In the mid 90s I had no concept of hardware capabilities when it came to consoles and handhelds. For a while I assumed that if I got a game on a handheld it would be the same as on console. Primal Rage is the title that taught me otherwise. I figured I would get the entire experience of the game I so cherished if I got the handheld cartridge. This was not the Primal Rage I expected. Video games were a rare purchase as a child so I spent a ton of time with it regardless. So how bad is Primal Rage on the Game Boy? Pretty bad. Let’s dive right in and take a look.
Primal Rage takes place in an alternate present day where civilization has largely broken down. A giant meteor struck the planet rearranging the continents, and six prehistoric beasts have been awoken from their slumber. Each of these begin their fight amongst each other to rule what has been deemed “Urth” and thus starts the action in Primal Rage. Notice how I said six of them when every other port has seven. That’s because Vertigo was left out of this version. I’m not sure if it’s because of memory restraints or the processing power needed to render her, but it’s disappointing nonetheless. Unfortunately there’s almost no story exposition here and we’re simply thrown right into the action upon booting the game up. This is a fighting game so it’s not that big a deal either way.
The character roster is a little underwhelming. I mean, six characters in a fighting game released in the mid 90s? Forget about it. Game Boy or not that’s really bad for the genre and they should have done everything in their power to expand the roster. Things only get worse once we start taking a deep look at it. You have the poster boy blue yeti Blizzard who uses the power of ice, his counterpart Chaos that uses vile attacks like vomit and farts, Talon a small but fast raptor, Sauron the god of hunger, and Diablo who is based on fire. At least you can tell who they all are on the small screen, but only a few of their special moves make the migration to handheld. There’s a very weak and limited combo system in play using these but if you’re like me you’ll just get frustrated.
If you’ve played a 2D fighting game before then you pretty much know the drill. You select from one of six playable fighters, and then compete against the others in a series of 1-on-1 fights. There’s no fancy gimmicks or bells and whistles; your goal is just to reduce their life bar to nothing. The winner is decided in a series of three fights with the victor of two being declared the winner. At the end of the final match you can input a fatality attack ala Mortal Kombat. It serves little purpose except to look ‘cool’ and provides a more satisfying conclusion to the fight. Unfortunately each character has only one of these so if your favorite finishing move didn’t make the cut then tough luck. That’s just one of many reasons to play a different version of Primal Rage.
Most fighting games on the original Game Boy stutter and suffer from choppy gameplay. Primal Rage is unfortunately no different. The problem is the developers tried too hard to simply downsize the effects of the original arcade release. It’s very technically impressive in screenshots (this is one of the best examples of digitized graphics I’ve seen on the platform) but in motion is a different story. The two characters move on screen very robotically. They seem to warp around instead of fluidly animate. For a fighting game this is a major problem. The choppy engine makes even playing Primal Rage a chore. Imagine trying to string together attacks when the game can’t keep up with your button inputs. That’s Primal Rage in a nutshell.
Unfortunately the controls also suffer in this port. The Game Boy only had two face buttons after all. You only have two different basic attacks; weak and strong. They’re designated to the A and B buttons. You can perform different attacks if you’re mid-jump or ducking, but these are pretty basic. Your options have been reduced from the home console ports because of the lack of face buttons. Hit detection has some major problems with hitboxes being too big. It’s difficult to dodge attacks when the game is so wonky. This goes double so for projectiles. As I mentioned earlier many of the special moves have been removed. Now you have just two or three of these apiece, and most of the best ones are missing in action. I would take another character being removed if they could just keep the movesets as they were.
I have even more bad news about this Primal Rage port. The game modes are severely limited. You have just single player arcade, as well as training. That’s it. The main mode has you squaring off against the other opponents one by one and when you’re done that’s all folks. There’s no additional content or even a secret boss. Nothing. It’s a case of what you see is what you get. The training mode is the biggest insult however. As far as I can tell it’s no different from the main game except that you can now choose your opponent. Primal Rage doesn’t teach you character moves or strategies in this mode; it only lets you select your foe. The fact that there’s no two player option or anything in this title makes the one bone they threw an extra insult.
As I already touched upon Primal Rage is a very beautiful Game Boy game in screenshots. The digitized character models are some of the most detailed in any handheld title at the time. You can clearly tell who each character is including Sauron and Diablo who are palette swaps of one another with only minor differences. From a visual standpoint Primal Rage clearly pushes the archaic Game Boy quite hard. Unfortunately pretty graphics don’t mean much when the game itself chugs at a framerate in the single digits. It’s difficult to play, and I never was able to get used to the slow paced gameplay. The soundtrack manages a fair bit better. The composers were able to re-create most of the iconic music from the arcade game here. While it does sound like a whole lot of bleeps and blips I thought it was competently done.
