Fossil Fighters (video game)

Fossil Fighters, known as We Are Fossil Diggers (ぼくらはカセキホリダー) in Japan, is a 2008 video game developed by Nintendo SPD, Red Entertainment, M2, and Artdink and published by Nintendo. It was first released in Japan on April 17, 2008, and was later released in North America on August 10, 2009, and in Australia on September 17, 2009.

A sequel titled Super Kasekihoridā, was released in Japan on November 18, 2010. It was released outside Japan, originally titled as Super Fossil Fighters, but changed to Fossil Fighters: Champions, released in North America on November 14, 2011. A Nintendo 3DS entry, Fossil Fighters: Frontier, was released in Japan in February 2014, and in North America in 2015.

Gameplay
The central concept of Fossil Fighters is the revival of prehistoric fossils into supernatural forms known as "vivosaurs", charged with elemental energy, and the use of these creatures in combat against each other.

The player accesses regions called "dig sites" and collects "Fossil Rocks", each of which contains one-quarter of a dinosaur's skeleton; head, body, arms, or legs. Fossil Rocks are scanned and cleaned at a "Revival Machine" and then incorporated into a vivosaur. Although a vivosaur can be revived using only a head fossil, integrating the other three parts will grant it bonus strength and access to additional abilities. If the secondary parts are found without a head, they will be stored until the head is found and subsequently integrated into the vivosaur.

Cleaning a Fossil Rock involves removing the rock around the fossil with a hammer, and then the remaining layer of dirt with a drill. The player has 90 seconds to accomplish this task and risks damaging the fossil by hitting it directly with the hammer or drill. A cleaner and less damaged fossil grants more strength to the vivosaur it is integrated into.

Vivosaurs with a head fossil integrated are used in turn-based combat against opposing vivosaurs. Up to three of the player's vivosaurs may challenge up to three of an opponent's. Each team has access to one Attack Zone, two Support Zones and one Escape Zone; their starting positions are in the Attack and Support Zones. Vivosaurs can use attacks and other abilities by expending Fossil Power (FP) gained at the start of each turn. Fossil Power can also be conserved between turns in an attempt to expend a large amount on a strong attack. Two turns’ worth of Fossil Power is added to a combatant's pool if one of their vivosaurs runs out of Life Points (LP) and is defeated. LP also decides who is first to attack in a battle, in which the team with the lowest total LP goes first. The battle is over when all of an opponent's vivosaurs are defeated.

The basic strategy of Fossil Fighters is to use attacks with an Attack Zone vivosaur while Support Zone vivosaurs apply statistical bonuses to the player's Attack Zone or statistical penalties to the enemy's Attack Zone. However, Fossil Fighters contains much strategic diversity. A damaged Attack Zone vivosaur may be "escaped" to the Escape Zone when weakened, but a Support Zone vivosaur must enter the Attack Zone and take its place. The now-empty Support Zone will be filled by the escaped vivosaur in two turns.

Fossil Fighters uses a system of elemental balance where each vivosaur has an elemental affinity: Fire is weak to Water, Water is weak to Air, Air is weak to Earth, Earth is weak to Fire, and Neutral-element vivosaurs have no elemental strength or weakness. Certain mythical vivosaurs, only granted to the player in special circumstances, are of the "Legendary" element, which functions identically to Neutral-element vivosaurs.

Plot
After arriving on Vivosaur Island, the Hero confronts a thief and encounters a young girl named Rosie, whose Dino Medals were stolen. After defeating him, the Hero discovers a mysterious idol.

Soon after, the Hero gains access to Knotwood Forest, and helps its inhabitants, the Digadig tribe, defend their treasures from the BB Bandits. During his journey, the Hero gets two more idols, fighting the BB Bandits along the way. A mysterious girl named Duna appears to be following him.

The next day, Rosie is kidnapped by the BB Bandits, the Hero offers the idols in exchange for her safety. After battling Rex, Snivels, and Vivian, the BB Bandits' leader is revealed to be Police Chief Bartholomew Bullwort. The Hero succeeds in getting him arrested and saving Rosie. Meanwhile, Rosie's grandfather, Mr. Richmond, suspects that the bandits were hired to steal the idols.

Dr. Diggins requests that the Hero search for an idol near Mt. Lavaflow. After he finds the idol, Duna demands him to give it to her, and she is revealed to be a dinosaur-like alien called a Dinaurian. After Duna runs off, Rosie meets up with the Hero and they find that the BB Bandits have taken over Vivosaur Island. Bullwort captures the Hero and Rosie, but Rex, Snivels, and Vivian, no longer wanting to take orders from him, help the two escape. The Digadig chief reveals that Bullwort's vivosaur, Frigisaurus, was rivals with another legendary vivosaur known as the Ignosaurus, whom they revive to help defeat it.

The next day, Duna and another Dinaurian named Raptin arrive to take the idols and reveal them to be Sub-Idolcomps, which are intended to wipe out humanity. Using Raptin's device, the Hero and Diggins infiltrate the ship and find the Sub-Idolcomps connected to a larger Idolcomp as the Dinaurian king, Dynal, reveals Project: Mother Planet, their plan to revert humans to amoebas and start over. Dynal tells Duna to press the switch, but she refuses, having learned the good of humanity. Dynal is furious at her betrayal and presses the switch himself, but Diggins causes it to malfunction, sending himself and the Sub-Idolcomp back in time to the Jurassic period. Dynal attempts to kill the Hero and Duna, but the two teleport to safety.

Duna reveals to Richmond that the goal of Project: Mother Planet is to recreate the Dinaurian's home planet, as the planet-eating Guhnash destroyed it. Additionally, the Dinaurians created humanity using seeds derived from their own DNA, with the Idolcomp having been created to monitor evolution and enable humans to evolve into Dinaurians. However, the Sub-Idolcomps were lost in an accident and ended up on Vivosaur Island, so the Dinaurians hired the BB Bandits to search for them. Dynal's Sub-Idolcomp was shattered into five fragments while traveling through time; after gathering them, Duna reveals that it is missing its core processor, which is located in the Dinaurian ship. Raptin appears and attacks the Hero to get the fragment, but the latter is victorious.

The two revive Diggins back in the Fossil Center, with him having found stone-sleep technology in the ship and used it to survive into the present. Back on the spaceship, the Sub-Idolcomps reveal that the Dinaurians' seeds died in the ocean and that humans originated from their own planet. While the Sub-Idolcomps liked them, the Main Idolcomp wanted to destroy them, so it instead sent a signal to Guhnash to have him devour Earth. Upon returning to Earth, Dynal helps the Hero teleport to fight Guhnash, but he can only send one additional person for support, with the Hero having to choose either Rosie or Duna. The two save Earth, but Guhnash's energy interferes with the teleporter, so the two use stone-sleep to survive the return to Earth. Upon returning, the Hero is revived, but his companion is not: if Duna was chosen, her petrification is seemingly irreversible, and if Rosie was chosen, she loses her memories. However, the Digadig chief teaches the Hero a dance that restores her to normal.

Development
The director Azusa Tajima and Genki Yokota from Nintendo SPD along with their entire sound staff from Nintendo worked together with Artdink, M2 and Red Entertainment in the development of this game. In an interview with the 4-team development group, Nintendo's Hitoshi Yamagami describes the game's conception around 2004, when Red Entertainment proposed the idea of a game involving dinosaurs.

Reception
Fossil Fighters received a score of 32 out of 40 by the Japanese magazine Famitsu. The game was the third best-selling game in Japan the week of its release at 35,000 copies sold. By the end of 2008, Fossil Fighters had sold 240,176 copies, making it the 15th best-selling DS game of the year in the region. In the United States, it sold 92,000 units in August 2009, making it the 10th best selling game for that month.

In America, Fossil Fighters scores averaged between 7 and 8. Reviewers generally praised the game for being fun, having simple yet surprisingly addictive cleaning while having battles that were somewhat enjoyable. While most reviewers compared it to the Pokémon video game series, some reviewers like GameSpot didn't mind, saying that they might as well borrow from the best, while others didn't bring it up much. Reviewers found game elements like graphics and music overall lacking, and some reviewers, like IGN (who gave the game a 5.3), knocked the game for being repetitive and too Pokémon-like.