Primal Rage

Moby ID: 5565
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Description official descriptions

A meteor struck the Earth and caused great chaos. Seven gods from ancient times awoke, and are now attempting to take control of the post-apocalyptic world.

Primal Rage is a one-on-one fighting game featuring dinosaurs and giant apes as the fighters. The graphics are done with digitized stop-motion animation. Gameplay is similar to Mortal Kombat in that it is viewed from a side perspective, and features deadly finishing moves at the end of the match.

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Critics

Average score: 70% (based on 48 ratings)

Players

Average score: 3.2 out of 5 (based on 113 ratings with 4 reviews)

Mortal Combat just got an upgrade!

The Good
Hmmm come to think of it, this game is a total Mortal Kombat rip-off. Still fun though regardless. Boy, I was in highschool when the Primal Rage - Rage hit the schools. Since Mortal Kombat was such a hit, this game at least where I come from was a complete success.

Thankfully it wasn't as "corny" as Mortal Kombat. It had better graphics, better moves, better "gore", better sounds, better everything. In addition that all the characters were monsters...and dinosaurs was my favorite subject, though oddly enough my favorite character was an small sized blue King Kong (see cover art).

Me and my friends spent hours trying to find new combos and finishing moves. It's amazing how much you can accomplish when it's fun.



The Bad
Not much bad about the game that I can recall. I still think some monsters stink. The gorilla is totally the coolest bloke around.

The Bottom Line
If you liked Mortal Kombat, you'll like this better.

PlayStation · by Indra was here (20756) · 2004

An underrated classic

The Good
The game is very original - although it IS based of Mortal Kombat, it still has very original ideas in it like using dinosaurs and giant apes as fighters, this made the game really fun, and like in MK, characters have special moves and "Fatalities" to discover. The stages are very unidentical to each other, which makes it a good variety. The graphics weren't the best of its time but due to a lot of colours used the game looked quite good.

The Bad
The beasts don't sound too powerful, the music is also quiet and unpleasant on the stages, and the small humans, which jump near the gods all the time, make such annoying voices and sounds, which makes you wanna blow them the hell away, but instead, you'll even have to defend your own, will, at least you can kill the opponents humans. There isn't a big variety also, 7 fighters, 7 stages, though in actually, again, the game was made so colourful, that it was even quite fun to play it sometimes.

The Bottom Line
I don't exactly know why i mostly liked this game and everybody else didn't, maybe its because I'm a Mortal Kombat fan, and a couple of my friends, MK fans as well, liked the game also, so this might be the reason. Anyway, this game is best playable not for fighting game fans, but for those who are fans of MK and like to see some "WAD"'s made of it.

DOS · by Medicine Man (328) · 2009

EXCELLENT

The Good
First off, I LOVED the characters used in the game. No stinking humans to fight with, nothing but beast baby! YES!

Second, Talon and Vertigo kickass!

The graphics were outstanding considering what system they were done for, the 16 bit Sega Genesis...along with other systems. Which at the time, I believe, had the best graphics going for gameplay.

The gameplay was easy but it could also quickly turn challenging if you weren't paying attention to what you were doing. However, pulling off the moves that each individual dino could do was a little harder unless you really practiced to get it down.

For example, I myself had to really work at getting a two hit combo in with Vertigo. These two hits being first Hypnosis and then the Scorpion Sting that followed it.

Another example, performing Talon's three slash, climb up and then flip backwards move wasn't easy either. Another one of his moves that it took me a while to master was the one that he ran up to the opponent and just did a bunch of hind feet slashings to the abdomen, then flipping away.

But all in all, I have no complaints about the game itself. It came, it saw and it conquered as my favorite fighting arcade game.

10 out of 10!

The Bad
I never figured out how to make Talon do his Jugular Bite attack. That was the ONLY move I never figured out...other than the Fatalities.

I didn't know about the Fatalities that the fighters were able to do...until now. So of course, naturally, I never figured those out either. And, most likely won't have chance to since my 11 to 15 year old Sega Genesis finally quit working. I can't complain though, it survived about 10 years of my sister abusing it when I beat her at a game.

Especially this one!

The Bottom Line
There are no words to describe this game, you would have to play it yourself to understand. BUT, if this wasn't possible then I would wing it. Going from what I experienced both good and bad.

If you want something different than Mortal Kombat or any other fighting game that uses human or humanoid fighters to do battle, then this one is for you! You fight as a Draconian, or so the Dino-Gods are called, and your goal is to dominate over the new Urth. Crushing your opponents as you go along and devour the puny humans. You have your choice of seven fighters and all armed with their own techniques. Prepare to RAGE!

Genesis · by Laura Rosenberger (6) · 2006

[ View all 4 player reviews ]

Trivia

Censorship

Continuing with the Mortal Kombat fiasco, Nintendo censored this game as well. Chaos' Golden Shower finishing move (you can figure it out) has been 'fixed' so that a CENSORED bar appears across the screen and Chaos freezes in his 'relief' position.

Planned sequel

There was going to be a sequel, Primal Rage 2, but due to poor sales it got cancelled. However, Atari felt it needed a sequel in one form or another, so a book written by John Vornholt, called Primal Rage: The Avatars, was created instead of a second game.

Information also contributed by Fighting Freak

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Contributors to this Entry

Game added by quizzley7.

SNES, Genesis added by PCGamer77. Game Gear added by chirinea. SEGA 32X added by Kartanym. Amiga added by Martin Smith. Arcade added by Pseudo_Intellectual.

Additional contributors: CaptainCanuck, Havoc Crow, LepricahnsGold, Rola.

Game added January 3, 2002. Last modified February 28, 2024.