Designasaurus

• Title — Designasaurus • Developer — Intergalactic Development • Publisher — Britannica Software, DesignWare • Genre — Edutainment • Release — 1988 • Platforms — Amiga, Apple II, Apple IIGS, Commodore 64, MS-DOS • Designer — Ezra Sidran

In 1987, Ezra Sidran signed a contract with Britannica Software for the development of an educational dinosaur game. Shortly before signing the contract, Sidran graduated from Marycrest College and received a computer animation degree. Sidran insisted that Designasaurus not be looked at as a game due to it being educational and accurate. Many of Sidran's friends in the same computer animation program helped him complete the game's artwork. One of the game's developers was Edward Isenberg. Isenberg said of the game in 2012, "This was a low resolution, two dimensional game because it was in the early 90s. You'd be able to walk the dinosaur from one side of the screen to the other and see if you could avoid being eaten."

The game consists of three parts which is the game itself, creating a dinosaur, and printing coloring pages of dinosaurs. To create a dinosaur, a paleontologist of the Museum of Natural History allows the player to use bones from its collection to build their own dinosaur. Every design details the likelihood of the final dinosaur surviving. The game part of the software lets the player control their created dinosaur to help it survive while navigating its environment. The software includes a Dinosaur Hall of Fame certificate after the successful completion of the game and 12 dinosaur pictures which can be printed on t-shirts.