Blast from the Past! Primal Rage Retrospective
Primal Rage was the first fighting game my brother and I played in our youth. With the boom of popular fighting games like Mortal Kombat, Street Fighter, and Marvel vs. Capcom, various video game companies scramble to release their own line of fighting games. However, if it wasn't any of the big three above, then they had no fighting chance and faded into obscurity. That is until Primal Rage came out.
What is Primal Rage you ask? It's Mortal Kombat, but instead of warriors, ninjas, and cyborgs, you get dinosaurs, apes, and a bipedal cobra sorceress. The story is set in a post apocalypse Earth (pronounced Urth) where you play as one of seven prehistoric gods hellbent on world domination. Sounds simple right?
The first time I was exposed to Primal Rage was at a mall. There was a clothing store that had a game station for children to play with while their parents were shopping close by. I believe they kept Primal Rage in the console forever until they removed the station because I don't remember any other game we played during our occasional visits. I guess the game stuck onto us that my parents eventually bought the game for our Playstation back home. The controls were hard to master, but I'm a simple man: I see dinosaurs, I like. Remember this was a time before I knew about Godzilla and King Kong, so my experience with giant monsters originated from here. Besides the dinosaurs versus monster action, the process of how Time Warner Interactive created Primal Rage made me appreciate the game further. As someone who works with stop motion as a hobby, I was surprised to come across a video detailing the development on the game using (you guessed it) stop motion technology. Where Street Fighter involved sprites and Mortal Kombat used live action actors, Primal Rage is probably the first video game to utilize the stop motion effectively. Other than that, it plays like any other fighting game with the addition of fatalities that intrigue Mortal Kombat fans.
The next memory I had was the toys. My parents spoiled us with almost all of the action figures, which I still have to this day. Diablo, the red T.Rex and personal favorite of my brother and me, was given away a while back, but I got him back in late 2018 at Toy De Jour, a popular collectible toy store in Chicago. We used to have larger figures with rubber skin similar to Kenner's Jurassic Park toys, but no longer have them. When we did, my brother and his friend let me join in on the fun, pretending to clash like they did in the video game. Thinking back, I have to give Playmates Toys a win for producing quality figures with game accurate paint applications, unique gimmicks per figure, and decent articulation. For those who are unfamiliar, Playmates Toys was responsible for creating iconic toylines such as the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles line and Peter Jackson's King Kong. However, they are also responsible for the infamous 2020 Godzilla toyline (look at your own risk) after acquiring the rights from both Bandai America and Jakks Pacific. For such a crazy concept like Primal Rage, leave it to Playmates to succeed in bringing these characters from the screen to my toy chest.
Despite having a bias for the game I noticed some issues that prevent it from being the best game. For instance, the game doesn't allow you to choose maps, there's no way to return to the main menu (that I know of), and there's no final boss. Instead you fight the same characters in one sitting with one health bar. With some ports, the transition from arcade stick to controller doesn't translate well. While they had decent promotional material, it wasn't as memorable, which explains Primal Rage's obscurity from the general public. When one person yells, "Mortal Kombat!", people will know what it means. But when someone yells, "Rage!", you'll get nothing. I guess the reason why Primal Rage isn't as popular because it is a but lackluster in replay value and offers nothing different besides aesthetics.
Besides the issues, Primal Rage is a franchise that brought my brother and I together. We bonded over our enthusiasm for dinosaurs, video games, and toys. When you think I learned everything about Primal Rage, there's always something new to surprise me. I didn't know that they had a limited comic book series, a novel, and a second game, which can only be found in Illinois (of all places!). Fortunately, they brought the game over to C2E2, and I was finally able to play it. While the games aren't as renowned as Mortal Kombat, Primal Rage is my favorite fighting game of all time and a personal favorite toyline. It deserves to be checked out, if not brought back from extinction.
What is Primal Rage you ask? It's Mortal Kombat, but instead of warriors, ninjas, and cyborgs, you get dinosaurs, apes, and a bipedal cobra sorceress. The story is set in a post apocalypse Earth (pronounced Urth) where you play as one of seven prehistoric gods hellbent on world domination. Sounds simple right?
The first time I was exposed to Primal Rage was at a mall. There was a clothing store that had a game station for children to play with while their parents were shopping close by. I believe they kept Primal Rage in the console forever until they removed the station because I don't remember any other game we played during our occasional visits. I guess the game stuck onto us that my parents eventually bought the game for our Playstation back home. The controls were hard to master, but I'm a simple man: I see dinosaurs, I like. Remember this was a time before I knew about Godzilla and King Kong, so my experience with giant monsters originated from here. Besides the dinosaurs versus monster action, the process of how Time Warner Interactive created Primal Rage made me appreciate the game further. As someone who works with stop motion as a hobby, I was surprised to come across a video detailing the development on the game using (you guessed it) stop motion technology. Where Street Fighter involved sprites and Mortal Kombat used live action actors, Primal Rage is probably the first video game to utilize the stop motion effectively. Other than that, it plays like any other fighting game with the addition of fatalities that intrigue Mortal Kombat fans.
The next memory I had was the toys. My parents spoiled us with almost all of the action figures, which I still have to this day. Diablo, the red T.Rex and personal favorite of my brother and me, was given away a while back, but I got him back in late 2018 at Toy De Jour, a popular collectible toy store in Chicago. We used to have larger figures with rubber skin similar to Kenner's Jurassic Park toys, but no longer have them. When we did, my brother and his friend let me join in on the fun, pretending to clash like they did in the video game. Thinking back, I have to give Playmates Toys a win for producing quality figures with game accurate paint applications, unique gimmicks per figure, and decent articulation. For those who are unfamiliar, Playmates Toys was responsible for creating iconic toylines such as the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles line and Peter Jackson's King Kong. However, they are also responsible for the infamous 2020 Godzilla toyline (look at your own risk) after acquiring the rights from both Bandai America and Jakks Pacific. For such a crazy concept like Primal Rage, leave it to Playmates to succeed in bringing these characters from the screen to my toy chest.
Despite having a bias for the game I noticed some issues that prevent it from being the best game. For instance, the game doesn't allow you to choose maps, there's no way to return to the main menu (that I know of), and there's no final boss. Instead you fight the same characters in one sitting with one health bar. With some ports, the transition from arcade stick to controller doesn't translate well. While they had decent promotional material, it wasn't as memorable, which explains Primal Rage's obscurity from the general public. When one person yells, "Mortal Kombat!", people will know what it means. But when someone yells, "Rage!", you'll get nothing. I guess the reason why Primal Rage isn't as popular because it is a but lackluster in replay value and offers nothing different besides aesthetics.
Besides the issues, Primal Rage is a franchise that brought my brother and I together. We bonded over our enthusiasm for dinosaurs, video games, and toys. When you think I learned everything about Primal Rage, there's always something new to surprise me. I didn't know that they had a limited comic book series, a novel, and a second game, which can only be found in Illinois (of all places!). Fortunately, they brought the game over to C2E2, and I was finally able to play it. While the games aren't as renowned as Mortal Kombat, Primal Rage is my favorite fighting game of all time and a personal favorite toyline. It deserves to be checked out, if not brought back from extinction.
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