Released in 1995

Available in

Genre: Fighting

When Primal Rage was released in arcades, in quickly became a mega-hit, and was later released on the majority of games consoles available at the time, including the 32X. Rather than re-do everything to take full advantage of the 32X hardware, Probe Entertainment took the same route they took with 32X Mortal Kombat II -Primal Rage on the 32X is an upgraded version of the Genesis game, and isn't that much better for it. Some things are improved on, such as bigger sprites and more colors, but you'd have to have the games running side by side to really notice the difference, and overall the 32X port is quite obviously not close to the arcade game graphically.

Sadly gameplay wise it isn't close to the arcade version either. The 32X version is based on version 1.7 of the arcade game, which is an older version. The arcade game had since seen an update to version 2.3, which added more moves and fatalities, none of which are in the 32X version.

And I'm not that fond of this game anyway. The main problem is the controls, as the special moves require you to hold down several buttons, then do a motion on the d-pad. This makes special moves a pain to pull off, especially when compared to Mortal Kombat II . There are also only seven characters, and almost each character has a palette-swap (such as Sauron and Diablo) who look the same but have different moves. There isn't even a final boss in the game either. There are some fairly silly and entertaining fatalities to witness in Primal Rage, but once you've seen them, the game offers little else. If you've already got the Genesis version you certainly don't need the 32X version.

A massive meteor shower has hit the Earth, destroying civilization and releasing the "draconians". These creatures wage war on one another for control of the entire planet. The single player mode has you pick a character and then you must have everyone in a series of one on one battles, using the traditional best two of three rounds rule most other fighting games use.

Characters have different swipes, bites and kicks. There are two buttons for swipes/bites and two for kicks, but by pressing buttons together you can use even more powerful attacks. Each character has their own set of special moves, from farting on your opponent to grabbing and pummeling them for a few seconds. As well as the special moves there are finishing moves. When you defeat your opponent in the last round of a fight, you have a few seconds to input a specific command on the controller to use a fatality and kill your opponent. Beneath each character's life bar there is another bar which fills up if you take repeated hits. Once it is full your character will be stunned and unable to move, so quickly wiggle the d-pad around to empty the bar and escape the stun status.

Humans will follow you and your opponent around in the background, but can sometimes be interacted with. Each character has a move that lets you eat a human, if you eat one of your opponent's followers, you will regain some health. In addition to the single player mode, a second human player can join in and there is also a training mode. Some extra modes can also be played are are easily accessed in the extra options menu (see below).

Extra options menu
At the main menu, press left, right, up, down, down, up, right, left. The words "Extra Options" should appear, enter this to access a cheat menu which lets you do things such as give yourself infinite credits, make your character invincible etc.

-The back of the American version's box claims there are only six characters in the game, and at the top you see heads for six of the characters -for some reason, Vertigo's head is missing! The 32X version does indeed have seven characters, why the box blurb claims otherwise is a total mystery. The Genesis version's box even states there are seven characters, and Vertigo's head is shown with the other characters.

-Primal Rage 32X is notorious among collectors, as the European version is very rare and extremely valuable. It seems not many copies were made. In comparison the American version goes for a fraction of the price.

-Some American gaming magazines stated that a Primal Rage 32X CD version was in the works, but it was never released. Quite how the game would have benefited from using the SEGA CD hardware isn't clear to me, unless they just intended to add the FMV opening sequence the Saturn and Playstation versions had.