Prehistoria is the trope for Video Game Settings taking place in the Lost World or Hollywood Prehistory. Cavemen abound chasing Nubile Savages, while dinosaurs will live in volcanoes or breathe fire and eat anyone who comes too close. Expect a blend of Jungle Japes and Lethal Lava Land. Any architecture will likely be either crude huts, Mayincatec stone structures, or Jurassic Park-style electric fences and laboratories.

A rarer variant may mix in Slippy-Slidey Ice World for an Ice Age setting — replacing the dinosaurs with prehistoric mammals like mammoths and saber-toothed tigers.

Typically features a mix of different prehistoric creatures — like mastodons and triceratops living side by side and Everything Trying to Kill You. Expect to kill a lot of dinosaurs and/or cavemen. Please ignore the palaeontologists sobbing softly in the corner.

Named after the cave area of Secret of Evermore.

Compare Lost World and Hollywood Prehistory, the non-video game versions of this trope.

Not to be confused with Prehysteria!, a series of family films about tiny dinosaurs released by Moonbeam Entertainment, a subsidiary of Full Moon Features.

For the new book series of the same name, see Prehistoria.

Examples

• This is the entire setting of many Video Games:
  • Dinosaur Planet and Star Fox Adventures, which mix this with Mayincatec in areas like Walled City and Krazoa Palace.
  • Bonk's Adventure and its sequels, which has a caveman with a Hard Head dealing headbutt to the local dinosaur life.
  • Worlds of Ultima: The Savage Empire where the Avatar travels to a Lost World with tribal princesses, dinosaurs and mad scientists.
  • Carnivores hand waves it, since it's set on a different world that happens to have convergent evolution. Past this weak justification, it's the trope, although it at least separates the dinosaurs and ice age mammals (the mammals going in the more polar regions, the dinosaurs in the more temperate, equatorial islands).
  • Joe & Mac takes the most cartoonish version and runs (and jumps) with it. Big stone wheels, Nubile Savage babes and pterodactyl rides are all included.
  • Any games based on The Flintstones which features the misadventures of a modern Stone Age family.
  • Saurusland, a primitive game that was one of the first releases for the MSX and Tomy Pyuuta.
  • Toki which features a tribesman cursed to become a projectile-spitting ape who traverses a lush, primitive Lost World and fights monsters including dinosaurs and mammoths as he tries to save his Nubile Savage princess from an evil Witch Doctor.
  • Far Cry Primal, set in a relatively realistic depiction of the Pleistocene. No dinosaurs, but plenty of mammoths, smilodons, and others
• The original Age of Empires game has a downplayed example- the first 2 Ages are Stone and Tool, while the latter 2 are Bronze and Iron (sadly, the Copper Age hasn't been added ingame). Basically for the first half of the game, the player will be playing as a caveman living in a hut decorated with bones and wielding a club before starting properly an ancient civilization.
• The first world in Age of Zombies is Prehistoric times, featuring a unique caveman announcer, cavemen zombies and Zombie T-Rex as the boss.
• ARK: Survival Evolved: Waking up on a mysterious island full of formerly extinct animal life, including plenty of dinosaurs, you'll go from fending off these beasts with sticks and stones to filling them with holes once you develop machine guns and Plasma Cannon.
• Banjo-Tooie has Terrydactyland, which serves as the game's fifth action stage. It is a scorched canyon inhabited by three families of cavemen and several dinosaur mooks, and has some areas with quicksand. At the very top of the stage lies Terry, a large pterodactyl who mourns the theft of his eggs (and erroneously accuses Banjo and Kazooie for it, forcing a boss battle), though things get better for him afterwards as the duo agrees to help him find them.
• Billy Hatcher and the Giant Egg has Dino Mountain. With dinosaur skulls that vomit lava.
• 65,000,000 B.C.,^note (A.K.A. "Prehistoric" on the SNES and "Prehistory" on the DS) in Chrono Trigger, with the added touch of humanity fighting against reptilian humanoids called Reptites — essentially dinosaurs with human forms and intelligence. On the party's second visit, they witness Lavos crashing into the earth, causing the mass extinction of dinosaurs and Reptites alike. Hilariously, one of the early player's guides for the game called that age "Prehistoria" which led a fan or two to calling it that until the DS version gave them something better.
• The "Uga Buga" chapter in Conker's Bad Fur Day takes Conker to a Lethal Lava Land cavern inhabited by the Uga Bugas (not to be confused with the Unga Bungas from Banjo-Tooie, though both games were developed by Rare, so they're likely related), as well as sentient boulders that hang around the Rock Solid nightclub. There is also a T. rex marching down a walkway suspended over lava, eating cavemen as it goes. The game lampshades this trope by having Conker complain about how he can't even visit a "dinosaur-themed world" without being mugged by a bunch of cavemen.
• Cratermaze begins its adventure through time in the primitive world. Each time period has two types of enemies; here, it's cavemen and dinosaurs.
• Crash Bandicoot:
  • Crash Bandicoot 3: Warped: The Bone Yard and Dino Might! levels as well as the secret Eggipus Rex. In the former two levels, Crash is chased by a large, scarlet-colored triceratops that aims to crush him, thus serving as the game's equivalent of the boulders and the polar bears from the first two games respectively. In the second level and secret level, Crash can also ride a friendly baby dinosaur.
  • Crash Bandicoot 4: It's About Time: Most of the Eggipus Dimension levels are set in prehistoric times; starting off in a dense jungle before slowly transitioning to a volcanic landscape. In the level "Dino Dash", Crash or Coco get chased by an angry, red-colored T-rex throughout. In one instance, they were saved by the falling boulders due to Dingodile's accidental intervention in "Rock Blocked", if only for a short time.
• Croc: Caveman Village is the third village that Croc visits in Croc 2, and contains eight levels. It features a river of lava, dinosaurs, a giant, sentient Venus Fly Trap, several volcanoes, Stonehenge, and a Witch Doctor Gobbo.
• Dino Crisis 2: The game has rival government agencies sent back in time millions of years ago. There they will contend not only with dinosaurs, but brainwashed teenagers from the future and their android helpers.
• Donkey Kong:
  • Donkey Kong Country Returns: World 6 (the Cliff) is a primeval canyon where brown mud flows in many levels, greatly reducing Donkey's and Diddy's motion when they're soaked in it. There are also dinosaur ribs they can step onto, Undead Fossils as enemies, crumbling rocky platforms, and spiky boulders. Besides the dinosaur ribs, another prehistoric motif is fossils reminiscent of the Leviathan infants from Metroid Prime 3: Corruption (both games were developed by Retro Studios).
  • Diddy Kong Racing: The first world, Dino Domain. Its courses take place in landscapes inhabited by dinosaurs and pterosaurs, such as scorched canyons, primeval jungles, and volcanic caves.
• Level 2 of Dragon's Lair II: Time Warp. In this prehistoric era Dirk, Mordroc, and Daphne land in, our hero fights off dinosaurs and centaurs!
• A few levels of Ecco the Dolphin were a cross of this and Underwater Level. The enemies included a prehistoric version of the common jellyfish enemy, dinicthys fish standing in for the sharks, giant seahorses, and inexplicably vicious trilobites. Seriously.
• The Lost Underworld segment of EarthBound (1994). The place (and the monsters in it) are so huge that your party is only a few pixels high by comparison.
• The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim has aspects of this; in many ways a standard fantasy setting with a specifically Scandinavian flavour, but nonetheless inhabitant by caveman-like giants, woolly mammoths, and sabre-toothed cats. And there are lots of caves, and Dinosaurs Are Dragons.
• Empire Earth like Age of Empires begins the player as humble prehistoric humans who could potentially give rise to mighty civilizations... or chose to stay behind and remain primitive cavemen. Realistically, other players who play better are more technologically advanced (having access to nuclear bombs) will decimate them in combat.
• Endless Ocean: Luminous has each dive grant access to a specific type of sub-area out of five possibilities; one of them is an ancient Mayincatec ruin riddled with prehistoric aquatic life, offering a (flimsy) explanation for how they could have survived into the modern day to be found and studied by the player character.
• The premise of the game E.V.O.: Search for Eden is to evolve your character from tiny fish to mighty land mammal. The whole game is set in a relatively scientifically accurate version of this (except for the aliens meddling with evolution and the dinosaurs living in secluded areas).
• In Gunman Clive 2, South America has dinosaurs and other prehistoric creatures as both enemies and platforms. The game supposedly takes place in the year "18XX".
• Golf Story: Lurker Valley has shades of this. Features tar pits as hazards, dino skulls and mammoth tusks as set dressing, and the NPCs are all cavepeople who speak in You No Take Candle.
• In Goofy's Hysterical History Tour, the first stage takes place in a prehistoric museum exhibit. The boss of the stage is Pete disguised as a caveman.
• In Gem Smashers, Egg Island takes place in a canyon filled with dinosaur eggs. The boss of the stage is a baby pterodactyl who wears eggshells as a hat and overalls.
• In Home Improvement: Power Tool Pursuit!, the first world takes place on the set of a prehistoric forest. Animatronic dinosaurs serve as enemies.
• Jurassic Marsh in Plants vs. Zombies 2: It's About Time. The zombies in this world are themed around cavemen, and the world's gimmick are invincible dinosaurs that helps the zombies in various ways (Velociraptors kick zombies past your defenses, T. rex makes them faster, etc).
• Humankind simular to Age of Empires above, starts with a Neolithic hunter-gatherer nomadic tribe which hunts mammoths before making enough progress to develop into a proper ancient civilization, though simular to Empire Earth it can go beyond the period of Antiquity into modern times.
• Hurdle Turtle: "Raceous Cretaceous" is a stage that takes place in a prehistoric wasteland with the walls and hurdles being replaced with Tyrannosaurus rexes and Triceratops, and infinite stretches of volcanoes in the background.
• The Journeyman Project briefly has you go back 200 million years into the past for a few minutes to obtain a disc containing the entire history of the world, which was placed far enough back in time that the likelyhood of someone tampering with it would be minimal. It is after this task that you begin your real mission.
• Jitsu Squad has a stage set in a planet where dinosaurs still exists and runs rampant. It was named "Primal Rage" as a blatant reference to an older classic dinosaur game.
• Kirby's Epic Yarn has "Dino Jungle", a Jungle Japes version of this trope, featuring prehistoric animals from pterodactyls to Tyrannosaurus.
• The first world of the first Lost Vikings game. Its only pretense at actually being a prehistoric world was its dinosaur and human enemies, however, as the stages featured the usual assortment of keys, bombs, and drawbridges found in the other levels. It is called "Prehistoria".
• The aptly-named Prehistory chapter in Live A Live features Pogo the caveman protagonist (and his gorilla buddy, Gori) saving the Nubile Savage Beru from the enemy Kuu tribe. They use mostly stone tools, hunt for food, and live in cave-like dwellings. There's even a dinosaur skeleton in Pogo's tribe's backyard, and the final boss, Odo, is a T-Rex.
• Slash Man's stage in Mega Man 7, although all of the dinosaurs are robots, wandering through a jungle filled with Jurassic Park-looking electic fences in the background.
• Mewgenics: The Jurassic is set in the titular period, with dinosaurs of all sorts roaming around. The area's boss, Dreadnoughtus, is the biggest dinosaur of them all.
• Normy's Beach Babe-O-Rama: The first stage takes place in New Jersey, 65,000,047 BC. It is a prehistoric town that resembles Bedrock, and the background music features a sound-alike of The Flintstones theme song. The goal of this stage is for Normy to rescue Moon-Unity, the Goddess of waves from Ogg the Caveman, who serves as the stage's boss and has captured her to test his new invention, the surfboard.
• ParaWorld has a team of Science Hero types along with ageless figures from the 19th century journey to another dimension full of dinosaurs, prehistoric mammals and local tribes with surprisingly well-developed technology. In this dimension, electricity doesn't work but there's a bit of magic and a lot of technology of the steam punk, clock punk, Stone Punk, etc. variety.
• Primal Rage combines this with After the End. A meteor crashes into Earth, reverting mankind to cavemen, rearranging the continents, and reawakening the gods. What does this lead to? Dinosaurs and giant apes beating the crap out of each other and eating each other's followers.
• Reksio and the Time Machine: The aptly-named Prehistory, where Reksio and the roosters' cavemen ancestors live alongside dinosaurs, woolly mammoths and various saber-toothed critters such as saber-toothed spider and saber-toothed hamster.
• In Sesame Street: Countdown, the seventh level takes place in a prehistoric jungle, complete with dinosaurs.
• The Simpsons games:
  • Virtual Bart has a level where Bart is a dinosaur in Prehistoric times. Enemies in this level include dinosaurs and Flintstones-esque versions of The Simpsons' cast, some of which give you corn dogs to restore your health after you defeat them. The first and third acts take place outside a volcanic cave, the second and fourth acts take place inside the volcanic cave, and the fifth and final act takes place in the Ice Age.
  • The The Itchy and Scratchy Game has "Juracid Bath", which serves as the first level of the game. The stage features miniature cavemen-like robots of Scratchy as enemies and a sound-alike of The Flintstones' theme song as the background music. The boss of the stage is Scratchy, driving a turtle-like car.
• This is quite an odd setting in Sly Cooper: Thieves in Time. Set in Gungathal Valley in 10,000 BC, it's home to the standard mix of Stone/Ice Age woolly mammoths, sabertooth tigers, dodo birds, ankylosaurs that act as catapults, pterodactyls (which make even less sense due to the cold), the ancestor of all Coopers, and a jive-talking, garishly dressed painting black bear. The strange disappearance of the local pterodactyl eggs seems to be causing problems, though.
• Sonic the Hedgehog:
  • Dinosaur Jungle in Sonic and the Secret Rings, also returning in Sonic Racing: CrossWorlds, is a prehistoric forest with colorful dinosaurs, giant mushrooms, and giant dragon fruits. Secret Rings is based on the Arabian Nights, which made a lot of people wonder why there were dinosaurs... it's actually a reference to the story of Sinbad, although very exaggerated. The music sums it up pretty succinctly:
    Dinos! It's a jungle! Dinos! It's the wicked wild!
  • Sonic Rush Adventure has Plant Kingdom. In addition to the giant plants, there are also dinosaurs and other prehistoric animals wandering around as enemies. The boss is a robot T. rex.
  • Paleo Tarpits from Sonic Boom: Fire & Ice is a prehistoric island devoid of civilization and features the earthly remnants of mighty dinosaurs and numerous tar pits.
• SpongeBob SquarePants: The Cosmic Shake has a Prehistoric version of Kelp Forest which is home to sea bears and prehistoric krabs. It's also where Pom Pom, a prehistoric version (and possibly ancestor) of Pearl resides.
• Spyro the Dragon:
  • Spyro 2: Ripto's Rage! has Skelos Badlands, which features cavemen building huts, giant animal skeletons, and dinosaur-like enemies. There is also Crystal Glacier, which is themed around the Ice Age and has primitive people wearing parkas and carrying spears.
  • Spyro: Enter the Dragonfly has Jurassic Jungle, which is this mixed with Lethal Lava Land.
• Stage 4 in Strider (Arcade) brings this to the Amazon forest, and has Hiryu fending off Nubile Savages and a number of dinosaurs.
• Super Mario Bros.:
  • Super Mario World: Dinosaur Land, befitting its name, presents an overarching primeval biome where many creatures, including prehistoric ones like Dino-Torch, Rex and Reznor can be found. For the sake of thematic variety, the specific worlds are intertwined with other settings like Green Hill Zone, Underground Level, The Lost Woods and Death Mountain (though not Level Ate, as the food-themed names for the levels and worlds are only for the sake of a tongue-in-cheek Edible Theme Naming). Cavepeople were added in the cartoon.
  • Super Mario Odyssey: The Cascade Kingdom (aka Fossil Falls) is home to plenty of dinosaurs, alive and dead. The visual focus of the level is the falls themselves, which pass through the fossilized remains of a Triceratops. Also, the outfit Mario can buy here is a caveman costume.
  • Mario Kart: Double Dash!!: Dino Dino Jungle is a track filled with big ferns, bigger trees, and even bigger dinosaurs. Its route also goes through two tunnels with primeval ore, and some parts also have geysers that have to be avoided. It returns in Mario Kart 7, Tour and World (this one turning the larger crystal cave into a dinosaur laboratory) as a Nostalgia Level.
  • Super Paper Mario: The fifth chapter uses this setting, but with no dinosaurs to be found, just giant woolly mammoth things.
• Super Robotnik Land: The fifth world takes place in a prehistoric jungle, where George the Volcano and Tyrannosaurus Alan can be seen in the background. The boss of the world is HUNGRYMAN.
• Time Zone (1991): The second zone is a prehistoric world the Status Line calls "9999 BC," with the usual dinosaurs and volcanoes.
• Trog: This maze game features a couple of baby dinosaurs being hunted by cyclopean cave men
• In World of Warcraft, while there are dinosaurs throughout Azeroth (raptors, stegosaurus-like thunder lizards, and plesiosaurs), it's in Un'Goro Crater that you can also find tyrannosaurs, dimetrodons and pterosaurs, which are found nowhere else in the world. The Crater was a popular questing area as well as a place to tame unusual animals as pets. Its "lost world" feel was reinforced by being the only zone in classic game with no proper town, only a small camp. The entire area is a Shout-Out to Land of the Lost (1974), including the names of the characters and the camp itself ("Marshall's Refuge"). Cataclysm revamped the zone, but made it barely more settled, and explained why it so wild and unsettled: the Titans isolated the area from the world to experiment with lifeforms as they shaped the world.
• One of the video game levels in which the Scooby-Doo gang are trapped in the animated movie, Scooby-Doo and the Cyber Chase. And it does have a T. rex and woolly mammoths co-existing. And the characters lampshade it.
• Worlds of Ultima: The Savage Empire takes place in a prehistoric valley, with some dinosaurs and various scattered tribes that are mostly primitive.