 Ssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssss Welcome to today's edition of Yup That Existed. This time, it's Radical Rex. Err, wait, I gotta say it right. Totally Radical Rex, man. Check it out. It's a gnarly T-Rex threatened sub-pavement! Seriously, if you think I'm exaggerating when I do all this ridiculous 90s stuff, just listen to the song that plays at the title screen. He's a rad! He's a rad! He's my real cool Radical Rex. He's my real cool Radical Rex. He's my real cool Radical Rex. Yeah, that's what passed for entertainment back in October 1994 when this game was released. It was made by Beam Software based out of Australia, which is a good thing because they've made some quality stuff in the past like the SNES ports of Shadowrun, Smash TV and True Lies. Radical Rex is actually a remake of a Game Boy game, Baby T-Rex, another game where you're a dinosaur that rides a skateboard. And believe it or not, Radical Rex does in fact have a lot of charm. I mean, look how the game starts. I can't help but have just a big, stupid grin on my face while that plays. It has such strong poochy the dog vibes. And this is the real thing. This is organic poochy in the wild. Alright, to be fair, some of the charm does work as intended, like how Rex yells at you to start the game. And this one does have a bit of a Joe and Mack vibe to it, especially when it comes to the size of your sprite relative to the screen and your surroundings, how your character moves, and the settings of course have that prehistoric vibe and everything looks nice. But this game has some major flaws that I'll get to in a little bit, but first the basics. You get 1 health meter and 5 lives with 1 continue to get through 10 levels. The B button jumps, A kicks, Y has you breathe fire, and the X button is a special attack tethered to a meter up top. And you collect all the items and the who's it's and what's it's and all that platformer stuff that's in a million other games. What makes Radical Rex stand out is the skateboard, or more accurately the stupid frickin skateboard that makes the controls a total crap shoot. I mean it's a nice idea, it works just fine in Super Adventure Island, but in Radical Rex you move way too fast and you die over and over with barely enough time to react to what you're flying into. Now sometimes games like this can work, I call them pick up and die games where you need to die a million times to learn the layout to proceed with the game, but in this one your margin for error is so tiny that it's next to impossible to react in time to whatever obstacle is thrown in your way so you end up just bouncing out of control. In other words this is one of those games where instead of you playing the game the game plays you to paraphrase an old philosopher by the name of Yakov Smirnov. I will say at least the game allows you to go it without the stupid skateboard you can equip and unequip with the L and R buttons. The level design doesn't do this game any favors either, they just don't lend themselves well to going really fast, it's just a really really poor man's sonic, in terms of how the layout is supposed to work for the skateboard it's just bad. And plus the settings aren't that great either, here you get swallowed by a dinosaur and you have to explore its insides and find your way out its ass or something, but apparently this dinosaur's stomach doubles as a trampoline because you just bounce around uncontrollably without having any idea where to go. Next you're jumping around on a bunch of dinosaur bones and I have to mention that the jump sucks. It's one of those slow jumps where your character needs a frame or two to wind up. I don't know stuff like that always throws me off. The controls in this game never feel comfortable, you're either too slow or you're flailing out of control. If you're basing your judgment of this game just on the footage and you ignore my rambling then you probably think this game looks pretty good and you'd be right. This totally looks like a Joe and Mac spinoff and there's clearly been some thought put into this game like being able to make out with fish to take their oxygen underwater. Wait what? But yeah this game does have its charm but unfortunately the controls suck, the skateboard really sucks and there's not much else here that bolsters this game above below average. Again, if you think this game looks good you're better off with claymates or arty lightfoot or zero the kamikaze squirrel or skyblazer or smart ball or sparkster or cybernator or run saver and hopefully you get the idea by now. You know sometimes when writing these reviews I imagine myself in sixth grade daydreaming about playing video games so much that I would try to make every homework assignment to be video game related somehow. It was one of the only ways I could make myself do homework that I didn't care about but in this daydream my English teacher gives me an assignment saying that I need to write an 800 word essay on the game Radical Rex. That's what games like this feel like to me, sure I could really ham it up like I used to do in English class and talk about how Radical Rex ultimately stands as a testament to the relentless march of progress and its legacy will forever be as a fossil lost in the sands of time. You know something like that but hey instead it could just keep talking like a totally outrageous 90s dude but nah let's just call this game slightly below average and move on with our lives. Radical Rex was also released for Genesis Sega CD and Windows and if you want to play those knock yourself out but as far as the Super Nintendo Edition goes you can find a lot better. Alright that's all for now and I want to thank you for watching and I hope you have a great rest of your day.