Sunday, August 13, 2006

Primal Rage retrospective - part 1

In 1994, a video game expo made its way to the then-small but still growing town of San Antonio, Texas, where, after much hype and promotion, the arcade classic Primal Rage made its debute, and a hyperactive little maniac named Matt Frank "raged" on the arcade machine for a good several hours before his brain suddenly short-circuted from overwhelming "badassitude" (a phenomenon dubbed by the various great minds of the early 21st Century scientific community).

That said, Primal Rage was a wonderful bit of "space filler" in the hectic and merchandise-flooded days of my grade-school youth, alongside Gargoyles, Street Sharks, Beast Wars and randomly reoccurring obessions with Power Rangers >_>
Primal Rage was an unconventional gaming experience (at least in America) because it made its mark by adding a whole new level of creativity to the traditional fighting game (which always invoved random martial artists and, for some reason, Panda bears).

In one of my recent "subsequent childhoods" (I do believe that I'm somewhere near my 14th or 15th), I rediscovered just how damn COOL this game's concept was...so, I decided to start a series of glamor-shots of each Primal Rage character, and even taking some liberties with each.

DIABLO -


Diablo is a fan-favorite amoungst many gamers (including his creator, Cameron Petty), being as how his character was one of pure and absolute evil. Apparently, Diablo is supposed to be a kind of Allosaur, but it's somewhat obvious in the game that he and Sauron share the same character model. So, I took some liberties here and made him a horrific fusion of allosaur, carnotaur and ceratosaur.

BLIZZARD -


The great Yeti God and main protagonist of the game, despite being so brutal, Blizzard is said to be a noble spirit who seeks to protect his home and followers. I didn't really alter Blizzard much here, sans making him more humanoid.

I'll hopefully be able to continue this series up to the chracters introduced for the ill-fated "Primal Rage 2."
UP NEXT: Vertigo and Armadon!

Primal Rage and all characters related are copyright Atari, 1994