New Footage Of An Old Primal Rage II Prototype Board

arcadehero December 27, 2012 4
New Footage Of An Old Primal Rage II Prototype Board

There has been plenty to talk about when it comes to prototypes this year and so its fitting that we end the year with a look at a prototype game in action, Atari Games’ Primal Rage II. What footage has existed of this game has not been much aside from seeing the character selection screens but KLOV Forum user Jehuie is friends with an ex-Atari Games hardware designer that happens to have the last version of Primal Rage II in his possession, which was ver. 0.36A. He dug it out of storage and recorded the footage we see below for the world to see more of the game, which until now has been a few screenshots and a ROM on MAME that only shows the intro and maybe the character selection screens. Funny enough he has the game running in the cabinet of another prototype game, the puzzle game Freeze which was also canned but also not the best cabinet for Primal Rage II since that requires six buttons and the Freeze cab only appears to have two. Either way, at the very least we can see the game in action now although because of the lack of buttons he cannot turn into one of the dinosaurs to show those off. We can now see what inspirations the game was pulling from (seems like it would have been Killer Instinct meets Primal Rage) although who knows how the game might have ended up had it made it through the full development cycle.

[KLOV Forum Primal Rage II Thread]

4 Comments »

  1. batbot555 December 29, 2012 at 7:58 pm - Reply

    Too bad this game was never completed. I’m assuming if this game was completed and released many people would hate it.

  2. editor December 31, 2012 at 6:14 am - Reply

    Another example of the crippled R&D business within Atari nearing the end. A litany of wasted opportunities. Though this 1995 proto tested poorly, there were a number of R&D projects during that time that were dumped because he management were trying to wind down amusement investment – even though the sector offered some serious profits!

    • Arcades4ever January 11, 2013 at 5:39 pm - Reply

      I guess at the end of the day it comes down to confidence in business and due to consoles being more dominant which is only half true but people will still play arcade games if they find them and because most people focus on home consoles, mobiles, handhelds and tablet who are in the gaming business there is a lot of potential and areas not discovered due to all the attention of the above I mentioned gets. It not what’s already been done it’s about what’s not been tried or discovered yet 🙂

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