Stuff I Grew Up With/Video Game Corner: Primal Rage (1994)

Like King of the Monsters, this was a game I randomly stumbled across on a visit to Harold's, our town's local video rental store. As there were no arcades anywhere near me at the time (unless you want to count the game section in the back of our town's diner, which only had four or five games at a time), I had no idea that, like Street Fighter and Mortal Kombat, as well as King of the Monsters, Primal Rage started out there and was ported to the Super NES and other home consoles. All I knew from the box art and reading the description on the back was that it was most definitely right up my alley: another fighting game with monsters, only with really good graphics. So, naturally, I rented it, and when I played it at home, while I did enjoy it, I quickly ran into a common annoyance that I often had with fighting games at the time: the demos showed off a bunch of really cool special moves and attacks that I, for the life of me, couldn't figure out how to pull off, except occasionally by accident. Yeah, I was one of those kids who was more interested in doing the awesome moves I would see my opponents doing than actually winning the game. Truth be told, that's kind of the reason why, even though I certainly played them, I never got into the Street Fighter or Mortal Kombat games hardcore. But with Primal Rage, I was willing to stick with it because I really liked the theme and the characters, to the point where I did get my own copy, and while neither I nor my cousins ever became masters at it, we had some fun playing it together. What's more, I ended up getting a lot of the toys based on it and still have them laying around in my house... somewhere. Looking at the game today, I still like the concept of it, and think the graphics and music hold up nicely, but I find the controls, at least for the Super NES port, to be very stiff and the special and finishing moves both awkward to pull off, as well as hard to keep straight with all of the button and direction combinations. And this is just me, but I'm not all that big on fighting games anyway, and I especially can't get into those where the strategy and much of the gameplay is based around combos, which is very much the case here.

This is one of many games from back in the day where supplemental materials like the instruction booklet and the strategy guide I eventually got actually went into the plot and character backstories rather than the game itself (except for the arcade version, which I have played but only a couple of times in my whole life; also, when you win the game with a particular monster, you get their story and what they went on to do upon winning). A meteorite has destroyed all civilization on Earth, covering the planet with rain forests, reshaping the continents into that of a dinosaur head breathing fire (I always thought that one landmass was supposed to be a piece of meat in its mouth), and sending mankind back into the Stone Age, with them now referring to the planet as "Urth." The event, known as the "Cataclysms," have also awakened seven ancient, powerful monsters, and the remnants of mankind form individual tribes, each worshiping one of them as their god. Now, these gods fight for domination of the planet, with four of them making up the "Virtuous Beasts" who want to keep peace on Urth (though only two of them can truly be called "good"), and the other three the "Destructive Beasts" who intend to plunge the world further into chaos for their own benefit.

Like King of the Monsters, the basic gameplay is simple. In one-player mode, you choose a monster and fight your way through a tournament-style series of matches with the others (including, as also in that game, a palette-swap version of yourself), conquering each of their lands until you finally face all of them again in one long, continuous final battle. Every time you lose, you have to pick another fighter, meaning you have seven chances in all. You can also play a one-player training mode, where you pick both your monster and whichever one you wish to be your opponent in a best two out of three match (I often just did that whenever I played by myself), and the classic two-player mode where you can battle a friend, as well as a two-

player handicap match. When fighting an opponent, winning is a simple matter of depleting their "health" or "power" bar, and when defeated, the heart at the end of the health bar explodes into a bloody mess. The characters also have a "brain" bar that, when totally depleted (dizzy damage, as it's called), leaves them stunned and open to attack for a seconds (some characters' special attacks can stun them automatically). Before the final battle, you play a mini-game that allows you to increase your power bar, and every opponent you performed a finishing move or "fatality" on in the initial battle is also significantly weaker when you face them again at the end. During the fights, both you and

your opponent's worshipers watch from nearby and react to those who are winning and losing. They'll also sometimes walk into the arena in the middle of the battle in order to worship their god, and you can take the opportunity eat your opponent's tribesmen to regain health or just to spite them (it's best to go for the latter goal, as this action leaves you open to attack, unless your opponent is dizzy). This also deducts points from your opponent's score (as well as your own if you end up eating one of your own tribesmen), as the point system is based around however many human followers a god has. You get points not only for generally doing well in the fights and progressing through

the matches, but also by performing fatalities and combo attacks, winning the game, and doing so with less than ten continues or without continuing at all. None of this affects whether or not you're able to actually win, and your final score, which you see after the game is over, is mostly just for bragging rights. Speaking of worshipers, if you're playing with a friend, the two of you can actually play some "human volleyball" and bat one of them back and forth to each other.

The various creatures, their individual environments and backstories, and unique attacks and fatalities are what made the game especially appealing to me and, I'm sure, just about everyone else who played it, especially kaiju fans. Each one also has a specific potency to both their basic and special attacks, and combos of both that they can pull off. The basic control scheme, as far as the Super NES version goes, is broken down into four different types of actions: High Quick, Low Quick, High Fierce, and Low Fierce, which are the Y, B, X, and A-buttons, respectively (on the three-button Sega Genesis controller, the START button serves as High Quick, as well as Pause; someone tell me

just how efficiently that worked). Each character has four styles of basic moves: Standing Attacks, Crouching Attacks, Jumping Attacks, and In-Close attacks, and each of these have six different variations. For instance, you can do a High Quick or High Fierce Standing attack, as well as a High Power variation when you tap High Fierce twice in a row, as well as a Low Quick, Low Fierce, or Low Power Standing Attack, and so on for the other types. There are slight variations on the exact nature of these attacks, depending on the character (the giant apes will punch with High Quick, Fierce, and Power attacks, while the more dinosaurian monsters will bite; the apes will swipe at their

opponents' feet with their hands and legs in Low Crouching Attacks, while the dinosaurs will mostly do so with their tails), but they're more or less the same type of action. You also jump by tapping Up on the control pad (which can be a serious handicap, as I'll get into later) and tap away from your opponent in order to block their attacks, though this isn't always possible. And finally, each character has their own pros and cons, meaning you have to adapt a different strategy for each of them.

The game also has functions programmed into it to keep the fighting fair and not allow one character to deal unreasonable damage to the other. For instance, as the damage done to a character's health through combos becomes more and more significant, the combos themselves start to do less damage (it's halved after 50% damage, quartered after 60%, and goes into 1/8 after 70%), and dizzy damage is halved after more than two hits in a combo and brought down to 3/4 after more than four. There's also the infamous "No Cheese" icon, which appears whenever you try to pull off the same devastating move too many times or try to perform an unblockable move when your opponent is stuck in "block-stun," where they can't move momentarily after blocking. And in two-player mode, a character can go berserk when they have half of their opponent's health left, are down to 30% of their own health, and get knocked down in any manner. The reason why the requirements for it are so specific is because, when a character goes berserk, they inflict 40% more damage and combo damage regulation doesn't apply to them. This mode only lasts for twenty seconds, though.

Armadon, whose species is said to be a "Tristegasauratops," makes me think of a bipedal Styracosaurus. The God of Life, his stage or domain is the Hollows.  He's among the most noble of the monsters, as his intent is to defend the planet, whose life-force and energy flow he's connected to, from all of the evil ones. His special attacks tend to be very gory, involving his spiked body, and are the most damaging of all. Hornication Uppercut has him leap into the air and gouge the underside of an airborne opponent. Bed-O'-Nails is a defensive move where he curls up and his spikes sprout higher, allowing him to block airborne attacks and projectiles. The Gut Gouger is his version of a throw, where he jams his

nose horn into his opponent and tosses them over his shoulder; it's also unblockable. Mega Charge has him run at and ram his opponent, then get them with his horn. The Iron Maiden has him jump into the air, flip over, and land on his opponents with his back spikes (ouch!). Spinning Death has him roll up into a ball and slice into his opponent, and it can block most projectiles. And with Flying Spikes, he shoots the spikes on the tip of his tail. His fatalities are The Impaler, where he shoots several spikes from his back into the air and they impale his defeated opponent (this is exclusive to the Super NES version); Gut Fling, where he jams his horn into his defeated opponent and sends

blood and guts flying everywhere; and Meditation, where he goes into his Bed-O'-Nails stance, blasts his opponent with energy, charring their flesh, until they explode. The downsides to Armadon are that, as well armored as he is, he's also the slowest character, and his basic attacks don't have much of a range to them. His vocalizations are elephant-like groans and trumpets, stock sound effects that you've likely heard elsewhere.

Blizzard, one of two giant apes featured along with the other, mostly dinosaur-like monsters (both his and Chaos' species is officially designated as "Kong,"), is basically a giant yeti whose domain is the Cliff. Another virtuous monster, he was frozen in ice but released by the meteor, and wishes to undo the damage done to the Earth by both it and the other monsters. His special attacks are often centered around his immense strength and agility, although there are two that involve ice: Ice Breath, where he exhales a cloud of frost that momentarily freezes his opponents, and Ice Geyser, where he summons a pillar of ice from the ground that does the same. His other attacks include several types of Mega Punches: the Short Mega Punch, which has a short windup, range, and recovery time; the Long Mega Punch, which also has a short windup and recovery time, but has a lot more range; the Quick Mega Punch, with the fastest windup but a short

range and the longest recovery time; and the False Mega Punch, where Blizzard doesn't follow through on the windup, and projectiles and attacks to the torso do nothing. The Punching Bag has him grab his opponent and deliver four or five good hits, before finishing them with another special move. And he can grab and throw an opponent, either on the ground or by catching them in midair. His fatalities are the Brain Bash, where he whacks his opponent twice in the head, then punches up through the jaw and out the back of the head, sending the brain flying, along with bones and blood; To Da Moon, where he grabs his opponent by the throat, punches them repeatedly in the jaw,

and finishes with an uppercut that sends them flying into the sky and falling back down in the far background; and Redemption, a Super NES exclusive where he sends his opponents soul to the next world, leaving behind their bloodied skeleton. Blizzard's basic moves are also quite damaging, and his jumping skills often come in handy. His roars are aggressive, tiger-like snarls and roars.

Chaos, the other giant ape and one of the Destructive Beasts, was always my favorite. With brown fur and a height several feet shorter than Blizzard, his domain is the ruins of a city, and his backstory is also the most interesting, as he was a human originally: a witch doctor who accidentally changed himself into a vile, disgusting ape and must now defeat the other monsters to regain his humanity (in other words, he's actually not that bad). Chaos was definitely the most controversial monster, as his attacks are often crude, disgusting, and just plain sick (in his idle animation, you can see him scratch his butt): Power Puke, which comes in both fast and slow form, where he lets out a glob of green vomit that can do significant dizzy damage; Fart of Fury, where he expels a nasty green cloud (with a hilarious sound effect) that can cause instant dizziness to an opponent, and the Flying Butt Slam, where he jumps and lands on an

opponent with his butt, accompanied by another immature but funny sound effect. He also has the Ground Shaker, where he jumps and slams the ground with his fists, creating an earthquake that knocks his enemies away, and which he can do either on the ground or in the air; Grab-'n'-Throw, where he grabs his opponent and throws them over his head; and Battering Ram, where he slams into his opponent with his shoulder. His most notorious move, however, is the fatality known as Number One, where he pees acidic urine on his enemy, reducing them to bones. That move got the game temporarily removed from stores after a woman was outraged when she saw her eleven-year old  

son pull it off, although her case didn't do anything to hurt the game's success, nor did the ESRB change the rating. Unfortunately, that move was never programmed into the Super NES version, so I've never done it myself. I have, however, managed to pull off the Cannonball, where Chaos dives into a body of water in the background. And then, there's Hurl, where he lets loose a Power Puke, walks offscreen, and comes back in on the other side to slurp it back up! His short height and quickness also gives him an advantage. His vocalizations are as guttural and brutish as you would expect from, and he makes a hilarious choking sound whenever he's grabbed by a throwing move or goes berserk in two-player mode.

Diablo, one of two Tyrannosaur-like monsters (although he's officially classified as an Allosaur), is described as evil incarnate. A red, fire-spewing dinosaur from hell that was released from his prison by the meteor, he wishes to defeat the other monsters so he can torture the planet, bathing it in fire (not surprising, given his name). His domain, also not surprisingly, is the Inferno, and as you can guess, his attacks often involve fire. He can shoot either slow or fast Fireballs, the latter of which are among the fastest projectiles in the game; the Hot Foot is a fire blast to his opponent's feet, tripping

them up as well as frying them; the Torch is where he gets in close and literally chars his opponents, stunning them for a second; and Inferno Flash allows him to teleport around the arena, while also burning his opponents if they get too close. Mega Lunge is like Chaos' Battering Ram, only Diablo uses his head, and Pulverizer involves him jumping up and stomping on his opponent. His fatalities are Incinerator, where he blasts his opponent until nothing but bones remain; Fireball, where he produces one that instantly burns his opponent; and Infernal, which is basically just another form of Incinerator (later versions changed its nature). Diablo is very quick and great for long distance attacks, but he's not so effective up close. His vocals are some pretty generic roars and growls, although he lets out a ferocious one in one of his basic attacks.

Sauron, the second Tyrannosaur (officially identified as such), is the anti-hero of the Virtuous Beasts, as he must keep eating human flesh to live forever, and defeat the others in order to ensure he can go on doing so. His domain is the Cove, and his attacks are a diverse mix. Primal Scream forms a protective barrier around him that also does a lot of dizzy damage to opponents who come in contact with it. Flesh-Ripping Pounce, an unblockable mood, has him jump onto his opponent and rip out a chunk of flesh. The Stun Roar is a powerful, Godzilla-like sonic projectile that he shoots from

his mouth and which also does a lot of dizzy damage. The Neck Throw has him use his powerful jaws to grab an opponent's neck and throw them aside. The Air Throw, naturally, is the midair equivalent to this, requiring both monsters to be in the air at the same time. Earthquake Stomp is akin to Chaos' Ground Shaker, and he can do it both on the ground and in midair (though only on the Super NES in regards to the latter). And Cranium Crusher is Sauron's version of an uppercut, where he launches into the air and uses his head as a battering ram. His fatalities are brutal and bloody; Flesh Eater is an extension of his victory animation, where he puts his foot on his

opponent and then tears out a chunk of flesh; Carnage has him grab onto his enemy with his jaws and shake them violently, flinging blood everywhere, until they collapse; and Grape Crusher has him do an Earthquake Stomp that reduces his opponent's body to a blood mess. All in all, Sauron's attacks, both basic and special, dish out a lot of damage and he's good in both long-range and up-close combat, but the downside is he's slow and very big, making him an easy target. Like Diablo, his roars are kind of so-so, although the one he lets out with Primal Scream and after claiming victory is a memorable one.

Talon, a 16-foot tall Deinonychus, and my cousin Mikey's favorite character, is the patriarch of a large raptor clan and joins the war in order to protect it. His domain is the Strip. He's the only character with no projectile attacks, with special moves instead involving his sharp claws and teeth. The Slasher has him hit his opponent with both of his clawed hands. The Face Ripper has him grab onto his opponent and repeatedly bite into their face. Brain Basher has him jump on his enemy's head and whack them to the ground with his feet. Pounce and Flip has him run toward his opponent, grab onto them, take a couple of bites, then jump off and knock them to the ground. Frantic Fury has

him fly into a blur of claws and teeth. His most notable attack is the Jugular Bite, which can only be used as part of a combo and is brutal both in how it looks and sounds. Like Sauron, Talon's fatalities are quite bloody: Heart Wrencher has him slice open his opponent's chest, pull out the still beating heart, and eat it; Shredder has him horribly mangle his opponent with a Frantic Fury; and Stampede has him call in his family to devour them. His biggest advantage is he's the smallest and fastest of the fighters (you can actually make him move even faster by holding two buttons and then tapping either toward or away on the control pad), making him hard to hit, but at the same time, he has no long range attacks and his basic ones don't deal much damage. His vocalizations are these very distinct screeches, as well as an anguished scream whenever he's dealt a lot of damage.

Vertigo, a creature with the body of a dinosaur and the hood and venomous properties of a cobra (thus, she's officially a "Cobrasaur,"), is probably second only to Diablo in how evil she is. She's from another dimension and was banished to the moon, but the meteor crash weakened the shields that contained her and allowed her to return to the planet. Now, her goal is to enslave the last bit of humanity. Her domain is an area called the Tomb. Vertigo's attacks are often long-range and are pulled off very quickly. Venom Spit has her hurl purple acid at her opponent and, like similar projectiles, comes in either fast or slow forms. Come Slither has her grab her opponent with her tail and pull them to her. Scorpion Sting is a very long-ranged attack where she flings out her venomous, barbed tail.

Voodoo Spell has her automatically stun her opponent and is unblockable. And she can teleport around the stage, either on the ground or in the air. Her fatalities are probably the craziest of all: Petrify has her pull a Medusa and turn her opponent into a stone statue, then shatter them with her tail; La Vache Qui Rit (The Cow Who Ran) has her turn her enemy into a cow that then subsequently runs off; and Shrink and Eat is exactly what it sounds like. Vertigo's long-range attacks and ability to dodge projectiles simply by crouching more than makes up for how, despite her thin physique, she's actually kind of slow. Her vocalizations are snake-like hisses.

Although the arcade version is, naturally, the superior one in terms of both graphics and audio, I think the Super NES holds up fairly well. Yeah, the character sprites are much smaller and you don't get as much detail in the movements or designs, especially in regards to the virtually microscopic human worshipers, and the animation isn't nearly as fluid, but that's never stopped me from admiring them and thinking they're really cool. I especially love knowing that the animation was achieved through stop motion, which is both an interesting expansion on how Mortal Kombat famously made use of digitized actors and a neat throwback in that you're playing in the style of a lot of the classic

monster movies from yesteryear (Diablo and Sauron even drag their tails, as in classic depictions of dinosaurs). I also like how they gave each monster their own unique idle animation, with little tics specific to each one, as well as their own death throes, human eating (Armadon impales them with his spiked tail and lifts them to his mouth; Blizzard and Chaos grab them, put them in their mouths, and spit out the bones before swallowing; Diablo and Sauron crouch down and snatch them up in their jaws; Talon snatches them with his claws and quickly snacks on them; and Vertigo grabs them in her mouth, lifts her head up, and swallows them whole), and victory stances (Armadon puts one foot down firmly and trumpets at the screen,

Blizzard and Chaos beat their chests while roaring, Diablo puffs a few times and lets out a growl, Sauron plants his foot on his fallen opponent and roars up into the air, Talon puts both of his hands up and screeches, and Vertigo hisses right at the screen and does the same to the background, while flaring her hood)... for the most part. As I've said, sometimes they do reuse certain animations, especially with both Blizzard and Chaos, and Diablo and Sauron, who mirror each other in both design and attack animation, but you really don't mind these little shortcuts the animators took in the long run. And as tiny as the worshipers are, you can make out how they react to the victories and defeats of their individual gods, with the men and women having their own unique animation for each: the men throw their arms up in victory and the women jump for joy, and the former stomp their feet and the latter cry when their god is defeated.

The individual stages and lands are also nicely detailed. The Hollows, Armadon's domain, are these subterranean caverns that are meant to be his meditation chambers, with the centerpiece of the background being the shrine where he channels his inner thoughts. Blizzard's domain, the Cliff, is a snowy tundra near the Himalayas, with his temple in a mountainside off to the right and Mount Everest rising up in the background, now with an ape face carved into its side. Chaos' domain, the Ruins, are the remains of a city, with abandoned, overgrown buildings in the background, the main arena being a dried up river bank, with a beached ship to the left, and a downed power line over to

the right. The Inferno, Diablo's home, is the piece of land shaped like a fireball within the dinosaur skull's mouth and is basically hell, bathed in red, with a smoking volcano in the background, flame pits dotting the arena, a big mound of volcanic rock to the left, and an abandoned temple on the right. Sauron's land, the Cove, was once the Greek Islands, but is now a big, open stretch of beach, with craggy cliffs on either side and the remains of the Parthenon out in the water. The Strip, Talon's home, is probably the loveliest of all the lands, as it's a picturesque grassy plain with a small waterfall and pool over to the right, a cluster of palm trees over to the left, and what looks like an overgrown runway in the center. Vertigo's domain, the Tomb,

is what's left of Stonehenge, which now sits in the middle of a large marshland, with the petrified bodies of her victims on either side of the screen and the full moon visible in the background. And the final battle takes place in an arena with impaled dinosaur skeletons on either side of the screen, torches, a dock, and a large body of water in the background, and an enormous moon looming over the whole thing.

Maybe it's because this is the version I've grown up with and am just used to it, but I think the audio quality, though, again, far inferior to the arcade version (there, the tribes can be heard constantly cheering and jeering), is pretty good, all things considered. I like how the title screen has no music, just the sound of a waterfall and jungle sounds, which do manage to set a mood right from the start. As I've also gone into, the monster's roars and vocals, while muted, are very clear, regardless, as are the humans screaming when a monster eats them and the sounds of the various blows, with the more brutal ones like Talon's Jugular Bite and Armadon's Iron Maiden accompanied by these nasty, fleshy tearing sounds, while Chaos' Power Puke and Vertigo's Spit make these gooey splashes whenever they hit an opponent. And while he's not as omnipresent as those in Mortal Kombat and Street Fighter games, the announcer's big, booming voice, which you hear when he says, "Rage!", at the beginning of a match and when he announces the final battle, also comes through clear.

Unfortunately, the controls and some aspects of the gameplay are where the game suffers the most for me. First off, I find that the controls themselves are sometimes a tad stiff and unresponsive, especially the control pad itself. Maybe that's just on the Super NES or a sign that my personal console, which I've had basically since it was first released, is old and worn, but when playing it recently, I find it really wears on my fingers. But an even bigger annoyance has to do with the special moves, something I began to notice whenever my friends

and I would play each other. We were often pausing the game and glancing at the strategy guide to see what attacks we could do and how to do them, constantly interrupting the flow of the matches. I didn't mind it at the time but now, as an adult, I can say that having to remember all kinds of different button and direction combinations is really annoying (especially when the guide uses the High Quick, Low Quick, etc. way of referring to them, making them even harder to keep straight). And that's coming from somebody who still has the strategy guide at hand; imagine playing it nowadays and having to go searching for these moves on the internet. Moreover, the moves themselves are horribly awkward to pull off. As

critics at the time said, the problem is that they're a direct translation of the control scheme from the arcade, where you would hold certain buttons down and then move the joystick in specific directions. While that may work on a large arcade machine control board, on a small console controller, it has my fingers going in so many inconvenient directions in such a limited space that it sometimes feels like they're going to get tied in a knot. This is often compounded by "Up" on the control pad being the jump button, meaning that sometimes, while trying to pull off an attack, I end up jumping and canceling it out. Sometimes, I'm not even intending to hit "Up" but my thumb accidentally presses it while trying to press another direction. The finishing moves are especially notorious for being nigh impossible to pull off, and many of them I can't even do to this day. Some require you to hold down several buttons, tap a certain direction several times, then add several more buttons and control pad directions. Pure insanity.

My last criticism mainly just has to do with the fact that, despite how appealing the subject matter of this particular one may be for me, I'm not big on fighters. Specifically, I don't care for fighters where combos of both basic moves and these awkward, hard to activate special attacks are a big part of the gameplay, like it is here and also appears to be with Street Fighter (and Mortal Kombat, maybe?). Call me a simpleton but, the fighting games that I do like and own, such as the Super Smash Bros. games and the "Pipeworks" Godzilla trilogy, are those where you can just get in there and fight without having to keep all those variables in mind. I'm not saying I like them to be mindless button-mash fests, and I don't some strategy, but I don't have the attention-span, discipline, or patience for these intricate types of fighters. Those who are into them are more than welcome to them, and I'm actually jealous of the skill that some of them have.

Finally, I've always enjoyed the music, by Jeanne Parson. I think the music on the character select menu has a nice primal, epic sound to it, and I especially love the awesome music that plays whenever a character wins their first match. I'm not that big on the more somber-sounding bit that plays when the winner is decided or the one that plays when a monster performs a fatality, though. As for the music for the various stages, my favorites are the very epic-sounding theme for the Hollows, the kind of nasty music for the Ruins, the hard-edged theme for the Inferno, the surprisingly peaceful theme for the Cove, and the somber, downbeat one for the Tomb. The Cliff has a memorable, icy feel to it, while the Strip has always come off as kind of generic to me. As horrific as the idea is, the music for the feeding frenzy bonus round before the final battle has a shockingly fun sound to it, and the final battle itself has a low, menacing, but definite high stakes sound to it.

Primal Rage was intended to have a sequel, something I was more than game for, but it was quickly and quietly cancelled, as it was felt the game wouldn't sell very well. It's too bad, because the plot sounded cool, centering around the meteor that hit the Earth turning out to be an egg for a monster that hatches and attacks the planet, and the gods, both those in this game and new ones that were to be introduced, having to use human avatars to fight it. Though it was cancelled, there are some functioning arcade cabinets of it out there, one of which I saw at G-Fest in 2022, in the Mechagodzilla Arcade, along with the original (I didn't play it, though). After the popularity of Primal Rage quickly faded after the sequel was cancelled, I still look back at it with fond memories. While the home console ports weren't perfect by any means, and this style of fighting game isn't really my thing, the really cool monsters, the fun graphics, and cool music and sound effects still gave my friends and I plenty of hours of enjoyment, and that's all you can ask for from anything.