Shinji Mikami, the creator of the first three Resident Evil games, has made several other games away from the series to keep things fresh for horror games. One new concept Mikami came up with was Dino Crisis. Instead of zombies or monstrous bioweapons, the main threat in the game are different species of dinosaurs. Dino Crisis was brought into conception after the recent release of the Lost World: Jurassic Park.

The premise of Dino Crisis follows Regina, a special forces member of a secret agency and her team landing on Ibis Island, where an experiment goes wrong and dinosaurs took over the facility, hunting and killing many of the scientists in the area. Regina must navigate around dinosaur threats like velociraptors and the tyrannosaurus rex while searching for a man named Dr Kirk and uncovering the mystery of the experiment.

The dinosaurs featured in Dino Crisis are based on the look and behavior from the Jurassic Park films. The velociraptors were large and scaly, while being swift and intelligent. They can even pursue Regina from room to room and hunt in groups. The raptors were made to be smart enemies compared to the zombies of Resident Evil. Another major threat is the T-Rex, the largest dinosaur in the game. It appears through the story events as a recurring boss fight that can’t be killed, only repelled or evaded.

The gameplay of Dino Crisis is similar to Resident Evil and can be seen as a spiritual successor that takes the basic Survival Horror gameplay and just changes some minor things around it. Some differences include how Regina aims her weapons while moving away or closer to targets compared to Resident Evil characters. Inventory management is only strict to how many of one item the player can carry.