The lights are on
Atari's Primal Rage was one of many "me too!" fighting games that followed the success of Street Fighter II and Mortal Kombat. The 1994 arcade game featured dinosaurs battling other prehistoric beasts, including a giant yeti who had a thing for peeing on his opponents. A sequel was in the works at one point, but it was canceled. Atari did manufacture a handful of test cabinets for the game before pulling the plug on the project, and now you can see gameplay footage from one of them.
YouTube user Raydude uploaded the clip, which shows more than four minutes of gameplay. It's definitely crude looking by today's standards, but its jerky animations would have looked poor even in the mid-'90s. It's still fun to see things like this unearthed and dusted off, especially if you don't have to pay $.50 for the privilege.
[Via Shoryuken]
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Nostalgia!
Ha
I remember playing Primal Rage at the local pizza place when I was a kid. I faintly recall having a port of it on my Game Gear, as well. Not sure how, but I had figurines of the yeti guy too.
While I did like the original game I can see why this one never made it. It's like they were trying to be Killer Instinct, Clay Fighter, and Weapon Lord all rolled into one. Which were all out at that time.
Wow, never thought I would be saying this, but thank god it never god a sequel!
I can see why it was canned. Someone got the bright idea to remove the 'awesome' factor from it. I can imagine the meeting now, "Hey, lets make another Primal Rage game, but we should remove the one thing that made our fighter fun and stand out amongst the others. Now you will fight with people, just like in every other fighting game!"
"Brilliant sir, brilliant! We swill start right away"
*gets to the point in development that the game is in the video*
"Wait... this was a TERRIBLE idea! Quick, everyone kill yourselves so no one ever finds out!"
So technically this was the first Bloody Roar?
i never understood why there aren't really any good dinosaur themed games
Aw.........
man thats going back in time no pun intended.
Super interesting! I still remember reading a bit about this in Gamepro's old "Fighting Edge" section. About how it was supposed to be fully 3D (instead of using digitized sprites), and how they were - stupidly - going to bring humans into the fray. Well, "Gods", I suppose - but the point is, they were muscling out the dinosaurs; the attraction, the hook. But mostly, that was it. No follow up, no more details, and the game vaporized. So it's cool to see this nowadays :)
Fighting games were more interesting back then. There were so many with so many weird things, desperate to stand out from Street Fighter or Mortal Kombat (yet wanting their audience all the same). It's amazing how many cool ideas are buried in forgotten fighters. Even things like Power Instinct and Plasma Sword.
...? Is his a Robot Chicken skit?
I like how they got rid of the only redeeming quality of the game, Dinos fighting; lol.
I always kind of liked Primal Rage for whatever reason. Kind of wish I had gotten to try this out.
What happened to the dinosaurs and apes? I bet that's why this games failed so badly. I LOVED Primal Rage.