Welcome to Choose Your Fighter; it’s a series I will be doing here on my blog that goes into detail the characters of every fighting game I love. I’ll go over their backgrounds, their in-game history, some of my favorite designs, and create a comprehensive guide of the character. Then, once I’ve gone over each character, I’ll break them down every which way, including rankings, reflections, and maybe even some brainstorming on future ideas.

There is no better way to start this off than with the fighting game that started it ALL for me: Primal Rage.

Primal Rage was released in 1994 by Atari Games. It was a fighting game featuring seven choosable characters, all of whom were larger than life monsters that acted as demi-gods over an apocalyptic earth. Essentially, a meteor makes impact with Earth, causing near extinction. The remaining humans are essentially tribes, falling under the allegiance of the God of their… choosing? It’s not clear just how exactly they chose their allegiance, likely just geographical convenience, but in the game, when a fight is won, the loser’s followers goes to the winner. Regardless, these seven behemoths came from the rubble, old gods back to claim their throne. The continents have converged into a dinosaur skull, and the planet we know as Earth has a new title; URTH. Is that change necessary?

Now comes the fighting part. The seven gods all have different visions of what the Urth should look like. Some want to control it completely, and others want to bring back civilization; try to help the humans instead. What this debate results in is a death match with only one dinosaur/monster standing. The seven monsters are as follows: Sauron and Diablo, who are designed around T-Rex and etc. Blizzard and Chaos are giant apes with sick mullets. So sick. There’s Talon, who looks kind of like a raptor with feathers. It’s compared wisely to a “Carakiller”, a bird-raptor future animal from the show The Future is Wild (which I will be getting into on this blog, believe me!) by the Primal Rage fandom page. Armadon looks like a Triceratops and a Ankylosaurus mixed together; he was always my favorite because of his horn and that Triceratops was always my favorite dinosaur. Lastly, you had Vertigo, who can be best described as a snake-like beast. She has the head of a king cobra, but a dinosaur’s body. Wait until you see some of this character design; it’s truly incredible.

The game plays like your standard fighter, by the way. It has a gauge for your “brain” that can cause you to be dazed if it goes low enough. Otherwise, it’s pretty standard, along with special combos and, as was the flavor of the week in the 90s, fatalities. Ironically enough, the studio that owns the rights to this series is none other than Warner Bros, home of Neatherrealm Studios and the Mortal Kombat franchise.

There is a LOT I want to get into about this game; from the comic series, the cancelled sequel, the heat it got with the press, and my personal reflection on it. I will be saving that for some articles that will come in due time. But first and foremost will be the first volume in the Choose Your Fighter series, where I will break down all of these characters and their backgrounds. Below will be a running list of all the articles written. Feel free to keep this bookmarked and follow along. Thanks for reading. Check in soon for the start of this series!

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Volume 1 – Primal Rage

Choose Your Fighter (Character Breakdowns)

• Armadon
• Blizzard
• Chaos
• Diablo
• Sauron
• Talon
• Vertigo

Rankings List

• Primal Rage Fighters: Ranked

Reflections/Articles

• Memories of Primal Rage