What If… Dino-Riders!

5th Feb 2026

Barry

10 mins

Walking through games stores as I often do – I’m often surprised (and sometimes confused) by some of the products that land so prominently on the shelves. It’s lead to disappointment sometimes.

Like seeing the massive quantities of Transformers on the shelves only to the sad reality that they’re just collectable models. Sure, they’re nice but so prominently? And everywhere in the store – even blocking access on the floor.

And so it was that walking into Jolt Games my eyes were drawn to Masters of the Universe Battleground; a He-Man (HeMan? He Man?) themed miniatures game which is an absolute gut punch of nostalgia to my childhood. I don’t often think about discussing that period without a therapist or alcohol – but He-Man was one of the many cartoons that successfully convinced many children they needed that Castle Grey-Skull playset.

It lives so large in my head and so I was struck with another thought – how much of this is there? There’s two seasons of that cartoon (according to my cursory google search), the game has up to Wave 8 and I had absolutely no recollection of who the Snake Men were let alone why I want that faction. And that’s not any sort of condemnation of the game’s quality or how it plays because I really want to play it. It’s just that my current back catalogue of painting is significant and I’m time poor.

Remember me talking about painting Star Wars Shatterpoint? Yeah, I’m still doing that…Like I cannot place enough emphasis on how crap I am at this aspect of the hobby.

But I digress – I wonder why He-Man? I know there’s a new cartoon on Netflix and live action movie on the way but this is clearly stylised in the 80’s cartoon. And that leaves me wondering about who the hell owns the rights to those other iconic cartoons that were really just marketing platforms for toys.

My pick would be - per the title - Dino-Riders.

Honestly what wonderful nonsense!

For anyone who doesn’t remember it or worse still never saw it– it’s an eclectic combination of dinosaurs that in realistic terms have no reason to be seen together (I’m a nerd deal with it), aliens in desperate need of throat lozenge, and mind control of said dinosaurs. It’s just a casserole of nonsense – the Brontosaurus (sic) has a slippery slide and laser beams around its ankles as though its attending a high risk pilates class.

It’s amazing.

I never managed to get my hands on the T-Rex (damn you Rosco!)  - and getting one in box now will definitely require some explaining to my wife when considering the cost.

Honestly let’s face it, there’s only one season of the show and there are so many other shows to choose from. Circling back – where is that Transformers miniatures game?

Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles? GI Joe?

Oooh Robotech! Mask!

The point is there’s so many IP’s to choose from and clearly so little capacity to turn them into tabletop games that could have any staying power in a competitive market. Hence the wave 8 Snake Men…

My pitch for Dino-Riders would be multiple loadout types for the actual dinosaurs for upgrades, different …riders(?) and management of dinosaur fatigue and…well probably a countdown until the bad guys lose control of Tyrannosaurus Rex – which I remember happening repeatedly as their “I’ll get you next time Gadget” bit at the end of an episode.

Dramatisation. May not have happened.

But it probably happens once and I’m just misremembering.

The narrative of the show is pretty limited with only 14 episodes (one of which is in the Ice Age), and so there’d have to be a fair bit of liberty taken with the content. But there are plenty of characters to choose from for both factions so that doesn’t need to be a concern. And with names like Questar, Vector, and Faze.

And they’re meant to be the good guys.

The real expansion of the content would really be through a campaign mode - or at least objectives where both factions are clearly trying to get enough resources to repair their ships and find a way back to their time. Oh and kill the other guys in the process…

I probably shouldn’t become too emotionally invested in what the game might be. I have a significant pile of shame to get through in terms of games I haven’t really played yet. And I just got the next campaign for Star Trek Into the Unknown (thoughts on that to come), and I bought Halo Flashpoint at CanCon.

And the guys told me that was easy to paint… and I think they lied to me but I digress. There’s a lot of stuff that I want to will into existence - hence this series of articles. Let me know what classic series you would like to see make its way to the tabletop.

Stay salty!

- Barry