Atari’s Cancelled Primal Rage II Is Now Playable Through MAME

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Atari's Cancelled Primal Rage II Is Now Playable Through MAME

http://wwg.com/2017/02/15/atari-s-cancelled-primal-rage-ii-is-now-playable-through-mame/

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Primal Rage II remains one of the game industry's biggest mysteries. It was a game that was built to completion, and for some reason threw giant humans into the mix with the fighting dinosaurs from the original, but then it was cancelled at the last moment, with Midway probably figuring that the game would be a much bigger disaster than it originally anticipated. (Well, that and it was already ruling the arcades as it was with its Mortal Kombat games.)

For years, the game lived in legend, and, at one point, even ended up at Galloping Ghost Arcade in Illinois in playable form. But now, if you've got access to a MAME emulator (either on your PC or through some modded game system), you can give it a try for yourself.

With the help of a dedicated build of MAME called MAME4RAGE 2, the build became highly playable, showing off a number of stop-motion models put into play, improving the graphics of the first game significantly. These are represented by "avatars", beings that can still fight one another for the sake of ruling the planet.

You can check out footage from the MAME emulated version of the game below, and learn more about the ROM from the official MAME4RAGE2 Reddit thread if you want to give it a try.

It's definitely a bizarre game – especially if you pick out two humanoid-based characters instead of the usual dinosaur breed – but there's no doubt it remains a curious part of gaming history. Now, if we could just get that Beavis & Butthead video game on MAME…


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SoadscC_ySM
 
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To be honest, it's no secret why this game didn't make it past the proto stage. Whoever thought it was a good idea to have man fighting man in an over-crowded area of the same should be kicked in the balls. The gameplay looks... pretty weak.

Maybe if it ever makes it over to regular MAME I'll bother updating my MAME in my horizontal cab.
 
Heh, I honestly don't care for these games myself, I always thought they looked bad, same goes with the MK series, KI, pitfighter, etc. Preferred the cartoony stuff from Capcom a lot more.

But it's cool unreleased stuff is getting out there at any rate. Always a fan of that. There's an entire website dedicated to unreleased programs for the C64 for instance.
 
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