creatures perform the same moves with only elemental textures being swapped around them. They look cool initially, but it's easy to get fed up with them. As for the sound, the battle music is as unremarkable as everywhere else. The dino cries are extremely limited too. There are 2 main roars (cries), shared between all (105) prehistoric creatures. This means that Tyrannosaurus has the same cry as Plateosaurus, or that Chasmosaurus sounds exactly the same as Eoraptor. There are 2 additional death-cries when you kill a dino (one is exclusive to pterosaurs). Don't get me wrong, I don't expect an opera performance from the dinosaurs but 4 sounds in total?

Recruiting the prehistoric beasts

Fossil League introduces the proper capture method quite late in the gameplay. You will need dinosaur food to make an encountered dino friendlier towards you (don't mistake it with Dino Food - this is a healing item!). So much friendlier, that it may join you. Keep in mind, that not every dinosaur in the game can be recruited.

To be able to capture a dino, lower its health first and use the right food on it. Dino Grass is for herbivores, Dino Meat is for carnivores, and Dino Fish is eaten by the water and flying animals.

3. The plot again (spoilers ahead!)

As you are on your way for the Jurassic Herb, you meet your starter: Staurikosaurus, named Stakk! This guy will become your best dino friend. A short while later you run into a random dude wearing black, who steals your precious fossil (the one your father gave to you)! In an accident the fossil splits into 7 parts, all scattered in various prehistoric times and places, and it's up to you to recover them all, and save humanity! Wait, what?

Fossil League: preventing
killing dinosaurs with
machine guns since 2007!

It turns out, that there's an evil organization (where did I hear that from...?), called Syndicate X, which is after your fossil. Let me explain its motives. The fossilized remains belong to Big Mother: the ancestor of the mammalian line leading to humans. These remains can tell which ancient mammal was our true ancestor, and pinpoint the animal in the past. And thus, helping the evil organization to kill it. This act would destroy mankind in the future/your time, and that's the goal of Syndicate X. That all sounds quite insane, but there's an environmental message to it, which is revealed at the end of the game. Oh, X also has infiltrated the Time Monitoring Agency (some sort of police), so they are at least more competent than most evil teams in Pokemon

The eyepatch's a bit inconsistent here...
Ah, the curse of asymmetrical
characters!

In the meantime, you visit places where people legally live in the Mesozoic (such as the Battle Gym with a Dino Battle master residing inside it - the Commissioner who seems to like young girls. The gym has nothing in common with Pokemon Gyms though); end up in a hidden village settled against the law by time travel refugees (they live in peace with the nature so it's ok); destroy a poacher's hideout and rescue the captured dinosaurs; battle some real Dino Battlers nearby a volcano (about the time to see the tournament-esque battles); and see some really hungry ceratopsians at the end of the Mesozoic era. There is a considerable number of scripted boss battles along the way in which you always lose, only to learn you have to do a fetch quest first. After completing the fetch quest you can face the boss again and win for sure. Well, that's one way to make the playthrough longer... Some wild dinosaurs (and people) will need your helping hand as well. Each location ends up with a touchscreen minigame in which one of the fossil fragments is restored.

Total destruction, insanity, and some sweet cheesiness

And now we enter the more grim part of the plot... But, to be fair, the game started out with your dying parent, so it's something I've been expecting!

The main scientist of Syndicate X is Professor Miller. This guy saw the far future, and oh boy, it was not nice at all. In the future the human race will have a great war in which they wipe out the entire planet's life, leaving everything destroyed. With that I kinda hoped to see that future ingame (there were 7 fossil pieces, remember?), but unfortunately, the Late Cretaceous is the last place you visit...

Anyway. The Professor's goal is to erase mankind from existence by killing our ancestor - Big Mother. Without us, everything else can live on, untouched by our destructive nature. What's more, Big Mother is already captured in a cage, ready to be stabbed to death by the guy! No kidding! Thankfully a time paradox comes in handy, as the Professor can't kill the mammal when he ceases to exist. Each time he stabs the poor creature, he disappears for a while and then reappears. This makes Big Mother untouchable by her ancestors. The screenshots are priceless, so let me include them here, just for you.

Killing your ancestors is not advised, or else you can enter an infinite loop!

What an experience! But it's not over yet. The Professor sends out - who else? - a Tyrannosaurus rex to kill the mammal! The reasoning is simple: dinosaurs aren't her ancestors, and thus they are able to destroy her for sure.

In the final boss fight (with the T. rex) Stakk attacks, risking his life. Soon the tyrant lizard king falls, and the bad guys are taken by the police (Miller is getting noticeable more insane). You restore 2 last missing fossil fragments and cry over your mortally wounded Staurikosaurus, as it looks like your partner dinomon is dying... Or is he? Nah, the dying dinosaur is going to be fine in another cutscene, resting peacefully under a blanket, with some bandages on. And with that cartoony sleeping snot bubble too! (I want to keep the screenshots in place, but believe me, the image is unexpectedly cute).

After the dramatic battle, it's time for the happy end! Taiga seems to be strangely happy about Miller going insane though...

After these events, Big Mother was safely sent to her time. Everyone concludes that humans and dinosaurs can create a true and long-lasting friendship. But what about the awful future professor Miller saw? It's up to humans to avoid that path. As Dr. Smith put it "we can change things for the better if we try hard enough". Heh, I guess that settles it then? Everything seems to be alright. The game is ove--

Wait, wasn't there something about The Dino Tournament Championship?

Oh boy, yes it was! The final location in the hub world is now unlocked - Battle Coliseum. At long last, you can enter the titular tournament. Who cares if you just saved mankind, only the tournament will show who's the boss!💪

Restored fossil of Big Mother - the mankind's ancestor!
(...Looks like a counterfeit to me but shh)

4. End/postgame

The Coliseum is a rather nice but short (you can enter the tournament only once) postgame content, in which you fight against 5 Dino Battlers. All of them are the friendly NPC you met earlier and they specialize in one Power Group. The last member of each trainer team is a super OP prehistoric creature, unseen and not met yet during your adventure. After winning the tournament you can re-enter the building to fight the dinos again (they will re-appear as overworld models; the Yangchuanosaurus' is HUGE there btw!) and befriend them. I feel like I should include the endgame screens here. Who else will be dedicated enough to reach that far in the game and record that?

(Oh, it's a good time to mention it now. The game features Wireless PvP. ...but I have a feeling that you won't be able to find anyone else to battle with xD)

The Coliseum bosses. They are super OP! (Screenshots not in order).

The congratulations screen. You met all of these people
in your time-traveling adventure.

After the credits roll, the game teases you with the uncompleted Dinopedia (it looks like some dinosaurs can only spawn now). Gotta find these remaining dinos and fill the missing blank spots. Upon doing so, you receive another congratulation screen:

My time was properly spent. Yay?

And with that completed, it's time to fully enjoy all 105 extinct animals in their 3D glory! ...Or, if you don't have the game (which is more than likely), you can enjoy the Dinopedia when I actually write the post about it. Although, I'm pretty sure some screenshots are available on the net, if you don't feel like waiting (assuming that anyone even reads this blog). The animal roster and their tiny descriptions are included in the publisher's Walk-through as well.

5. Personal notes and the score

To conclude, Fossil League is a shallow, yet harmless experience. Not counting some bold elements (stabbing animals to death, shooting starving dinosaurs with machine guns etc) and stiff dialogues, the story is kind of alright sci-fi/adventure for kids, which is corny at times. The graphics and sound are at an okay-to-awful level. The fights get boring quickly, and there is some grinding involved as well. The dinosaurs are portrayed as real creatures (not some enhanced fantasy beasts). Although they have odd skills like shooting beams or engulfing themselves in flame energy which add some dynamism. Tbf, if the animals would fight with their teeth, claws, and tails only, then it would be beyond boring, haha. There are a few typos and errors, but generally, their 3D descriptions come as quite accurate - as far as 2006/2007 goes, and under the DS capabilities. Few theropods are even feathered. In the end, I would give this game a score of 5/10. The middle ground, between the good and bad.

PS. Contrary to the score, Fossil League did have an influence on me, as it sparkled an unlikely... fanart? My restoration of Staurikosaurus pricei was done simply because [at the time of writing this] I couldn't find any good restoration of the game's main dinosaur. How to write about something, if there's no nice representation of it in the media? So, I did my best, with my limited time and skills, to restore this animal as accurately as I could. And thus, let me include the digital painting, as a finishing touch.

Staurikosaurus pricei restoration - an unlikely fanart of the game's main dinosaur?