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)

Street Fighter with dinosaurs.

The Good
As the title suggest you don't play with humans this time around, but with prehistoric creatures and other monsters. Personally I consider that to be an awesome update because there are enough humans in video games, but playing as a dinosaur sounds pretty awesome (and it is). All the Jurassic Park rejects have their own abilities that fit their animal nature, such as; clawing, biting and hitting others with your tail.

Primal Rage is right next to Mortal Kombat in the relatively small collection of pretty good games for the Super Nintendo that feature a lot of gore. Every bite and every claw causes a stream of blood to emerge from the enemy and the health is indicated by a bar connected to the enemy's hearth, that once depleted causes the hearth to explode. You can also do so much damage to the enemy that they suffer from a paralyzing shock due to the brain damage.

The stages are pretty awesome and all play to the on-going theme of "conquering the new earth". You'll get to see a lot of different locations in this post-apocalyptic adventure and by defeating the enemy in each area you will slowly work towards total domination. It's very similar to how Street Fighter II had you fly all over the world to take part in a big contest, but just a little bit more sadistic.

I think it's funny that the game keeps score by indicating the amount of followers you have. To the humans you are some kind of god and by performing well you will earn yourself worshipers, but failure will cause them to turn to a different creature. They will also cheer for you during combat and sometimes they will even approach you during combat, which often causes them to be hit and launched into the air.

The Bad
i really suck at these games because the NPC's always know things I don't, I thought I was pretty good with one of the characters, but when I fought against that same character a few minutes later, I was shocked to see him pull off all kinds of different moves I didn't know about. Perhaps it gets easier when you have the manual or if you look up a moves list on the internet, but it's still annoying.

The game looks awful and that is saying a lot for Super Nintendo. All the colors are dark, so most of the time it looks like you are watching an Atari game glitch out and that can't be good.

The controls feel a little stiff when they are not just been confusing, along with that comes the problem that a lot of the attacks are very hard to use properly because you need to know how long your tail is or how far your neck can stretch. This makes the game part fighting and part mathematics and it doesn't really work.

The Bottom Line
Like I have said before, I am not very good at these games, so I am not very good at reviewing them either. I personally prefer this game over Street Fighter II just because it has dinosaurs in it, but both games are pretty decent.

SNES · by Asinine (957) · 2011

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

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

[ 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.