Common Sense Media Review
By Chad Sapieha
,
based on child development research. How do we rate?
Pokemon-ish RPG substitutes fighting dinos for monsters.
Parents Need to Know
Why Age 7+?
Any Positive Content?
Where to Play
Videos and Photos
Fossil Fighters
What's It About?
FOSSIL FIGHTERS’ slogan could be “gotta find and clean ‘em all!” It’s a role-playing game involving the collection of animals that makes no bones about drawing inspiration from Nintendo’s popular Pokemon games. The primary difference is that rather than finding monsters and pitting them in battle against one another, players are instead digging up dinosaur fossils and cleaning them in a laboratory using a hammer, a laser chisel, and a their breath (they can blow into the mic to remove dust) before re-animating them and throwing them into the ring. All of the action takes place on remote atoll called Vivosaur Island. Players take control of a young fossil fighter in training who slowly learns the ropes from the locals while upgrading his fighter’s license and earning access to areas of the island home where he can find rarer fossils.
Is It Any Good?
Fossil Fighters is a polished and entertaining children’s RPG. Using a sonar to find fossils in fields is exciting, and the bone cleaning activity requires a very delicate touch in order to preserve as much of the dinosaur’s remains as possible. What’s more, the battles are fairly strategic. Players are required to manage teams composed of up to five creatures, each of which has its own upgradable abilities and is assigned an attack, supporting, or escape position on the battlefield. Later battles demand both thought and skill.
However, play is hampered by excessive text dialogue. Consequently, the game moseys along rather slowly. It will take most players better than a couple of hours to reach the first major battle to level up to a second grade fossil fighter. Plus, the cleaning, though fun, begins to feel repetitive once you realize that the vast majority of discovered fossils are duplicates of others you’ve already found. Pokemon lovers will have fun, but it’s unlikely they’ll consider Fossil Fighters a permanent substitute for their favorite franchise.
Talk to Your Kids About ...
Families can talk about paleontology as a career. What do you think paleontologists do? Do you think hunting for and researching ancient fossils would be fun? Do you think the number of findable fossils is dwindling as more researchers head out into the field? Does that make a paleontologist’s job more difficult? Which would be more fun to investigate, plant or animal fossils?
Families can also contrast the game with Pokemon, a franchise with a similar concept. What are the major differences between these two games? Is one more appealing than the other? What do you think of the idea of using once-real animals instead of fantasy monsters in battle?
Game Details
- Platforms : Nintendo DS , Nintendo DSi
- Pricing structure :
- Available online? : Not available online
- Publisher : Nintendo
- Release date : August 10, 2009
- Genre : Role-Playing
- ESRB rating :
- Last updated : November 11, 2020
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