Back when i was about 7 there was this web game i liked to play called MyDinos. It was a cross between Club Penguin and Pokemon with a Jurassic aesthetic, hence the name. This post is long and details a dive i took trying to find out more information about this game.
more under cut
A while a go i went down a bit of a rabbit hole trying to look for more information about the game. It kinda fell into a black hole after a while after i played it, and years later i decided to look it up to see what was going on with it, only to find that the game straight up doesn't exist anymore how about that. I was, of course devastated, but i was also determined. I kept googling the name, I put the quotes around it and i found a reddit thread of someone asking about the game.
At that point i thought, “Ok! I’m not crazy, this game did exist!” so i go to the wayback machine. Someone had to have saved the web domain right? Well, uh, right! There it was!
Exactly how i remembered it too. That little Pterodactyl in the background flies across the screen, and the chunky dinos on the bottom occasionally turn and wave. I was really excited to know that somebody saved this, that means at least one other person cares about this weird little website, and that made me happy.
Of course after this i started clicking on some links. The play button is broken here, and hitting login takes you to a grey screen, but if you scroll up theres a few other links that i tried out. The first one says ‘Welcome’, it takes you to the website description.
pretty neat, pretty neat. Hitting the member button there takes you to a similar page that says ‘Coming Soon’ on it. I assume they were gonna add that eventually, but I don't remember it existing when i played it. The parents button takes you to a page explaining the chat policy, and the support button tells you how to report people. Pretty standard for this sort of website. The only other links that seem to work are the Terms of Use and Privacy Policy links, so what now? Going to the website in this current year just allows you to buy the domain.
Well at this point i was gushing over the fact that i could see the funny dinos for the first time in a while, so i did what any normal person would do and started googling again. And, now since i knew what i was looking for, it didnt take long to find a bare bones fandom wikipedia page about the game. It has the logo as it’s main header, and that’s really all i needed to get excited, because again this existing somewhat means someone also cares about it.
This was honestly more than I expected. The game’s been dead for so long i didnt expect for there to be so much here. A lot of the pictures for the game’s monsters, called Dynamals, were taken from this game’s Phone version (which is no longer in the app store sadly). A lot of Dynamals were named, but not all of them have pictures.
The Dynamals, as i remembered them, were all vaguely based on dinosaurs. It’s not like Fossil Fighters where every vivosaur has a real world counterpart. I, personally was looking for a very specific Dynamal. I had one Dynamal i liked, and it was my starter. Of course when i started this quest i couldn't remember the name of the thing, but when i saw it’s picture i instantly remembered that it was mine.
That would be the Shuna line.
There shown is a baby Shuna, and a Shuna. This is the only image on the wiki of the thing, but it struck my head like a nostalgia rock. And what led me to it was what comes after it.
This god damn bad ass of a dinosaur. This is as far as i got my Shuna before I got stuck at a part and dropped the game because i couldn't brute force it. (Reminder i was 7 or 8) Looking at this thing was like meeting an old friend. I wanted to go up to it and say “Hello there my dearest companion, oh how i’ve missed you so...” while petting its large spines.
i drew some pictures of the line to get it out of my system
(def redrawing those later) and i forgot about the game for a few months.
Fast forward to today, and i go back to looking up stuff about this game. I go back to the wayback machine page, i look around a bit, nothing new. Then i’m looking through google images when i find the pixelated head of a baby shuna
Now i’ve never seen this specific image, and the website intrigues me so i go there and-!
“Holy shit, it’s the official blog of the devs”
Truly cannot believe i found this. The site still works of course, it’s not a wayback machine link this time, so I i start poking around. The devs would hold coloring contests for different Dynamals, which i think is pretty neat. You can even see the winners and honorable mentions.
Sadly their fourth contest doesn't have the winners showing, but the other three are all there. The blog also speaks of updates, different clothing choices coming, and bug fixes. It also has links to other blogs relating to MyDinos. Yep, the blog possum had a few blog joeys on it.
There was Lyville’s MyDinos Cheats which shows off glitches and cheats in the game.
There were two websites that connected to a supposed clan in the games meta called the ’Shadow Ninjas Clan’ which is such a name a kid in their boxfort would call their friend group and i love it. One site spoke of the rules of the clan and the dress code so they knew who was in the clan.
The other site was for lower members of the clan, and only one person posted on it.
The last site is called ‘MyDinos Club’ and their header is a finely crusted jpeg with MyDinos spelled out in the disney font. It contains the adventures of a kid who pointed out events and updates and even encountered a dev at one point.
It was all very pure to explore. Reminded me of a simpler time.
You know what else reminded me of a simpler time? The youtube videos i found of kids playing this game. Complete nostalgia trip.There was one where someone toured all the hub areas, others where kids were just playing the game or talking with friends. Seeing all the hub areas and the field areas made me miss the game.
Here’s a few of the videos i found
But where to go from here? No where else really. The game has a twitter and a facebook, but both talk about the defunct app game and nothing else. They each only have one post only talking about that.
I think the devs tried to follow the kids onto phones and i pods, but it didn’t exactly work seeing as the game doesn't exist anymore. It’s kinda the same as the original Club Penguin’s fate if you think about it, except it happened in the 2010s.
I can only hope this game gets a rewritten version or something at some point, maybe with a fresh coat of paint. This game deserves more than what it had. It was a solid idea, and i wish it never crashed as hard as it did.
