My, oh my! Dinosaurs are dangerous...
Story: Here you have the typical post-apocalyptic... prehistorical future of mankind. Wha? Yeah, you read me right. Some catastrophe occured that made dinosaurs and giant apes to walk on the surface of Earth once again. Those hulking monsters are set to conquer this new world they haven't seen for 65 billion years...
Gameplay: You get to play has some of the mightiest of the new monsters. You choose between the T-rex king Sauron, the swift Talon, the poisonous Vertigo, the crazy Chaos, the stone-cold hearted Blizzard, the hulking Armaddon and the fearsome Diablo. Those characters are thrown against each other in a Mortal Kombat-like fashion of gameplay. You can do weak, medium and strong attacks. You can also do some crazy- and painful- looking moves too. From the quick strikes of Talon to the attack flamer and crushing jump combo of Diablo, you have an array of moves to do with each character. The particularity of Primal Rage is that you get to fight every opponent in the game, but should you get defeated and chose another fighter, you have to conquer again each continent of Earth. This is Total Domination!
Graphics: In my time, Ah played PR on an Arcade machine, like Ah said earlier. For a 1995 game, it had "way cool graphics, man!" -like Ah used to say as a teenager. On the SNES, the same could not be said. Now that Ah look at it (Ah play PR on SNES emulator, now. Ah'll try got get it on cartridge, though) today, Ah must say that the graphics aren't even par with the Killer Instinct or Donkey Kong -computer generated quality. There is a lot of pixels, the animations are sometimes choppy and the colors are dark. Yet, you'll see some nice touchs, like the heart of each opponent beating franticaly the more the health bar is near empty. The backgrounds look good and add to this post-apocalyptic prehistorical feel. By the way, Primal Rage is gory. When it's not the heart exploding or the brain melting down, it will be those huge gushes of blood spouting from a wounded monster that will make you remember why there has been an Anti-violence in video games protest back in the '90s.
Sound: Maybe Ah should not trust my SNES emulator and maybe my memories are long forgotten, but Ah must said that the sound environment is not the best aspect of Primal Rage. The music, while correct, is not memorable. The opponents themselves have unsatisfactory barks, roars and whinings when dealing or receiving wounds. Sometimes, they don't even emit any noise while there is an animation suggesting some sound. But you don't play this game for its sound, anyway.
Value: There are seven characters in Primal Rage. Every one of them have his own set of combos and poweful finishing moves. This may not look like much if you compare with today's fighting games, but in its heyday, Primal Rage was just plain fun to play. For all those of you who remember the old school fighting games, this will make you nostalgic as you think on how games back then used to be simple, yet incredibly addicting.
Final statement: There is nothing like beating the crap out of your friends with giant dinosaurs and raging apes. It was true in the mid-'90s and it's still true today.