The Official Ghetto Overlord Review of:
Color a Dinosaur

I've seen World of Warcraft players with more life than the title screen.

I lied! Here's title screen after the original title screen! Huh, why aren't you impressed? :(

Look at the Wikipedia list of the worst video games of all time. There's three things that make that article absolutely pathetic:
1) It's almost as long as the Wikipedia article on water, the substance that powers every organism on this planet and should get its own Wikipedia site for its achievements.
2) At the time of this writing, the neutrality of "the worst video games of all time" article is/was disputed.
3) Color a Dinosaur is inexplicably off this list.

At the top of the "worst games" article, you'll find the usual suspects crapping up the chimney: E.T. and Superman 64 are firmly at the top of the list, but there's no mention of Color a Dinosaur. Kid-oriented games are probably even worse than movies marketed "for the whole family" because even the kid eventually gets the point after about fifteen minutes of playing. Color a Dinosaur is one of those kid-oriented games that lights the bar for awfulness on fire and clears it with yards to spare. Before I go into the game itself, let's have a look at how the clever marketing department at the aptly-named Virgin Games handled the box art for this game:

"Turn your NES into an educational coloring book!"
I could write about it being the perfect educational example of how not to make a video game, but that's not quite clever enough here at The Ghetto. I ask: what the hell is educational about Color a Dinosaur? I don't know what I'm supposed to learn: how to make colors count when you have about four ugly colors to work with? This entire game is the equivalent of the founding fathers being forced to write a perfect copy of the Bill of Rights with the five vowels, two consonants, and the phrase "EVERYONE BUT BLACKS GET THESE RIGHTS".

Freehand and block movement - children can move the pencil to any point or the computer will automatically center to the next fillable area.
Forget the fact you can't actually draw anything, the game designer believed so little in the motor skills of a child that there's an option to automatically center the cursor in the middle of whatever section of the screen you wish to color in. Sadly, this is akin to playing with an Aim Hack in a first person shooter. Even sadder, putting it that way tells me this game would probably have a hell of a market if it was released today.

9 patterns to color - Stripes, plusses and more!
"Not even Microsoft Paint can do that! Though it does have us beat by about sixteen million colors..."

Save your budding little artist's original art on VCR to send to all your loved ones.
"Forgive us because we didn't add a save feature! Teach your kid how to configure electronics by showing him how to hook up your Nintendo to the VCR!"

Now children ages 3 to 6 (or adults who don't want to miss out on all the fun)...
I should never be angry at the back of a Nintendo box, but I am.

...from the mighty Tyrannosaurus Rex to the lovable Triceratops...
What the fuck, "lovable"? Of all the adjectives you can use to describe a Rhinocerous on steroids, you use "lovable"? That's like calling Hitler "whimsical".

All of this was good enough to earn the coveted...

Great work, Color a Dinosaur! And I haven't even gotten to the game yet. Let's choose a dinosaur to color!

CHOOSE YOUR KOMBATANT

Perhaps the concept wouldn't be too bad if it wasn't the most horribly coded game this side of Big Rigs: Over the Road Racing. Perhaps it wouldn't seem so bad if it didn't have Mario Paint and Adobe Photoshop giving it a beatdown in the "overall value" department. But rather than just filling in the blanks like the "Paint Can" tool in MSPaint has been doing since the eighties, Color a Dinosaur takes about forty minutes to color in sixty pixels thanks to its braindead programming. The coding is divided into a series of squares which the game a bunch of squares (as can be seen on the left) which the NES has to use all of its might to color in individually. This can take six to eight weeks and the "meltdown imminent" light on the Nintendo will be at red for this entire process.

I want to write more about this game, but unfortunately, there's not much of a game here (the only thing that can be chalked up as a positive). Well, I tried the best I could, but I'm not sure whether or not I'm satisfied with my work. For a second opinion on the finished works in my painting career, I bring in legendary forum troll Mike_LowELL to give his respected opinion on my Color a Dinosaur-assisted works!

Mike_LowELL's Reviews of my Color a Dinosaur Drawings!

wow ive seen bulsh1t b4 but this must b the biggest bulsh1t ever. HIS TALE IS NOT MADE OF BRICK WTF DINOSAURS WAS MADE OF STEAL MY DAD SAID THATS Y THEY WERE SO STROGN. n it looks like hes either 1 of those homeless dinosaur's going "SPARE CHANGE MEESTER" or hes stoned n hes trying 2 sell whatever the fuk hes carrying in his hadn for more cocain. i bet u hes like that kid i beat up in my forth perido class the othr day he was trying 2 tell me "dargon ball z was the best anime on tv" and i was like "pokemon is much better u fuckin faget" n then he hit me and i punched him in his fukin mouth and blood went everywear and the teacher is a christian so she fainted but i think its cus she was turned on so mchu. neway this paintign SUCK!!! rateing: 2/10 (+2 becus it sucks so bad it good)

WHAT THE FUK IS THIS IVE VOMITED KOOL AIDE AN THAT WASNT AS BRITE AS THIS BULLSITH!!! it was at my 11th birthday about two year's ago n i got a barry goldwater action figure n it came with a nuclear bomb n when u exploded the bomb barry goldwater would say like "oh shit i blue up the world" but neway nuclear bombs dnt maek colros' this ulgy. i red the entir wikipeedia article n added "mike lowell was hear" n it said nuclear bomb make ugly but not 'ghetto overlord color a dinsoaur' ugly. jesus christ give me strenght to beat the shit of this gheto faggot!!! rateing: 0/10

Conclusion: Mike_LowELL basically summed it up best: if I, one of the most creative denizens of the internet, cannot employ Color a Dinosaur to any sort of potential, what chance does a four year-old have? (See "overall" rating for answer.)

Graphics: 1.5 / 10
Gameplay: Gameplay? LOL
Sound: -2 / 10
Time to Beat (estimated, since there's no way in hell I would play through the whole game): There is no end. Once you fuck up coloring one dinosaur you pick another.
Overall: 0 / 10

© 2006 by "Ghetto Overlord". Credit will be given when necessary, and I'd expect the same from you. We're all professional here; you can be hatin, but don't be stealin.

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