Technology is a rarity in this post-apocalyptic nature preserve. Six hundred years later in the 26th century, they emerge from the depths a little worse for wear only to find that nature has reclaimed the planet, a second Moon is in the sky, and dinosaurs have returned to life. In 1996, the world is wracked by ecological disasters and by 2020, what’s left of humanity retreat into vast underground shelters to wait things out. This review on Prehistoric Pulp praises the series as “the best dinosaur comic ever published…one of the best adventure comics ever to appear.”Īnd like Konami who banked on the short lived popularity of Moo Mesa the year before in ’92, Capcom bet a beat ’em up on the unique world that Schultz had created and which TV eventually brought to animated life.Ĭadillacs and Dinosaurs eventually replaced “Xenozoic Tales” as the title of the series when it appeared as a small “blurb” on the second issue and caught on, eventually leading to a slew of Cadillacs and Dinosaurs inspired creations such as the cartoon series.Īccording to the series, we shouldn’t even be writing about this stuff anymore because humanity should almost have died out by now. But that was enough to inspire CBS and Nelvana to create a short-lived, thirteen-episode cartoon series which ran from ’93 to ’94. The series by Mark Schultz started way back in 1987 and ran on a very irregular schedule up to 1996 where it stopped at the 14th issue. And if you wanted a beat ’em up made of your favorite comic or cartoon, you really couldn’t go wrong with either of these two. But like the Boys from Moo Mesa, Xenozoic Tales had an interesting spin on a particular subject - in this case, a post-apocalyptic Earth where dinosaurs now ruled and Cadillacs ran on dinosaur guano. Xenozoic Tales, though, seemed a bit out there much like Konami’s move to license Wild West C.O.W. The same with their Dungeons & Dragons play. The Punisher was a perfect shoe-in and fans since then have praised it as one of, if not THE, best beat ’em ups ever made. The cover wasn’t as nice as the US one above, but it was lavishly illustrated on the inside instead with comic panels in the backdrop.īut that didn’t mean Capcom completely ignored the power of a good license - or the potential it brought to the table to build an action game around it. The European flyer for the game was six pages filled with illustrations and info like this detailing the characters and the world for an audience that might have no idea what the comic was all about. Their approach seems to have been more focused on original works based loosely either on history or film tropes from Dynasty Wars’ Chinese-themed history smash ’em up to Final Fight’s gang blight buster. Now, Konami’s house focused quite a bit more on comic and cartoon licenses by tagging properties like Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles to more obscure ones (at least in the US at any rate) such as Asterix for the beat ’em up crowd. In that year, Konami hit arcades with three very different titles: post-apocalyptic face bashing in Violent Storm, Altered Beast-like Metamorphic Force, and the fantasy-themed Gaiapolis.Ĭapcom would also hit arcades with three beat ’em ups of its own, each also very different from one another: a Marvel-licensed outing for The Punisher, Dungeons & Dragons’ Tower of Doom, and an arcade game based on the cult comic series, Xenozoic Tales, called Cadillacs and Dinosaurs. The year 1993 would become the last peak year for arcade beat ’em ups coming out from both Capcom and Konami. And if the style looks familiar, you might think the quality of the work shares similarities to another award-winning cartoon series that he is currently working on – Prince Valiant in the Days of King Arthur. Believe it or not, this is the US flyer (courtesy of the Arcade Flyer Archive) for the arcade game which features Mark Schultz’ fantastic art typical of his work on the Harvey award-winning Xenozoic Tales.
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