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Games to Create Dinosaurs

Dinosaur-themed games are plentiful in the 21st century, appearing in board and video game form, for instance. Yet only a few of these titles tap into something many kids --- and some adults --- doubtless want to do, which is customize and even design their own prehistoric beasts. Dinosaur creation games either allow players to design new dinosaurs, or else alter the way these beasts act or even fight within the game.

DinoMixer
- A game available on the iPhone and iPhone Touch mobile devices, "DinoMixer" is all about interchanging dinosaur body parts --- from legs to tails --- to create whole new dinosaurs from these various components. Players can choose body parts from 13 famous dinosaur species, including the spinosaurus, the carnotaurus and the allosaurus. Players can utilize these parts in over 2,000 different ways, according to the publisher's website. The game also offers a puzzle function; shaking the device causes a dinosaur's parts to scatter, and players can then race to put the dinosaur back together correctly.
Combat of Giants: Dinosaurs
- This unusual combat game, available on the Nintendo DS system, finds players tracing the outline of dinosaurs by utilizing the DS stylus, with the aim of inflicting damage to their prehistoric opponents in dinosaur-based duels. Players choose a combatant to control from a selection of 26 creatures, and battle across nine environments, including forests and deserts. The dinosaur creation aspect of the game comes into play when users customize their dinosaur using rewards gained from winning matches. Players can change their combatant's colors, and even add features such as bones to design a new-look dinosaur.
Role-Playing Games
- Pen-and-paper role-playing games, popularized by the likes of "Dungeons and Dragons," allow players to explore worlds of danger and treasure, utilizing only rulebooks, dice, metal or plastic miniatures to represent the action, and their imagination. Some role-playing games feature encounters with dinosaurs, or even whole lands populated by these beasts. Designers of these games include rules which aid players in coming up with their own unique dinosaurs, which then feature in players' adventures. For example, "Blackdyrge's Templates: Primordial Beast" is an expansion for the D20 role-playing game system, and contains rules for creating dinosaurs based on existing real-life animals, such as leopards.
Dinosaur Dig
- This preschool kids' game requires a sandbox to play. A supervising adult should begin proceedings by printing or drawing outlines of several different dinosaurs beforehand, and cutting them into a few pieces: torso, legs and head, for example. These pieces can be reinforced on card stock for durability. The adult then hides all of the parts in the sandbox and sets the players to digging in the sand and finding the pieces necessary to create a whole dinosaur. A time limit can be set, with the first player to assemble an entire dinosaur declared winner.

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