Title: Primal Rage Released: 1995 Genre: 2-D Fighter Developer: Bitmasters Publisher: Time-Warner Regions: USA, UK Availability: Rare

Like almost every console of the time, the 32x received a version of Atari’s surprisingly popular fighting game Primal Rage (that's Midway/Atari, not the REAL Atari.) Aside from smaller characters and some missing frames of animation, the 32x port is very close to its arcade parent, though the 16-bit versions aren't far off, either. It's rumored that 32x Primal Rage originally began life as a CD game, but was converted over to the cartridge format when the CD games tanked (which may explain the smaller characters.) What we basically have here is a mildly upgraded Genesis game involving motion-captured dinosaurs and Mortal Kombat-inspired fighting. All the “classic” elements are present: blood, fatalities, and even a finishing move involving urination. Primal Rage is one of several average 2-D fighting games for the 32x, neither great nor terrible. Recommended, but just barely.

Primal Rage was a surprise hit in the arcades, and a sequel was rumored and pretty much expected. Oddly enough, it never materialized. It seems that even games involving dinosaurs are extinct. The original arcade game is NOT running on Jaguar-based hardware, as has been rumored (though a modified version of the Jaguar chipset was used for several arcade games.) Primal Rage also appeared for the Sega Genesis, Game Gear, and Brazillian Master System, Super Nintendo, Gameboy, 3DO, and Atari Jaguar CD.

Note: The Primal Rage character “Sauron” can be found in T-Mek, one of the few 32x-exclusive arcade ports. See the tips and cheats section.
 
 

	Primal Rage is supposedly the rarest UK 32x game, with a rumored production run of only 6000 copies.
	The unreleased CD version of Primal Rage was said to be arcade-perfect, but lost some graphical detail when it was converted to the cartridge format.