If you were walking down an arcade in the mid-’90s, you’d see a parade of fighting games, and you’d probably have the likes of Mortal Kombat and Street Fighter firmly rooted in your nostalgic brain space. But in 1994, Primal Rage appeared in the Atari games. Its stop-motion animation style mixed with dinosaur fighting and killer gorillas made it the #1 rated arcade game of that year (as proudly displayed on the console releases art box).
The first Primal Rage even had a game collection that included a board game, as well as its own comic book series and translation of its story. It was also ported to 10 consoles ranging from PlayStation to Tiger R-Zone, which was essentially a handheld version of Virtual Boy without the headset.
It’s safe to say that the game was… All the anger.
Success always led to the production of Primal Rage 2 in 1995, with a team of 20 people operating on a solid budget of $2.5 million. The main difference was that the sequel would use human avatars that could briefly transform into Jurassic deities through the use of special moves, although the game would later feature a roster of 17 characters, including gods from the first game.
So where did all this error happen? The answer lies in both Atari Games and Midway. Atari Games put a Summer 1996 release date on Primal Rage 2, and wanted to gather marketing feedback ASAP rather than after the game is out or at least after testing their boards for bugs. So in a poor management move, they ended up shipping arcade boards for an unfinished game that was constantly crashing due to bugs. While the team was able to fix the issues after that, the truth is that the boards weren’t supposed to be shipped in the first place.
The main reason behind this was that Primal Rage 2 was a much more massive game than its predecessor, and required more time to develop. First, there was a growing amount of animation. In the first game, the characters had about 400 different animations each while the sequel included between 1,500 to 2,000 unique animations for each character. Also, the large number of animations means that it will take about half a year for each character to move from concept art to game. Focusing on animation meant neglecting balance, which audiences quickly picked up.
Atari Games also mismanaged the game’s marketing. They began promoting and liking the sequel in magazines and even sent toys for two characters, including the game’s boss Necrosan, to stores before the game was over. Feeling a pattern here? But the game’s final blow came from inside the house in 1996, when Midway bought Atari Games from then-parent company Time Warner. The first sign of trouble came after the acquisition, when the team asked Mortal Kombat developer Midway if they would allow Mortal Kombat characters to be added as secret characters in Primal Rage 2. Midway declined the offer, which should have sent some warning flags.
You’re now under the control of a new company that’s home to the world’s biggest and deadliest fighting game – the one that single-handedly scared the censors in the creation of the ESRB – and wouldn’t they share their personalities? Primal Rage wasn’t a small hit, and it wasn’t seen as an up-and-coming in the fighting game genre, it was huge! Then, later in the year, Midway took a company ax and fired tons of employees. Towards the end of 1996, they pulled the plug on Primal Rage 2, just as it was nearing completion, and her team was scattered and put on various projects within the company.
It wasn’t until 2014 when an arcade version of The Locker was revealed and was playable at the Galloping Ghost Arcade in Brookfield, Illinois. People came from all over to get some time with the game, its new characters, thousands of character animations, and simpler controls. Two years later, the game was patched to run properly on the MAME emulator so that the player could enjoy it for generations to come.
Did Midway just buy up the competition to destroy it? Midway subsequently filed for bankruptcy in 2009, which transferred the rights to its intellectual property library to Warner Bros. Before filing for bankruptcy, they had ownership of two very profitable fighting games, and they killed one of them for no apparent reason and did so. And she doesn’t even bother giving her a sequel a chance. Now, their games are in the Warner Bros. toy box instead of being played.
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