Radical Rex

The title screen.

Radical Rex is a 1994 platformer for Sega Genesis, Sega CD and SNES, released by Beam Software.

The plot is simple: An evil gopher-like creature named Skriitch wants to help the mammals rule the world, so he casts a spell on the dinosaurs that turns them against one another to help him achieve that goal. However, main character Radical Rex, a skateboarding, fire-breathing, "too hip to be extinct" T.rex, was unaffected by the spell. So he sets off to rescue the dinosaurs, which include his girlfriend, Rexanne. Strangely, the SNES version features a human wizard named Sethron as the Big Bad, rather than Skriitch.

The game has largely been forgotten, and is a rather generic 2D platformer. However, the nice graphics and animation, interesting levels, and cool music make it worth checking out.

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Tropes used in Radical Rex include:

• Ambidextrous Sprite: Yep. Rex will be perfectly mirrored no matter which way he's looking.
• Big Bad: Skriitch in the Sega CD version. Sethron in the Super NES version.
• Bubblegloop Swamp: The second level.
• Color-Coded Multiplayer: There's Rex, who is a light-brown T-Rex, and a second player controlled character that may or may not be an actual second character or just Rex dyed purple.
  • It's actually Rexanne.
• Difficulty Spike: It starts at Level 4, and each successive level afterwards just increases their Nintendo Hard status even more.
• Damsel in Distress: Rexanne.
• Dinosaurs Are Dragons
• Everything's Better with Dinosaurs
• Everything Is Trying to Kill You
• Evil Sorcerer: Skriitch and Sethron.
• Excuse Plot: Yeah, pretty much.
• Family-Unfriendly Death: Getting dissolved by a giant dinosaur's stomach acids, roasted to death in laza, drowning, or getting impaled on spikes.
• Foregone Conclusion: It's dinosaurs vs. mammals, for crying out loud!
• Getting Crap Past the Radar: In higher difficulties, some of the enemies in the Womb Level are sperm and eggs.
• Hit Points: In the form of a life bar.
• Idle Animation: Rex will impatiently tap his foot.
• The Many Deaths of You: There must be a thousand and one ways to get yourself killed in this game, and you are likely to hit every single last one of them before you beat the game.
• Mascot with Attitude: This was undoubtedly what the developers were aiming for with Radical Rex.
• Mini Game: You can enter these between the core levels of the game by collecting dinosaur eggs. The Mini-Game levels themselves are all the same: Radical Rex riding a pogo stick atop seashell platforms to collect more dinosaur eggs. Oh, and he has to stay above the rising acid. What Do You Mean It Wasn't Made on Drugs?
• Nintendo Hard: Not at first, but once you get to level 5, this starts setting in hard, as the enemies get tougher, the element of Super Drowning Skills is introduced, and each of the levels from this point on have bosses.
• Platform Game
• Ribcage Ridge: Level 4 is a dinosaur graveyard, where you must climb up giant jumbled dino skeletons.
• Save the World: An evil wizard is turning all your fellow dinosaurs against each other to induce their extinction and the rise of a mammals!
• Side View
• Somewhere a Paleontologist Is Crying: It's rather unlikely that real dinosaurs breathed fire. However, Rule of Cool.
• Stock Dinosaurs: The list includes:
  • Tyrannosaurus Rex, triceratops, stegosaurus, some kind of raptor, and a few others.
• Title Theme Drop: Hell, the title even drops into view when it starts!
• Title Theme Tune: Radical Rex, at least on the Dega CD, had one worthy of an 80s cartoon show.
• Totally Radical: It's right there in the title. The SNES version has a rather lousy theme song with the lyrics "He's a real cool/real cool/real cool RADICAL REX!", and Rex's soundbites sound like a bad imitation of a stereotypical California surfer dude.
• Tyrannosaurus Rex: Radical Rex and Rexanne.
• Womb Level: Level 3 opens with Rex accidentally getting swallowed by a gigantic dinosaur. Three guesses where the level is set — and it's a particularly Squicky example of this trope.