Primal Rage

Everything About Fiction You Never Wanted to Know.

Before there were humans, gods walked the earth. They embodied the essence of Hunger, Survival, Life, Death, Insanity, Decay, Good and Evil. They fought countless battles up through the Mesozoic Wars. Then Balsafas, an archmage from a parallel dimension, anticipated the threat that Earth's gods posed. He was not powerful enough to kill the gods, so instead, he banished one to a rocky tomb within the Moon. This disrupted the fragile balance between the gods; pandemonium ensued, and a great explosion threw clouds of volcanic dust into the atmosphere. The dinosaurs died out, and the surviving gods went into suspended animation.

Now, the impact of a huge meteor strikes the Earth. Its destructive force wipes out civilization, rearranges the continents, and frees the imprisoned gods. Get ready to rumble...

Playable characters:

This Fighting Game is a little unusual in that there's no boss character to smack around. There was a planned upgrade that would've given the game a boss to defeat to beat the game but that went unreleased by Atari Games. There was also a planned sequel that too went unreleased due to being too many Fighting Games at the time.

There was also a novel based on the game, Primal Rage: The Avatars. Although not literature of exceptional quality, it is noteworthy in that it expanded the backstories of the Gods, and introduced two characters that would have been in the sequel; Slashfang the sabertooth tiger, and Necronus/Necrosan the aforementioned boss.


Tropes used in Primal Rage include:
  • After the End: The story is set in a future in which modern civilization is wiped out by a meteor, and everyone who has survived is sent back to the Stone Age.
  • An Ice Ape: Blizzard.
  • Anti-Hero: Both Blizzard and Armadon are Type IV, while Talon could been seen as either type IV or V, and Sauron is type V AT BEST. As noted above, Sauron and Talon are real jackasses for "Virtuous Beasts", wanting to eat everyone and wanting to enslave all humans for cattle, respectively. Sauron in particular has the most disturbing ending screen in the game.
    • Note that the separating of the dino gods into the "Virtuous Beats" an "Destructive Dinos" was created purely for the toyline and has no bearing to the video game storyline, which explains both Sauron's and Talon's douchebaggery.
    • It should also be noted that these are essentially Kaiju. The "heroic" once are more concerned with protecting their territory and facing off against earth-destroying evils than they are with something that is little more than food to them.
  • Anti-Villain: Chaos is by far the least unpleasant of the Destructive Beasts (besides the fact he's disgusting and stinks to high heaven, according to the novel). In his ending, he regains his human form and leads the human tribes in rebuilding the world. He's also actually handsome.
    • According to the novel, while both Talon and Sauron do horrible things to their followers (keeping them as Cattle/eating them respectively) they are still more or less decent gods that will reward those the serve them faithfully.
  • Baleful Polymorph: One of Vertigo's three fatalities.
  • Boss Rush: This takes place instead of a Final Boss battle, which was planned, but cut.
  • Bowdlerise: At the last minute, Chaos' Urine Trouble Finishing Move was taken out of the Super Nintendo port of the game. Performing it in that version will result in Chaos merely performing his victory pose while a red circle with a line through it flashes.
    • In some versions of the game, one human victim (whose brains have spilled out) is blurred in Sauron's ending screen.
  • Breath Weapon: Diablo's Torch, Chaos' Power Puke, Sauron's Sonic Roar and Primal Scream, Blizzard's Freeze Breath, and Vertigo's Voodoo Spit.
  • Crapsack World: It's a bad time to be a human in Urth. Blizzard and Armadon are the only Dino Gods who have even the slightest consideration for humans, and Blizzard's attempts to get the Gods to stop being dickbags is ignored in the novels, while Armadon wants to sleep.
  • Damn You, Muscle Memory!: Unlike in most other fighters, the special moves are instead performed by holding down the buttons and then inputting the directions, instead of the other way around. You can still perform them the normal way in some versions of the game, but seeing that all of them require you to hit at least 2 attack buttons at the same time, it's not really worth the trouble. Try doing this with the fighters in MUGEN, where you now need to input the commands at the same time, Street Fighter-style.
  • Darker and Edgier: Ironically averted in the novel, which has everyone teaming up to wail on an undead dragon.
  • Digitized Sprites: Made from Claymation figures.
  • Dinosaurs Are Dragons: Gods, more accurately. In the book (and the canceled sequel) though, there is an undead dragon that shows up to annoy everyone.
  • Does This Remind You of Anything?: Ancient, horrible deities sleeping finally awaken and wreak havoc upon the world and then start slapping the shit out of each other. It's like the Cthulhu Mythos meets Jurassic Park meets Mortal Kombat.
  • Everything's Better with Monkeys: Blizzard and Chaos are both giant apes (Chaos was supposed to be an even more disgusting thing than a regular ape, but yay creator laziness).
  • Fantasy World Map: The meteor rearranged the continents to look like a Tyrannosaurus skull.
  • Fartillery: Trope picture. One of Chaos' moves is the "Fart of Fury".
  • Flawless Victory: "TOTAL DOMINATION!"
  • Fragile Speedster: Talon.
  • Gaia's Vengeance: Armadon, who is waken up by the constant movement and destruction caused by the other Gods.
  • Gorn: As if the gameplay hadn't had enough of this, the energy bars are veins connected to a heart at the end, and the special bar below is a nerve linked to a brain. Winning a match causes the loser's heart to explode and the brain to melt into ashes. There's also the fatalities.
    • In the intro screens, Talon is being interrupted by Vertigo while feeding on Chaos' carcass, complete with torn-open chest and visible ribs.
    • Speaking of Talon, his Shredder Fatality became even gorier with updates. In prior versions, the victim did the stock animation collapse in a fountain of blood. Version 2.3 left the victim standing, but lifeless, skinned and with lots of skeleton exposed.
  • Jerkass Gods: All of them to some degree.
  • Kaiju: Uhm, the dinosaurs are pretty goddamn big?
  • Mighty Glacier: Sauron and Armadon. Armadon, at least, can fire projectiles, and Sauron has AOE attacks.
  • Mix-and-Match Critters: Vertigo (part Plateosaurus and part cobra) and Armadon (a bipedal Monoclonius/Ankylosaurus/Stegosaurus hybrid).
  • Naked People Are Funny: Perform enough hits and damage with a single combo, and your followers will celebrate by streaking.
  • Names to Run Away From Really Fast: The main characters are named Diablo, Talon, Vertigo, Sauron, Blizzard, Armadon and Chaos.
  • Ninja Pirate Zombie Robot
  • Palette Swap: Chaos and Diablo are smaller, redder versions of Blizzard and Sauron, respectively.
  • People Farms: Sauron and Talon's goal.
  • Please Wake Up: On the continue screens after losing, you can see the humans trying to revive their respective god, with one of them pleading to the player to continue.
  • Prehistoria: It's more like Posthistoria, but they were fighting Prehistoria.
  • Puny Humans
  • Recycled in Space: It's Mortal Kombat WITH DINOSAURS AND GIANT GORILLAS!
  • Remember the New Guy?: Slashfang got the treatment in the novel. He was always there, but he stayed in the Savannas he called home until the other dino gods discovered and invaded them, causing him to join the war.
    • Talon occasionally does this to his chosen avatar.
  • Rule of Cool: Almost everything in this game would be insanely stupid if it wasn't also insanely awesome.
  • Rules of the Road: The game has a "No Cheese" sign (a wedge of Swiss cheese with a red bar through it) which flashes whenever a player tries a "cheesy" fighting tactic, such as throwing another while they're stunned from blocking, or using two stun techniques in the same combo.
  • Shock and Awe: One of Armadon's finishers.
  • Shrink Ray: One of Vertigo's fatalities involves her shrinking the opponent and eating them.
  • The Smurfette Principle: Vertigo. Averted in the novel.
  • Stock Dinosaurs: Talon is a Deinonychus (complete with feathers, but on his head), Diablo and Sauron are tyrannosaurs, and Armadon is a mix-and-match dino with a ceratopsian's head, an ankylosaur's armor, and stegosaur's thagomizer.
  • Taken for Granite: Vertigo can turn the opponent to stone and shatter them for one of her fatalities.
  • To Serve Man: The gods eat their worshipers. (Well, can. The only one who canonically does this is Sauron.) And yes, you can do this when you're playing as them.
  • Tyrannosaurus Rex: Sauron and Diablo.
  • Urine Trouble: Chaos' "Golden Shower" fatality.
  • What Measure Is A Human: Even Blizzard, the nicest of the Virtuous Beasts, isn't above chowing down on his followers, and Talon, as mentioned, considers humans to be cattle.
  • Whip It Good: Vertigo uses her tail as a whip-like weapon.
  • World of Badass: You'll probably end up dying, especially if you're a human. On the plus side, it may well be the coolest death imaginable!