Primal Rage

When I was still a kid, during holidays with my parents I could never force myself to lay on the beach and bore myself to death growing skin cancer while I was at it. I would always find my way to a nearby arcade and spend half of the holiday’s budget buying tokens. One year, at least ten years ago I stumbled upon a seasonal arcade that was set up in a large military tent. Remarkable place, with some rare (at least for Polish conditions) machines, including the first Street Fighter (!) and the game I want to write about – Primal Rage.
I need to explain one thing. When I was young I was really into two things – dinosaurs and Mortal Kombat. Finding a game that combined those two things was a dream come true.

Primal Rage is basically that – Mortal Kombat with dinosaurs. It’s a 2D fighter with special moves, combos, lots of blood and brutal finishing moves. Could a small kid want anything more? Guess not, at least at that time I didn’t. This is a game that made me buy, or to be more precise I made my parents buy for me the Sega Mega Drive II (Genesis) gaming system :D
But back to our sheep. You can choose from seven (two apes and 5 dinos) different characters (that with their special moves and fatalities strangely resemble the fighters from MK ;) ) in a quest from global domination. The gameplay is fairly generic only distinguished from other fighters by the special moves system, where you need to hold attack buttons and then perform the required movement instead of doing it the other way around and an additional energy bar that when depleted with quick combos left the fighter defenseless.
Still, it’s great fun to see huge monsters fight against each other with their followers cheering them under their feet. And those followers sometimes come out from the background into the arena and can be either eaten, which will replenish health or tossed around which, with two players, can be turned into a game of volley…man, volleyman :D Great (if mindless) fun I tell you.
The character in the game were created from plasticine and brought to life with a technique more typical for cartoons than games – stop-motion animation. This gives PR a particular and whimsical look, which combined with a high does of brutality makes an odd, yet amusing game.

There were multiple versions - the best being the arcade one, followed closely by the Sega Saturn one, with PC version being displayed in lower resolution and PSOne missing some animations. The versions for earlier generation of gaming gear were scaled down quite a bit, but still fun. There was also a fairly accurate version for GameBoy which I also possess and have to admit that for a GB port was really good.
Primal Rage is also part of the Midway Aracade Treasures 2 compilation for Playstation 2.

If you have a chance give the game a try and I’m sure an evil grin will appear on your face when your enemy’s heart next to his health bar will explode and turn into a bloody pulp.

P.S.
Sorry for the lousy quality of screenshots. I couldn't find anything without a huge "something games" watermark in the middle.