TECHNOSAUR was a computer game development project that started at Jim's Restaurant late one night, when four game designers got together to bitch about work over a cheap (and greasy) dinner. Amid ancient, hacking waitresses, soggy blueberry pancakes, and teenage vamps out way past their bedtimes, the idea of a conflict between the most elite military forces of the modern world and a culture of cybernetic, almost alien humans from Earth's own future began to take form. Real-time strategy from an overhead vantage, set in a simulated natural environment where rain would fall at random intervals, day would fade to night, fires would spread through fields and forests, and packs of cybernetically augmented velociraptors would shred anything standing in their way...it all sounded like fun. Exciting ideas made even better by an air of subversion.

Over the next 12 months, the project advanced and the team grew. However, things at the parent company "didn't work out as planned" and the project was eventually cancelled. Click here to go to the image gallery and see what could have been.

HIGH CONCEPT
The high-tech future collides with the prehistoric past in Technosaur, a real-time, networkable strategy game featuring the cybernetic augmentation of dinosaurs for mission-based combat. Present day forces clash with armies from a decaying future who have traveled back in time seeking vengeance and a new lease on life. The invaders bring a terrifying contingent with them--including raptors, tyrannosaurs, stegosaurs, and many other prehistoric engines of death and destruction. Players control the forces of either side, rising in rank from squad leader to war chief as they develop new military technologies, design cybernetic dinosaurs, and manage critical resources. The setting for this terrible conflict is a living world; rain falls at random intervals, day shifts to night, and the fires of war spread through fields and forests, making up the elements of the most realistic world simulation ever created in a strategy game.

THE STORY
Earth has been invaded. Not by aliens from another world, but by time travelers from humanity's own grim future.

Earth in the 22nd Century is not a pleasant place. Having risen up from the chaos caused by the collapse of the global economy and electronic information web in the early 21st Century, the societies of the world are fragmented and isolationist-oriented. Due to various ecological traumas, the global population has dwindled to dangerously low levels, and the consensus of those who still care about such matters is that twilight is falling upon humankind. Scientific studies, which took several steps backward during the collapse, have become greatly fragmented and strangely eclectic. The pursuit of technological knowledge has been redefined as a means of improving weaponry. Many weapons integrating the intellectual prowess of the human mind with the destructive potential of advanced machines have been unleashed during the conflict, resulting in societies that are as much synthetic as they are organic. Democratic governments have been replaced by Machiavellian feudal lords whose overzealous, xenophobic subjects live in fortified city-states which function more like military installations than cities. The existence of each citizen is wholly dedicated to furthering the war efforts of their leaders. Then, after this arms race has continued for decades, a single leader steps forward to deliver a startling and galvanizing message: the brightest minds of her provincial domain have had crude successes with experiments in time travel. This leader, with this one scientific advance, manages to align the armies of the world, focusing them upon a common goal. They decide to escape their battered and diseased world, and right the injustice done to them by their ancestors, by seizing the unspoiled lands of yesterday. To accomplish this, they embark upon a collaborative effort to open a window into the past. Those united constitute the majority of the world's military might. The factions who disagree are turned upon and slaughtered, leaving the victors free to apply all of their resources to exploiting the temporal gate technology. Their first, cautionary efforts entail a series of transit tests directed at uninhabited prehistoric periods: dinosaurs are successfully brought forward in time. Fully aware of their combat potential, the leaders of 22C Earth cybernetically outfit the dinosaurs with a variety of devastating weapons and biotechnical combat systems. Though limited in what they carry with them by the inherent qualities of the temporal gate, the invaders are confident that their superior technology will give them the upper hand. They enter the unspoiled past at key strategic areas. At first, the invaders maintain a hidden presence, choosing remote areas for their arrival. They spend several years gathering intelligence pertaining to their new home. Before long, though, the indigenous peoples of the late Twentieth Century discover the invaders and the war breaks out.
 

back