When I say “Apple //e dinosaur game,” you probably imagine something adorable, clunky, and immediately forgettable. What you don’t expect is a prehistoric survival sim that quietly shoves you into the metabolism of a starving T. rex and forces you to survive using nothing but instinct, a cursor, and some incredibly raw ecological mechanics. That game is T-Rex: The Dinosaur Survival Adventure, released in 1984, published by CBS Software, and designed by Keron Productions—an obscure studio that might’ve burned fast but left behind a surprisingly meaty fossil.
Let’s be honest: most people who see a dinosaur game want one thing—to crush, eat, and survive. T-Rex lets you live that dream, but it does it in a way that’s weirdly sincere. There’s no “extinction is bad” message or cartoonish mascot with facts about dino diets. This game is about struggling to live as a cold-blooded lizard in a cruel, pixelated world. And it’s brilliant in a way that’s somehow both educational and totally unhinged.
When I first picked this game up, I knew absolutely nothing about it—just that it had “DINOSAUR” in the title and I was in. Like, who grabs a dinosaur game thinking, “I sure hope I get to stand around and hum a tune quietly while contemplating extinction”? No one. I wanted to crush, eat, and destroy. And to my horrified surprise, that’s exactly what T-Rex gives you.
The best part? The game just throws you in. No handholding. No manual. No tutorial screen gently suggesting, “Press Z to breathe.” When you’re emulating these old Apple //e games, half the time you don’t even have the documentation because it was probably a binder full of classroom worksheets anyway. But somehow, this game still works. You figure it out as you go. You hunt. You die. You try again. Evolution, baby.
What really threw me was finding out later that this was supposed to be an educational game. Really???After playing for a while, I started questioning the actual educational value—and then realized that’s exactly the genius. It’s not about memorizing facts. It’s about experiencing the survival of a dinosaur firsthand. You even get win and lose conditions, and if you manage to bring up the help menu, you can alter gameplay conditions, boost your stats, and go full prehistoric murder machine. It’s like a sandbox for sadistic paleo-biologists. Don’t ever underestimate Apple //e games. You can still learn a hell of a lot from them, and honestly, it’s still one of my favourite systems ever.
The Game Itself: Starvation, Hunting, and No Mercy
You play as a Tyrannosaurus rex in a side-scrolling prehistoric world. There’s no setup, no story, no manual. You are dropped in and told nothing. Your survival depends on managing biological systems—hunger, thirst, energy, and screaming.
Hunt herbivores like Edmontosaurus or take risky shots at armoured beasts like Triceratops. Drink from lakes. Don’t overheat. Don’t starve. Don’t get kicked in the face by something stronger than you- yeah all the lessons a child in the 80s needed to hear before going outside for recess. Do it all while roaring! The screaming is the best part of the game because all you know is that slapping the spacebar makes the T-Rex scream. You shout “SCREAM!!!”, smash the spacebar, T-Rex roars and you giggle a bit. But discovery yells in your pickled-plum face when you scream close to another dinosaur and see the fight breakout. Then you are seized by the graphical display of what sort of looks like two dinosaurs kicking sand on each other until you both run away or you are the only one standing. OH! That’s how you eat- by SCREAMING. There are four difficulty levels, and you can even alter settings to give yourself a god-mode rampage if you figure out how.
This is all happening in 1984. On an Apple IIe. With rudimentary graphics and barely any sound. And somehow it works. Somehow, it feels alive-ish. Well, about as close as you can in 1984.
Who Made This and Why Was It So Good?
T-Rex was developed by Keron Productions, a New York-based team founded by Kerry Noble, with key design work from Etan Ben-Ami and scientific modeling from University of Michigan biologist Dr. Paul Webb. Webb helped Keron simulate real physiological-ecology models, making sure your T. rex didn’t just have a hunger meter, but an actual energy budget based on real cold-blooded animal behaviour. That’s a level of science most educational games still don’t bother with.
Etan Ben-Ami, the game’s lead designer and programmer, coded the game in C (unusual for Apple II development) and described the gameplay as a “role-playing adventure based on reptile models.” He later left game design entirely and became a psychotherapist—because apparently simulating the brutality of prehistoric survival is just a warm-up for unpacking human brains.
Noble pushed for serious educational value in Keron’s games and trademarked the name SciSoft in 1983, indicating ambitions to build a whole line of scientific learning games. T-Rex was the only one that got published.
CBS Software: Big Network, Bigger Faceplant
CBS Software was the publisher—a short-lived division of CBS Inc. that tried to break into the software market with a mix of Sesame Street tie-ins and experimental science games. T-Rex was supposed to be the first in a new line of science learning titles. Another title, Dinosaur Dig, followed in 1984. But CBS Software hemorrhaged cash and was shut down by late 1985 after losing $7.5 million in one year.
That meant T-Rex never got a sequel, a port, or a wider platform rollout. It was released, reviewed well in education-focused circles, won a “Critics’ Choice Award” from Family Computing, and then got buried like the fossils it was trying to emulate.
Reception and How it Survived… in Schools
Marketing for T-Rex was clever—it positioned the game as a learning tool that the whole family could enjoy. CBS ran ads saying things like “many CBS Software families have dinosaurs in their living rooms,” describing T-Rex as an interactive science lesson in disguise.
It saw modest use in classrooms, particularly on Apple II machines which dominated North American schools. It was sometimes bundled with educational catalogues or mentioned in the Whole Earth Software Catalogue, where it earned praise as a “problem-solving simulation.”
But because it didn’t teach through quizzes or narration, teachers unsure about its learning value often skipped over it. And once CBS pulled out of software, Keron couldn’t sustain distribution alone.
What Happened to the People Behind It
After T-Rex, the people who made this gem took some wildly different paths. Etan Ben-Ami, the game’s main developer, left the software world completely. Instead of continuing in tech, he became a psychotherapist—because after simulating the brutal daily life of a starving dinosaur, maybe dealing with actual human emotions seemed like a walk in the park.
Kerry Noble, who co-founded Keron Productions, continued working in educational technology and consulting. She was the driving force behind Keron’s science-first vision and helped get T-Rex into places like the Whole Earth Software Catalogue, where it earned critical praise. Her post-Keron work focused on how learning tools could be improved through digital platforms.
Dr. Paul Webb, the University of Michigan biologist who advised on T-Rex, returned full-time to academia. His expertise in physiology and ecology gave the game its unusual scientific grounding. He’s continued publishing in his field for decades—so if your T. rex collapsed from heat exhaustion in the game, you’ve got him to thank for the realism.
Keron Productions itself quietly faded out after CBS Software collapsed. They tried to pivot by releasing personalized greeting card disks for IBM PCs, which—no surprise—didn’t exactly ignite the software world. But their short run left us with one hell of a fossil in digital form.
The Apple //e Factor
Let’s talk about the elephant-sized dinosaur in the room: the Apple //e. If you grew up in North America during the ’80s and 90s, there’s a good chance you first encountered computers not through DOS prompts or Commodore BASIC, but by being plunked down in front of a beige Apple //e and told to type something.
The Apple //e wasn’t just a school computer—it was the launchpad for edutainment. It introduced a whole generation to the idea that you could learn stuff and have a little chaos at the same time. And T-Rex thrived on that chaos. With its massive install base in schools, the Apple //e became ground zero for educational games that didn’t feel like educational games. This machine gave titles like T-Rex a real shot at finding their way into classrooms and households without anyone realizing they were part of a quiet revolution.
You could boot up Oregon Trail and die of dysentery before lunch, then play T-Rex and die of thirst before math class. It was brilliant. And it was that exact ecosystem—flexible, curious, slightly underfunded—where strange little masterpieces like T-Rex could sneak into circulation and blow the minds of anyone lucky enough to stumble across them.
Without the Apple //e, T-Rex likely would have been a one-off curiosity no one could even run. But thanks to its popularity and accessibility, this oddball survival sim managed to slither into school labs, after-school programs, and eventually into the retro archive where it lives on today—emulated, re-discovered, and still willing to stomp you into the dirt if you don’t respect the food chain.
So pour one out for the Apple //e: a beautiful, clunky box of weirdness that let dinosaurs live forever—one 5.25” floppy at a time.
The Legacy: A Survival Sim Before Survival Sims
T-Rex is a proto-survival game. It predates Odell Lake, Wolf, Lion, and any other attempt to simulate an animal’s life cycle. It has no lives, no levels, and no plot—just systemic survival based on real biology. That’s not just educational. That’s genre-defining.
It never got the recognition it deserved, but it left its mark. The people behind it went on to other careers. The company faded. The CBS brand ghosted its digital venture. But the game stuck around—passed between collectors, emulated online, and rediscovered by people like me who saw a T. rex and said, “Yeah, let’s go freaking eat something.”
Don’t laugh at old edutainment. Sometimes, buried under layers of tape hiss and dot matrix, you find a game like T-Rex—a weird, raw, authentic simulation that teaches you something not through facts, but through hunger, heat, and the constant threat of extinction.
SOURCES:
- T-Rex: The Dinosaur Survival Adventure – MobyGames
- Family Computing Magazine – April 1985 (Internet Archive)
- Whole Earth Software Catalogue – 1985 (Internet Archive)
- Paul W. Webb – University of Michigan Profile
- Etan Ben-Ami – LinkedIn Profile
- StahlmanDesign.com blog – Below the Root & CBS Software Memories
- CBS Software – Company Overview and History on MobyGames
- CBS Software Catalogs and Ads – Internet Archive
- USPTO Trademark Search – SciSoft Filing