The Quest to Find Dinorex

o1s1n

Some of you might remember the affinity we had around these parts with Dinorex, the bizarre Taito dinosaur fighting game, about ten years ago.

I was planning to host an A&R beers and thought it would be fun if I bought a Dinorex PCB in advance and had it ready to play on a cabinet for the night.

Alberto1225 on Arcade Otaku happened to be selling a board, I bought it from him along with a PGM Cartridge of The Gladiator, on the 16th of August, 2013. So just shy of a month away from ten years ago today.

The board arrived, I tested it out in my SNK cabinet, it worked beautifully. I excitedly wrapped it up and stored it away for the big A&R beers night.

The beers night arrived, I went to stick the PCB into the cabinet and it was nowhere to be found.

I've kept an eye out for it over the years, but it just never turned up. Nowhere among any of my PCBs. Since buying it, I've actually moved house four times, with a lot of stuff being thrown out along the way.

Did it end up in the bin? Did someone else throw it out? did I actually buy it in the first place? I did only play it once - was that just a dream? No it cant have been, I've the PMs from Alberto1225 saying it was shipped!

I eventually gave up, deciding that I'd just never know what happened to it. A mystery for the ages.

Today I was reading arcade-projects.com and saw someone mention a Dinorex PCB. A user from Ireland. It brought memories of my missing board flooding back. Did this guy find my board in a landfill? Is it actually still in my house somewhere, among the pile of PCB boxes? Convinced it had to be somewhere, I decided to take up the search again.

First port of call was seeing what the thing actually looked like. Maybe my one had some identifying markers. I hadn't a clue.

Back then I used to upload all my photos to a photobucket account, but after their whole ransom thing they did, I deleted my account. So unfortunately if I did take photos of the board, they were long gone.

Decided to search Arcade Otaku for 'o1s1n Dinorex' and as it turns out, I'd posted an image of it when it arrived in the 'post here when you get something new thread'

The hyperlink was dead, but a blurry thumbnail was still there with a nice big ugly Photobucket watermark:

Well that's a start!

Okay, I knew what I was looking for and had to get up into the attic anyway to get some other bits, so decided to look through the PCB boxes again.

After searching under suitcases, Christmas decorations and piles and piles of cables, I found a box with two big Taito PCBs. One looked very like the above thumbnail.

The Taito sticker with the game name was on it (white sticker next to the Taito logo) so I got excited for a moment when I saw this as the Irish guy's board on Jamma-projects.com had DINOREX written clearly here - unfortunately on mine the text had vanished over time.

In addition to this, I was convinced it was a Rastan board as I'd seen one of them in the attic a few years back. With a glimmer of home I took it down for testing but tried not to get too excited.

Plugged it into the SNK cabinet, switched it on and... nothing. Completely DOA. Not a peep. No garbled sprites, no sound, nada. Whatever Taito board it was, it looked like it's secrets died with it. I noticed that one of the eeprom windows was exposed, perhaps that was it.

As a last ditch attempt and with no hope left, I plugged it into the Pony - nice new PSU in it so should be giving a board clean power.

Powered it on and...

OH.MY.GOD.ITS.DINOREX.AND.IT.WORKS

Apologies for the absolute dog **** photos but I was so gobsmacked in the moment I lacked the ability to take anything clearer.

I must have tested this board in the SNK cabinet over the years and just kind of cast it aside in my search as it 'didn't work'. Little did I know it just didn't seem to like the PSU in that cabinet.

So there we go, ten years later, the board I thought was lost forever that I only played once had been there in the attic all along. Waiting for the right PSU.

The beautiful sound of victory!

https://youtube.com/shorts/ZeA0axi_KkU

KeRbDoG

I read the title of the thread with a 'wait, i know that game' kinda look...then yes! That was the one and only game on a pandoras box Jamma yoke I have which my kids would play. Nothing else.

So...what did you think of the game itself after all that time? :)

Inviere

Initially I thought this was gonna be a search for an old A&R member 😊

Fantastic read, really enjoyed it, well written. Delighted you found it, must have been a great feeling to power it on in the second cab and see it spring to life...not only did you find the unfindable, but to see it still work, sweeeet 😎

geotrig

arghhhh what was the other Taito board !!! i need to know now

tonyotonyo

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0VkrUG3OrPc

Reading through, I wasn't sure it was going to turn up in the end. Nice one!

This is probably the one you found on the other website

Top tier engrish in it :)

Rastan was the other board?

o1s1n

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120806640#Comment_120806640

Haha! I love the idea that your kids will have bizarre memories of playing such a weird, obscure game when they're older. They'll probably be writing about it online in 20 years trying to figure out what the game was, with folks more than sure they're thinking of Primal Rage and they'll be insisting that's not it. :D

It's still as whacky as I remember! Even whackier in that I can only play it vertically orientated for now haha. I'd totally forgotten about the little trainer dudes whipping the dinosaurs, it's mental stuff.

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120806829#Comment_120806829

Maybe if I leave the board running long enough he'll hear it as a siren's call and reappear again.

It actually has me wondering about some of the other boards that appeared not to be working that might in fact have been a dodgy PSU. I think it might be an idea to replace the PSU in the other cabinet too now at this stage.

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120806952#Comment_120806952

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120807486#Comment_120807486

Haha! So I think the other Taito board is Rastan, however I powered it on and it was just garbled white squares. There are quite a few socketed chips which I'm going to try to reseat and see how it goes. Watch this space...

Yep Tonyotonyo, that's the exact board/photo, with the 'DINO REX' sticker on yours down the bottom that I was hoping to see on mine :D

johnny_ultimate

Discovering the twist ending to Dinorex is my single favourite A&R beers moment :)

dav09

Wow never heard of this game, amazing story and great it showed up, had a similar story with a prototype PCB I had misplaced but only went missing for a year or so but was sure it was gone or taken or left in a cab I sold, I'm sure it's happened a lot of people. Moral of the story for me was to put stickers on each game!

Is the game any good? It looks sorta like Primal Rage.

o1s1n

A prototype PCB? Oh wow that's not something you'd want to be losing alright! Anything unreleased?

Dinorex is an absolutely awful game but falls into the 'so awful it's good' category. From a time when Taito developers were full on mental. Always kind of reminded me a bit of Metal Black. Actually I just googled it there and it looks like they were both directed by Takatsuna Senba, so that explains that!

Retr0gamer

It's an awful game but there's a strange amount of love poured into it. The storyline is utterly mental and... Goes places.

Congrats for unearthing some arcade and retro lore. I'm not sure what it is but we always managed to extract the weirdest **** at the arcade and retro beers from full mame ROM sets.

I'm amazed we never found trio the punch.

dav09

So many 90s PCBs fall into the "'so awful it's good' category".

Ah yeah, a bit embarrassing this one. Definitely the most rare PCB I own, it's a Mortal Kombat 1 prototype, I believe it came from a location test or a preview show, and had multiple sticker versions changed on the PCB so looks to have been reflashed multiple times but has a few differences to the final released, a few prototype romsets have been dumped but haven't verified if mine has or hasn't, I must do that. I remember frantically looking for it one day going to the arcade and multiple storage units, thinking something that might not have been dumped has ended up in the dump or been given away or taken, turns out it was under a bed in a box all along at the very back, the last place I remember it been was at the arcade so thought it went walk abouts but must have taken it home at some stage after I tested it and someone must have moved it.

o1s1n

Fascinating stuff! That would definitely be worth a few eurons alright. Might even be worth sticking up a video on Youtube for posterity just so it's recorded visually in case any of the roms ever go bad.

dav09

Yep I actually had that planned, started a channel to cover all things arcade just have been slow with editing them together due to my previous setup but should be good now. But defiantly, I don't want something like that lost if it is an undumped version although it is a later proto from memory. It actually cost not that much, bought it 3 years ago, regular PCBs go for more than it cost at the time, I've sold most of my PCBs besides maybe 20 as I can't justify the prices on them now.

Retr0gamer

I played a few data east games on switch re entry. They're really ropey games and the yanks have no nostalgia for them but they are pretty beloved in Europe because the rights were cheap but he conversions were handles by pretty competent porting teams.

Bad dudes vs dragon ninja and sly spy are pretty forgettable arcade games but they had excellent C64 and Amiga conversions.

o1s1n

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120816147#Comment_120816147

That's a really great idea, best of luck with it! I kind of wish I'd done some kind of content creating when I was buying stuff up back in the day. Would have been great to document it all. Like you, I can't justify PCB prices anymore. Even more so that they're getting older and older and more prone to faults. Imagine dropping €1,500 on Battle Garegga for example and getting magic smoke a few days after having it in your cabinet 😮

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120816353#Comment_120816353

Ah Data East, even when I was a kid, I knew I was probably in for a mediocre game when I saw that logo pop up. 😁

They've a couple of games I do really like though, the Magical Drop series for one, along with Street Hoop and Windjammers. Maybe SNK made them pull up their socks!

I also have a Desert Assault PCB by them knocking about somewhere, it's basically a poor man's Mercs.

80s Synth Pop

Dave post a link to your channel I'll subscribe :)

Definitely dump the eproms. Run this command:

mame -romident <path to the dumped roms>

If there is no match you can zip them up and send to code @ mamedev . org

dav09

Yeah I seen it myself in Level Up, PCBs might not have been as expensive as Cave PCBs but seen I'd say 30+ blow over 2/3 years, some 4/500 a piece. Most came from that time we tried to operate 20 Goliath's, ether a PSU, monitor of PCB blew every few days!

As for the channel cheers great do! I had a bit of a false start 3/4 months ago as didn't have a pc powerful enough to edit really, sorted now and have a few going up soon. https://youtube.com/@ArcadeUnknwn

And thanks for that, I've never done a room dump before but seems straight forward above.

TechnoFreek

Superb post Oisin. Well done.

o1s1n

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120831570#Comment_120831570

Thanks dude!

Managed to save another PCB this evening.

I've had an original Atari Tetris for an age that always booted with some sprite issues. Sound worked fine and it played fine. But visually it was a mess. Always just assumed a bad component somewhere.

Fairly old PCB, dated 1989. Used to actually have a second one too but it's MIA.

Took a comparison photo this evening, so the bad PCB on the left and miSTer on the right displaying the same game correctly. (Funnily enough my PCB is a hori one and misters one is vertical, the opposite of my actual screen orientations!)

Sideways images aside you can see the problems. The image is there but the colours are all wrong.

I thought I'd just try reseating every single socketed chip on the board on the off chance it might work.

And it did! Haha. Easiest fix of all time.

o1s1n

Quite a bit of fun testing more PCBs out this evening.

The six slot switcher really is great for testing purposes. Can have a board being powered in say, slot 1. Board doesn't work. Change the switcher to slot 4 which is empty.. Can now remove the board and work on it. Stick the board back in, change the switcher back to slot 1 and try again. Lots of testing without having to turn a cabinet on and off each time or digging out a supergun.

Metal Black was one of my favourite PCBs but for some reason it stopped working.

Plugged it in this evening to they new PSU - Bingo! Back to life. So it was a PSU problem afterall, nothing wrong with the game itself.

Had a similar thing happen with a Raystorm PCB, also actually working 100%.

Few other boards I was tinkering with that had mixed results.

Nebulas Ray. Interesting vertical shmup, boots and is about 90% there, still some graphical issues but I got rid of a lot of them with eeprom reseating.

Gnet is still working thankfully.

Shame I didn't take a photo of the Raystorm PCB. Really interesting to compare it to the Gnet board, they both run on Sony branded hardware (I think it's PS1 tech basically) with Taito boards mounted on top. Gnet gets even more interesting then with the compact flash card on top of that again.