STORY:
Before there
were humans, gods walked the earth. They embodied the essence of Hunger,
Survival, Life, Death, Insanity, Decay, Good, and Evil. They fought countless
battles up through the Mesozoic Wars. Then Balsafas, an arch mage from a
parallel dimension, anticipated the threat that Earth's gods posed. He
was not powerful enough to kill the gods, so instead he banished one to
a rocky tomb within the moon. This disrupted the fragile balance between
the gods; pandemonium ensued, and a great explosion threw clouds of volcanic
dust into the atmosphere. The dinosaurs died out, and the surviving gods
went into suspended animation. Now, the impact of a huge meteor strikes
the Earth. Its destructive force wipes out civilization, rearranges the
continents, and frees the imprisoned gods.
One of the smallest
selection screens of all time!!!
REVIEW:
Primal Rage is a 2D fighting game featuring giant
prehistoric creatures known as "gods" to the humans. While the
"gods" are fighting, human
tribesmen
wander nearby and worship their gods during battle... the giant beasts can toss the humans around or even feast on them to regain strength.
In addition, eating
your opponent's humans will add to your score, while eating your own will
penalize the player. Twisted... yeah?
Jurassic Park meets
Mortal Kombat.
Primal Rage
plays similar to other 2D fighting games, especially Mortal Kombat... just a bit
slower and
more clunky if you will.
Like Mortal Kombat, each fighter has their staple
priority attacks and special moves in addition to a unique fatality AKA "Domination" move. Also borrowed
from Mortal Kombat, the game's animation was stop-motion captured into the
game. The graphics definitely weren't bad for a 1994 arcade game, but
unfortunately most home
ports were pretty damn ugly to say the least. However, the home versions included
exclusive bonus games like human volleyball and human
bowling. It's only a little messed up...
Apparently not the giant
ape.
Unlike
most fighting games, where special moves are performed by moving the joystick - followed by pressing one or more buttons, Primal Rage's control scheme
requires the player to hold down attack buttons, then perform the joystick
movements. Later revisions of the arcade version added the ability to perform
special moves the more traditional way, with motion followed by button presses,
but kept the original method in place as well.
Primal Rage achieved a fair amount of success at arcades and
retained its popularity when it was ported to a variety of home consoles. A
sequel was actually planned (Primal Rage 2), but Atari games abandoned
the project in fear that the game wouldn't make a profit. A few test cabinets of
Primal Rage 2 were actually created, and rare footage of the prototype
game can actually be found on Youtube.
The sequel featured giant "human" gods who could turn into various
beasts during gameplay. (And to be honest, it was ugly. I'm glad
it wasn't released).
Page Updated:
November
10th, 2014
Developer(s):
Atari Games
Publisher(s):
Atari
Games
Platform(s):
Arcade,
Playstation, Sega Saturn, Sega Genesis, Game Gear, 32X, 3DO, Super Nintendo,
Game Boy, Jaguar CD
Who
would've thought the creators of Asteroids would create such a violent and
borderline disturbing fighting game? lol. "Dinosaurs VS
giant apes" never really held my interest, but for some
reason I quietly slipped quite a few tokens into that Primal Rage
arcade cabinet back in the day
(notably at a few arcades that didn't offer better fighting games).
Primal Rage was definitely unique... I'll give it that. It seemed like
the game's overall goal was to "turn
heads" at the arcades and stand out as something completely different; Primal
Rage
succeeded in that aspect at least. It was an interesting change of pace to the
typical mid-90's 2D fighting
game, but the long term lasting appeal just wasn't there. It also didn't help that there
were only 7 characters in the game (including 2 sprite clones).
In fairness, the roster is actually pretty balanced. ~TFG
Webmaster
Twisted... yeah?
Like Mortal Kombat, each fighter has their staple
priority attacks and special moves in addition to a unique fatality AKA "Domination" move. Also borrowed
from Mortal Kombat, the game's animation was stop-motion captured into the
game. The graphics definitely weren't bad for a 1994 arcade game, but
unfortunately most home
ports were pretty damn ugly to say the least. However, the home versions included
exclusive bonus games like human volleyball and human
bowling. It's only a little messed up... 
Arcade)
Console)
In fairness, the roster is actually pretty balanced. 
