Primal Rage Review (Atari Jaguar CD, 1995)

It’s crazy to look back on all of the fighting games that were released in the 90s. Street Fighter II was the title that really put the genre on the map. After that came Mortal Kombat which gained its own huge fanbase. From here we had an endless sea of copycats to both franchises. Most of these are largely forgettable. There are however a few that managed to carve their own niches in the market. One of my favorite Mortal Kombat clones was a title called Primal Rage. Originally I played it on the Super Nintendo. As we now know this is largely considered the worst home console version of the game. So what’s the best then? In my opinion it’s the Atari Jaguar CD release of all things. Let’s take a look today at why!

The Atari Jaguar itself was not known for having a wide dearth of third party software. The console failed in the marketplace and thanks to its strange hardware it was not easy to develop for. That’s why this version of Primal Rage is so unexpected. Not only was it released for the expensive add-on for the already failed console, but the developers put some actual effort into it. While this, and the 3DO edition are similar the Jaguar CD release omits some unnecessary FMVs and to my eyes looks slightly better. Plus, the controller here is much better for pulling off special moves.

Primal Rage takes place on Earth sometime in the future. Civilization has been largely destroyed by a meteor that struck the planet, most life has been destroyed, and the continents have been rearranged. This cataclysmic event released several long dormant prehistoric beasts trapped beneath the planet’s crust. The surviving humans now worship these dinosaurs and apes as gods, and each are competing to rule “Urth” as it’s now called.

It’s a fair set up by fighting game standards, but it’s extremely cheesy and funny. Personally I like it though. As I just mentioned the fighters are composed of prehistoric beasts that are divided into both good and evil categories. On the lighter side are Blizzard the ice breathing yeti, Sauron the god of hunger, a spike laden triceratops named Armaddon, and a small but fast raptor named Talon. On the opposite end of the spectrum are the repulsive ape Chaos, fire breathing Diablo, and the evil serpent named Vertigo. In typical fashion each of the characters has their own background story as well as ending sequence. Honestly it’s a scenario aimed at young teens. It was edgy back then but feels a bit ‘try hard’ now.

At its core this is a traditional one-on-one fighting game. You can play against a human player or participate in the story mode. Here you must battle and defeat every other character, and then face them again in a boss rush of sorts. Gameplay is strictly two dimensional and you as well as your opponent can only move left and right. Each character is armed with punches, kicks, bites, etc. and they differ wildly in power and range as well as speed. In addition each is armed with a host of special moves. These include throws, projectiles, and strikes that vary in strength, recovery time, and speed. There’s an in depth combo system and you’ll need to learn these intricacies to master it.

The inputs for most special moves differ from your typical fighter of this era. Primal Rage focuses more on holding down a face button while performing directional inputs. It’s not really worse just different. If you play a lot of Mortal Kombat or Street Fighter it takes a little getting used to. Many of the directional combinations are similar to those in more traditional fighting games. They include a lot of half sweeps on the directional pad and holding left or right down. The special moves are mostly physical in nature but just about everyone here (except Talon) has some sort of projectile at their disposal. These are generally easier to dodge than usual because of their slow movement.

Each character also has several different fatalities (ala Mortal Kombat). These are extremely over the top and bizarre even by genre norms. My favorite is Vertigo’s which transforms the opponent into a cow. Why did they include this? Because they can. Chaos has a fatality where he urinates on an enemy which sounds juvenile now but it was really novel back then. Primal Rage certainly doesn’t take itself too seriously, and that’s one of its best strengths.

Unfortunately gameplay is a little clunky. This is best attributed to the pre-rendered digitized characters and their limited frames of animation. Movement is slow and a little awkward to be honest. I understand that these are giant prehistoric beasts but fluidity is a real problem. This is the game’s biggest flaw and holds it back from being a true classic.

The Jaguar CD version differs from the others in a few ways. In my opinion it’s the best looking version of the game pre-Sega Saturn and PlayStation releases for one. Iit even contains a few exclusive gameplay modes. You have tug of war where two players compete over a single life bar as they fight each other trying to gain ground on it. Next up is a new endurance mode wherein two players battle each other using literally every character in the roster. The first person to run out of characters loses. In addition you’ve also got the classic single player and simple multiplayer match modes. Not much has been changed with them.

Unfortunately the games suffer a major issue; the Jaguar controller itself has only three main face buttons. You need a six button controller to play this game with any degree of success. Unfortunately those are rare and hard to acquire. You would think with all of the inputs on the numeric pad the developers could have worked something out. It wouldn’t make up for the lack of face buttons, but the option would still have been nice. Unfortunately you’ll have some problems without the six button pad.

As I’ve already mentioned this is one of favorite versions of the game from a visual standpoint. It still looks like a 16-bit title, but the smoother framerate. There are additional frames of animation are a marked improvement over both the SNES and Genesis versions. The colors also seem to pop more in this port. The digitized characters look very interesting. The fact that they were created as sculptures gives the art style a surreal ‘action figure’ quality. The backgrounds, especially Sauron’s stage, really stand out thanks to the enhanced color palette. The characters also look noticeably better because of it. Unfortunately Sauron and Diablo simply look like palette swaps at different sizes. In addition Blizzard and Chaos have very similar body designs as well. For a game that only has eight fighters that just seems a little lazy to me. Overall this game looks pretty good though.

Primal Rage has a pretty decent soundtrack that I’ve always been a fan of. The prehistoric motif comes through wonderfully with heavy drums and raw instrumentation. It’s very fitting. The theme of Blizzard’s stage, as well as that of Sauron’s are both particularly enjoyable. My favorite overall track is that from the character select screen which perfectly fits the apocalypse motif. On the other side of the coin the sound effects are a little dull. Collisions and hits sound a little muffled and unrealistic. Each of the characters has their own signature grunts and cries. It’s all muffled, and these would fare significantly better with sharp samples and good quality recordings. There’s even a little bit of voice work which also sounds pretty decent. The audio is decent despite a few issues.