is this game rare? i've never heard of it till recently, i picked up a copy since it was 2.99 with case & instructions

These days, just about any GameCube game is rare...Though since this is Dinotopia (I recall that being the name of a book series, which I actually think was a cartoon/tv show back in the day), I don’t think it’s “rare” per-say. Hard to find, yeah, but considering things, I don’t think it’s actually a rare game (if it were, I’m sure you’d have needed to pay a good chunk more than you did for it...).