4. Primal Rage
Primal Rage, another Atari entry on the list, was in one sentence Mortal Kombat but with prehistoric looking beasts taking the place for the fighters from Shao Khan's tournament. The plot for the original arcade coin-op released in 1994 revolved around a version of our world called 'Urth'-a place overgrown with vegetation and with signs of civilization only radiation soaked monuments of the past. Urth was also a world where now massive overgrown beasts equipped with deadly force battled to the death, all while in the audience of helpless looking, but in actuality worship bound 'cave-men' and women that often became snacks for the winner. In the game you could choose from seven different beasts, from fierce Blizzard, a creature that looked like King Kong's evil cousin to T-Rex long lost twin Sauron, a dinosaur that could spit breath from his enormous jaws that could cause significant damage to foes if on point. The game had a great story behind it for those interested in that sort of thing, as well as a number of different moves for each of the seven characters, including (like Mortal Kombat) 'Fatalities'-so you could really stick it to losers. I can't mention the fatalities without mentioning that Rage felt some of the same backlash Mortal Kombat did for it's depiction of gruesome violence, changes were made to some versions of the game just so it could be presented to a wider audience. Some attempts at ports to home consoles were made but due to some technical issues in the way the game was actually made, Primal Rage never really got the sequel it deserved, despite the rumors of one that had been all but ready to be released to the gamin community back in 2001. The game lived on through it's story, inspiring some fiction but never again seeing enough interest to get past all it's obstacles and make a comeback in the form of a new game. So how do we get the human chomping back on track for Sauron and his gruesome friends? I don't think a new Rage could be made the way it needed to be without those technical issues that made ports 'just not right' being addressed right away. Whatever it took, we would have to get the programming right so every drop of blood, every kick of a giant clawed foot was just as it would have been in the arcade if Primal Rage II had been released next to other coin-ops years ago. But my dream of a new Primal Rage is regarding a version for home consoles, so I would need a translation of what we saw in the arcade to be so flawless it could stand next to the original. After that? Arguably the greatest thing about Primal Rage versus a lot of other 2-D fighting games was its story. A planet like ours, destroyed and then born again with what's left of the globe forced to worship (be food) for the colossal fighters of the game. An imaginative writer (ME!ME!ME!) put the test on a new version of Rage could go wild with ideas (can you tell I'm drooling?) of where to go with the story and how to make that story part of the game play. Primal Rage could morph into more of a RPG/fighter mix than just a scrapper with blood, imagine your beast not just as a brawler in a fight, imagine him as a conqueror out to wrestle away a piece of a continent, beast by beast. This could mean more creatures could be added to the roster of select able fighters, think about it, you could only choose seven fighters in the original, this isn't even in the same time zone as far as some fighting games with 15 or more fighters to choose from. The original Primal Rage had (short)endings for those who had their beast triumph over all others, I think expanding more of those type of visuals you saw at the end would go hand in hand with the RPG elements, making a successful campaign of a newer, deeper Rage that much more rich a victory.