Before there were humans, gods walked the earth. They embodied the essence of Hunger, Survival, Life, Death, Insanity, Decay, Good, and Evil. They fought countless battles up through the Mesozoic Wars. Then Balsafas, an archmage from a parallel dimension, anticipated the threat that Earth's gods posed. He was not powerful enough to kill the gods, so instead he banished one to a rocky tomb within the Moon. This disrupted the fragile balance between the gods; pandemonium ensued, and a great explosion threw clouds of volcanic dust into the atmosphere. The dinosaurs died out, and the surviving gods went into suspended animation.Now, the impact of a huge meteor strikes the Earth. Its destructive force wipes out civilization, rearranges the continents, and frees the imprisoned gods. Get ready to rumble...Playable characters:
Blizzard - The God of Good and leader of the Virtuous Beasts, Blizzard is an ape with icy elemental powers who wishes to return Urth to its natural state, even if it involves killing every Destructive Beast in the process. He lives on the Cliff, an icy temple in what was once the Himalayas.
Talon - The God of Survival and a Virtuous Beast, Talon is the chief of a raptor tribe and is highly protective of it. He fights to maintain their safety and intends to make the world a paradise for raptors where humans are kept as cattle and hunted for sport. He lives in a lightly forested tropical grassland called the Strip.
Chaos - The God of Decay and a Destructive Beast, Chaos is a witch doctor who attempted to turn himself into Blizzard. The spell didn't work quite right and he was turned into a disgusting beast and was forced to live in his own filth for eons. He wishes to defeat his enemies and restore his former greatness. He lives in the Ruins, the remains of a long destroyed city.
This Fighting Game is a little unusual in that there's no boss character to smack around. There was a planned upgrade that would've given the game a boss to defeat to beat the game but that went unreleased by Atari Games. There was also a planned sequel that too went unreleased due to being too many Fighting Games at the time.There was also a novel based on the game, Primal Rage: The Avatars. Although not literature of exceptional quality, it is noteworthy in that it expanded the backstories of the Gods, and introduced two characters that would have been in the sequel; Slashfang the sabertooth tiger, and Necronus/Necrosan, the aforementioned boss.
Anti-Hero: Both Blizzard and Armadon are Type IV, while Talon could been seen as either type IV or V and Sauron is type V AT BEST. As noted above, Sauron and Talon are real jackasses for "Virtuous Beasts", wanting to eat everyone and wanting to enslave all humans for cattle, respectively. Sauron in particular has the most disturbing ending screen in the game.
Note that the seperating of the dino gods into the "Virtuous Beats" an "Destructive Dinos" was created purely for the toyline and has no bearing to the video game storyline, which explains both Sauron's and Talon's douchebaggery.
Anti-Villain: Chaos is by far the least unpleasant of the Destructive Beasts (besides the fact he's disgusting and stinks to high heaven, according to the novel). In his ending, he regains his human form and leads the human tribes in rebuilding the world. He's alsoactually handsome.
According to the novel, while both Talon and Sauron do horrible things to their followers (Keeping them as Cattle/Eating them respectively) they are still more or less decent gods that will reward those the serve them faithfully.
Boss Rush: This takes place instead of a Final Boss battle, which was planned, but cut.
Bowdlerise: At the last minute, Chaos' Urine TroubleFinishing Move was taken out of the Super Nintendo port of the game. Performing it in that version will result in Chaos merely performing his victory pose while a red circle with a line through it flashes.
In some versions of the game, one human victim (whose brains have spilled out) is blurred in Sauron's ending screen.
Crapsack World: It's a bad time to be a human in Urth. Blizzard and Armadon are the only Dino Gods who have even the slightest consideration for humans, and Blizzard's attempts to get the Gods to stop being dickbags is ignored in the novels, while Armadon wants to sleep.
Damn You, Muscle Memory: Unlike in most other fighters, the special moves are instead performed by holding down the buttons and then inputting the directions, instead of the other way around. You can still perform them the normal way in some versions of the game, but seeing that all of them require you to hit at least 2 attack buttons at the same time, it's not really worth the trouble. Try doing this with the fighters in M.U.G.E.N, where you now need to input the commands at the same time, Street Fighter-style.
Darker and Edgier - Ironically averted in the novel, which has everyone teaming up to wail on an undead dragon.
Dinosaurs Are Dragons - Gods, more accurately. In the book (and the canceled sequel), though, there is an undead dragon that shows up to annoy everyone.
Everything's Better with Monkeys: Blizzard and Chaos are both giant apes. (Chaos was supposed to be an even more disgusting thing than a regular ape, but yay creator laziness.)
Fantasy World Map: The meteor rearranged the continents to look like a Tyrannosaurus skull.
Gaia's Vengeance: Armadon, who is waken up by the constant movement and destruction caused by the other Gods.
Gorn: As if the gameplay hadn't had enough of this, the energy bars are veins connected to a heart at the end, and the special bar below is a nerve linked to a brain. Winning a match causes the loser's heart to explode and the brain to melt into ashes. There's also the fatalities.
In the intro screens, Talon is being interrupted by Vertigo while feeding on Chaos' carcass, complete with torn-open chest and visible ribs.
Speaking of Talon, his Shredder Fatality became even gorier with updates. In prior versions, the victim did the stock animation collapse in a fountain of blood. Version 2.3 left the victim standing, but lifeless, skinned and with lots of skeleton exposed.
Please Wake Up: On the continue screens after losing, you can see the humans trying to revive their respective god, with one of them pleading to the player to continue.
Prehistoria: It's more like Posthistoria, but they were fighting Prehistoria.
Remember the New Guy: Slashfang got the treatment in the novel. He was always there, but he stayed in the Savannas he called home until the other dino gods discovered and invaded them, causing him to join the war.
Talon occasionally does this to his chosen avatar.
Rule Of Cool: Almost everything in this game would be insanely stupid if it wasn't also insanely awesome.
Rules Of The Road: The game has a "No Cheese" sign (a wedge of Swiss cheese with a red bar through it) which flashes whenever a player tries a "cheesy" fighting tactic, such as throwing another while they're stunned from blocking, or using two stun techniques in the same combo.
Taken for Granite: Vertigo can turn the opponent to stone and shatter them for one of her fatalities.
To Serve Man: The gods eat their worshippers. (Well, can. The only one who canonically does this is Sauron.) And yes, you can do this when you're playing as them.
What Could Have Been: The aforementioned canceled sequel would have introduced a new character, Slashfang the sabertooth tiger, as well as a boss, Necrosan/Necronus, some sort of skeledragonsaur, and used a Bloody Roar-style transformation system (the players were avatars of the gods). As a result, the ending for every character is left open-ended. The tie-in novel tied up these loose ends.
What Measure Is A Human: Even Blizzard, the nicest of the Virtuous Beasts, isn't above chowing down on his followers, and Talon, as mentioned, considers humans to be cattle.
Whip It Good: Vertigo uses her tail as a whip-like weapon.
World of Badass: You'll probably end up dying, especially if you're a human. On the plus side, it may well be the coolest death imaginable!
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