‘Primal Rage 2’: The Fighting Game That Was Almost Lost Forever

During the heyday of games such as Mortal Kombat and Street Fighter in the 1990s, several titles were made in an attempt to cash in on the bloody and brutal combat that many of these games portrayed. Some were much more successful than others, and one of the most notable fighting game titles that featured Mortal Kombat-esque violence was 1994’s Primal Rage. The game’s premise follows the inhabitants of Earth after a worldwide cataclysm. Meteors from beyond the stars struck the planet, causing catastrophe on every continent. Seas roared through cities, and entire populations were wiped out by volcanic eruptions. Humanity, as it was known, was essentially blasted back into the Stone Age, leaving only empty husks of the Old World left to be inhabited.

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During this near-extinction event, massive creatures known as the Draconians, once thought sealed away during the extinction of the dinosaurs, rose from their confinement. Many of these creatures were massive dinosaurs, though others resembled apes, and one creature was serpentine in nature and returned to the planet (now known as Urth) from the moon. These creatures once battled for total domination in a forgotten conflict known as the Mesozoic Wars, and the time had come for the battle for supremacy to continue anew. Most of Urth’s population, knowing they stood no chance to stop these powerful beasts, threw their weight behind individual Draconians and began worshipping them as gods. The continents of the planet had rearranged, and each Draconian would now step into the fray to conquer the planet.

In gameplay, players could either traverse arcade mode as their preferred god, systematically defeating opponents and conquering territory, or they could play against friends and take over Urth by winning on the game’s various stages. The controls operated somewhat similarly to Mortal Kombat, though players would need to hold and release buttons in order to use their character’s special attacks. The game saw a widespread release in arcades and drew substantial popularity, leading to the game being ported on multiple home consoles. However, due to the visceral nature of the game and its finishing moves, nearly every console port censored the game in some way.

One great game begets another, and it wasn’t long before the developers at Atari Games began work on a sequel. Primal Rage II, slated for a 1995 release, was well underway while the original was still circulating in arcades and on home consoles. Unfortunately, the sequel’s release date turned out to be quite ill-fated, as 1995 was a keystone year in the massive decline of arcades and their accompanying titles and machines. Thanks to the convenience and capabilities of home consoles and PC gaming, arcades began to drop off significantly in popularity. With their market dwindling away, Atari feared that Primal Rage II wouldn’t make enough money to recoup development costs much less turn a profit. Shortly into the game’s development timeline, it was canceled.

For years after, disappointed fans made their voices heard on early online message boards. They assumed that Primal Rage II would never see the light of day. Fortunately, they would be proven wrong. As early as 2001, rumors circulated that before the game was canceled, prototypes of the arcade machine had been released and distributed to an incredibly small number of arcades. Overall, two machines were considered to have been made, and rumors had persisted that they existed in a playable capacity. One was rumored to exist in two different Golfland arcades in California, and another was shown during a show known as California Extreme in 2001.

The rumor mill continued on, with screenshot leaks circulating well into the 2000s. Since only two machines were known to exist, obtaining a CPU board and dumping the BIOS files online wasn’t easy. Nevertheless, a version of Primal Rage II‘s BIOS files could be found and downloaded online thanks to the dedication of the game’s fanbase. The only problem was that the BIOS file wasn’t able to run on any known emulators, including the popular MAME emulator that simulated the hardware of various arcade machines. Since the BIOS file was considered moot, fans began to give up hope that Primal Rage II could ever be salvaged. Fortunately, the 2010s brought about good news on that front.

Around 2014, footage of the game in action began to pop up on YouTube, showcasing the game’s cast of fighters which included the Draconians but also their avatars, or human champions that battled in their name (the story of the game would later be made into a novel known as Primal Rage: The Avatars by John Vornholt). Before long, huge news dropped, as an arcade in Brookfield, Illinois known as Galloping Ghost Arcade was revealed to have one of the playable machines open to the public. Players had been given newfound hope, but traveling out to Brookfield just to play Primal Rage II was likely a bridge too far for many.

Primal Rage‘s dedicated fan community had their prayers answered in 2017. A Youtube user named GruntZilla94 posted footage of Primal Rage II in almost its entirety. By creating a modified version of MAME dubbed “MAME4RAGE2,” GruntZilla had created the first emulator capable of running the files for Primal Rage II that had been making rounds online for years. Releasing MAME4RAGE2 to the public, fans could now play Primal Rage II on their own machines and enjoy all the work that Atari had put towards the sequel. Since the title wasn’t completed, wide swaths of the game will never be available, but players have been able to take each other on in head-to-head matches as the game intended. The occasional bug or error tends to occur, but overall MAME4RAGE2 has improved since 2017 and is the most stable solution to playing Primal Rage II today.

It isn’t often that canceled video games are brought back from the depths of the abyss, but Primal Rage II‘s resurrection is a testament to the dedication of a fanbase who refused to give up. Although the Primal Rage franchise is likely to remain kaput, the fact that its most-dedicated players managed to preserve its unfinished sequel for posterity is a significant win that nobody likely saw coming.

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