Whatever Happened to Primal Rage?

I apparently have a knack for really enjoying games that are destined to never receive a sequel.  Take for instance one of my favorite fighting games of all time – Primal Rage, a game that by all accounts was a success yet not enough so to receive a second entry.

It’s not hard to see why I would enjoy a game like Primal Rage.  Set thousands of years after a meteor crashed into Earth, the world is now ruled by giant beasts that are worshipped by the remnants of mankind as gods. Giant monsters and dinosaurs, each with tribes of human worshipers, duking it out on a post-apocalyptic Earth? Why wouldn’t I play this game?

Aside from an interesting setting and a great roster of monsters such as standouts Armadon the god of life and Vertigo the goddess of insanity, the gameplay actually wasn’t half bad.  The game was a 1v1 fighter, mimicking popular fighter Mortal Kombat both in terms of graphics and gameplay. Each monster had special attacks, strengths and weaknesses, as well as several unique fatalities. One of the most interesting gameplay mechanics allowed for players to eat their worshippers for extra life. The game innovated in other ways as well, being the first fighting game to show as a percent the amount of damage done by a combo, a system adopted by Mortal Kombat 3.

Originally released for arcades in 1994, Primal Rage went on to be ported to almost every system at the time, appearing on the SNES, PS1, PC, Gameboy, Sega Genesis and more. It was by all accounts a successful game, though it received its fair share of controversy. The game is definitely violent, as blood sprays generously upon being hit by attacks. Player health and energy bars are represented by an artery filled with blood attached to a heart and a brain and brain stem respectively. Upon defeating an enemy their heart would explode in a bloody mess and their brain would deflate. Perhaps Primal Rage is most infamous for the evil god Chaos’ “Golden Shower” fatality, which shows Chaos urinating on his defeated foe, melting the flesh off his victim’s bones. Later versions of the game censored the fatality after public backlash.

After its release work quickly began on a sequel, however it was eventually cancelled and would never see the light of day. Multiple reasons, including some that may never be known, most likely contributed to the cancellation of the sequel, but the largest might have been the dramatic transformation that video games were undergoing in 1995. Arcades were quickly becoming less and less popular, momentarily saved by the sudden surge of fighting games such as Mortal Kombat, Street Fighter 2, and Primal Rage itself, but rapidly declining once again. At home games were making the leap from 2D to 3D, leaving many game developers in the dust. Perhaps the publisher felt that the lack of interest in the arcades would doom the game to failure, or that nobody would be interested in the sequel of a 2D fighter at a time when games were going 3D. There isn’t much to go on about how the game was shaping up, but for whatever reason the games publisher felt that the sales wouldn’t be there. A book and comic series would later come out that served as a substitute for the second game, telling the story of the dropped sequel and fleshing out the world further, but afterwards Primal Rage as a franchise was effectively dead.

It’s a shame really, that the sequel never saw the light of day. The original game is a blast to play with friends, especially for fans of Mortal Kombat, and discovering some of the crazy fatalities or seeing how many times you can juggle one of your human worshippers during a fight added extra character to an otherwise slightly above average fighting game. The chances of seeing another entry in this franchise are sadly almost zero, but that doesn’t mean players can’t still enjoy the original in all its bloody, dinosaur filled glory.

 

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