Games You Should’ve Played (But Probably Didn’t): E.V.O.: Search for Eden
The prehistoric theme has been vastly under-utilized in the world of video games. I mean, what comes to mind? Jurassic Park for the Genesis? Christ it was difficult. That cancelled BC game for the xbox? Just another case of Peter Molyneux being the step-father of the video game world, promising the world and then letting us down. The Dino Crisis series? The first one was terrible, the second one was mediocre, and the third one was in goddamn space. You have officially broken through the bottom of the barrel when you’re taking your game with a prehistoric-enemy theme and putting it in space.
“WHY DID WE BRING RAPTORS ONTO THE SPACE STATION? WHAT POSSIBLE PURPOSE COULD THEY HAVE SERVED UP HERE?”
For my money, the best game that ever revolved around prehistoria was a little-known Super Nintendo game by the name of E.V.O.: Search for Eden. Released in Japan in 1992 and North America in ‘93 by Enix, EVO was an incredibly weird action-platformer that focused on the concept of evolution on Earth. Starting off as a lowly fish wallowing in the ocean, you’d eventually grow and develop into a land-dweller, then (potentially) a mammal, ending finally as a human being.
I’m well aware how that sounds less like a good video game and more like “that class I never went to in high school”, but imagine that you’re the one controlling the evolutionary process.
You think your fish-character you’re controlling is cool, but want him to be a bit more deadly? Then give him some razor-sharp-goddamn-teeth. Think your weird, hippo-looking creature is way too slow to survive natural selection (and by natural selection I mean those asshole alligators gnawing off your tailbone)? How about “evolving” some tiger legs.
It was possible, through careful evolutionary decisions and exploring the world to find hidden power-ups (it is still a video game after all), that you could eventually become a club-wielding human being, using your mastery of basic tool craftsmanship to whip the asses of all around you. But personally? I preferred making my creature an ungodly murderous abomination, some Lovecraftian horror of claws and tentacles and crystallized hatred that would devour the souls of anything slow and/or stupid enough to stumble in front of it.
Go forth, my clawed tricera-monster. Go forth and FEED
The gameplay itself wasn’t anything too revolutionary for its time, but EVO managed to find a cool niche between the “jump-on-its-damn-head!” form of platformers that were in vogue at the time, with a surprisingly robust and in-depth RPG system.
There was some semblance of a storyline within EVO, something involving Gaian Earth Goddesses trying to create a creature worthy of ruling the planet, or something to that effect. I felt like it was some kind of mix between Darwin’s “On the Origin of Species” and “Battle Royale”, but to be honest I wasn’t paying too much attention; like every SNES-era platformer, you weren’t really playing for the engrossing story.
EVO was something of a rare treasure; it was generally over-looked during the time of its release, and the few reviews that came out for it at the time generally didn’t look too favourably on it, and so it kind of fell off into obscurity. It’s also true that since this game is likely more of a rare collector’s item than a video game it’d be difficult to get a chance to play today, and I would never be so crass as to suggest something illegal and immoral like downloading an emulator.
…Specifically, I would NEVER tell you that you could type the words “SNES emulator” into google and find an emulator in mere seconds, or that there are dozens of easily discoverable websites that would have ROMs of all kinds of Super Nintendo games, including possibly the very game I’m discussing here.
This. Don’t do this.
No, I would never suggest something like that.
