• Hey, guest user. Hope you're enjoying NeoGAF! Have you considered registering for an account? Come join us and add your take to the daily discourse.

Cancelled Primal Rage 2 finally made playable via MAME.

Source and Footage
Primal Rage first took to arcades in 1994 and gained fans thanks to its focus on letting players duke it out as one of seven different beasts. By the next year, Atari began working on a sequel, but projected it wouldn't do well enough and scrapped the project.

Unfinished builds of Primal Rage 2 have been accessible here and there over the years, but even die hard fans couldn't get the game running in MAME. That changes now as a dedicated fan's multi-year project has finally succeeded.

Utilizing a custom version of MAME known as MAME4RAGE2, it is now possible to check out the unreleased Primal Rage 2 in a fully playable format.
I never really cared for the human portion of the game but at least some video game history is now properly preserved.
 

Skatterd

Member
they're giant humans who transform into the dinosaurs?
the fuck is this shit

So back when I was a Primal Rage fan who was upset the sequel was cancelled, I read the novel that Primal Rage 2 corresponded with.

DSCN0712.jpg

Yes this exists.
It's some wild shit lol
 

shandy706

Member
It's actually pretty good looking (relatively speaking, haha).

I want to play this.

Edit* Also looks like you can just select the dinosaur/monster form if you want.

pr0203t3kl1.png


pr0202iwjq6.png


pr0201g1keu.png
 

FaintDeftone

Junior Member
I actually played an arcade prototype of this game. An arcade in Chicago called Galloping Ghosts (which is amazing and you should totally stop in if you're in the area) has it and I made a visit with some friends last year. It was pretty fun and very playable.
 
Skipped ahead on the video, and apparently there's a way to unlock each character's dinosaur form on the character select screen. So you can play as the dinosaur form, but when you trigger the Rage meter, you do special combo moves as a human.
 
So back when I was a Primal Rage fan who was upset the sequel was cancelled, I read the novel that Primal Rage 2 corresponded with.



Yes this exists.
It's some wild shit lol
I want this. I don't even really remember primal rage from playing it when I was super little, but I need it.
 

kubev

Member
It's a shame that this wasn't released. I think the developers realized that the controls in the original were just unintuitive, as I'm pretty sure that the sequel ended up using something much more similar to Street Fighter's control scheme.
 
Add this to the list of dinosaur based franchises that would sell well if remade today. People are thirstier for dinosaur media than they are for the rich, rich petroleum that flows from their ancient corpses.
 
Well Atari was trying to recapture that Pit Fighter magic, which was highly successful and ported to everything including machines that couldn't even run it. Was the first successful "fighting" game.

Primal Rage was too late, you had MK and MK clones all over at that time, and Clayfighter was using a new gimmick. It wasn't impressive enough. it was FUN enough, but back then you had to blow peoples minds to get their attention which primal Rage didin't despite it looking quote good and being fun.
 
Huh. No foolin'?

I remember key art and articles on this from waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaay back in EGM before it was cancelled. It's very odd finding this trickling into a tangible form. Next it'll be Kumite! :p
 
Someone better than me at fighting games can probably explain this but did Primal Rage's control scheme contribute to it's relative unpopularity compared to Mortal Kombat, Killer Instinct and Street Fighter? It touched on all the popular 90's tropes: Extreme edginess, blood and guts, controversial and realistic looking dinosaurs. Should have succeeded when you think about it.

The control scheme for the uninitiated was that instead of doing special moves doing motions with the joystick followed by button presses, you had to hold down buttons and then do joystick motions and release the buttons to pull off special moves. Kinda of a reverse of the traditional fighting game control scheme.
 

Plinko

Wildcard berths that can't beat teams without a winning record should have homefield advantage
Huh. No foolin'?

I remember key art and articles on this from waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaay back in EGM before it was cancelled. It's very odd finding this trickling into a tangible form. Next it'll be Kumite! :p

Oh my goodness. This was on the cover of an EGM, wasn't it? I have been trying to remember the name of that game for years.
 
Someone better than me at fighting games can probably explain this but did Primal Rage's control scheme contribute to it's relative unpopularity compared to Mortal Kombat, Killer Instinct and Street Fighter? It touched on all the popular 90's tropes: Extreme edginess, blood and guts, controversial and realistic looking dinosaurs. Should have succeeded when you think about it.

The control scheme for the uninitiated was that instead of doing special moves doing motions with the joystick followed by button presses, you had to hold down buttons and then do joystick motions and release the buttons to pull off special moves. Kinda of a reverse of the traditional fighting game control scheme.

I wanna say I remember hearing that the Japanese version of Primal Rage played more like Street Fighter but Atari in the west wanted the controls to be different for some reason. Again, I cannot remember exactly where I heard that but I want to say it was someone Metal Jesus (Youtube guy) interviewed and he helped code Primal Rage. I would love to try the Japanese version to see if that's true.

Edit: Nope! Not Metal Jesus. It was Happy Console Gamer. Found the video! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YPXXslxEyvc go there and it's around 23 minutes when they start talking about Japanese Primal Rage.
 
Yeah, but at the same time wouldn't this have come out in Power Ranger's heyday? People fighting and then turning into dinosaurs may not have been as crazy an idea at the time as it sounds now.

Nah. As a big fan of Primal Rage when it came out, I remember seeing screens for this in EGM and thinking "WTF?! I want to play as the dinosaurs!".
 

dark_chris

Member
I actually played an arcade prototype of this game. An arcade in Chicago called Galloping Ghosts (which is amazing and you should totally stop in if you're in the area) has it and I made a visit with some friends last year. It was pretty fun and very playable.

It's in Brookfield! You had my hopes up! @.@
But thanks to you, my gf and I are already planning a trip there. That place is amazing and yes I just saw they do have Primal Rage 2 there
 
Top Bottom