Primal Rage II Finally Hits Arcades 18 Years Later

The 1990's was a golden age for fighting games- Capcom and SNK were producing multiple amazing fighting games every year and practically every other company had at least tried their hand at creating one. Most of these games have faded into obscurity... whether it be Konami's Martial Champion, Sega's Eternal Champions, EA's Budokan: The Martial Spirit, or Naughty Dog's Way of the Warrior. 
 
Atari was also on the fighting game bandwagon... first with Pit Fighter- which was actually the first fighting game to use digitized actors before Mortal Kombat. Their most memorable fighter was Primal Rage, which replaced human characters with dinosaurs and a claymation art style similar to the old Clash of the Titans movies. Primal Rage had a pretty good run in arcades, receiving an update that added fatalities and a combo system, and was also ported to practically every home console and handheld. 
 
That's why Primal Rage II became a thing of legend- it was announced in several gaming magazines but never saw a release. The game had a brief location test in California... but before high speed internet and smartphone cameras, there were only verbal accounts of what the game actually was. That was until last year some videos hit Youtube of one of the only two known existing prototype cabinets for the game. Primal Rage II obviously is an unfinished game, but at the same time still a very playable protoype... at least to the two people that actually owned the game.
 
That's all changed this week, as the Galloping Ghost Arcade in Brookfield, Illinois has secured one of those cabinets and is available for anyone to play. The area actually has quite a rich fighting game history, with Chicago being the home of Mortal Kombat developer Netherrealm Studios, as well as Iron Galaxy- the developers on Killer Instinct Season 2. So if you're a hardcore fighting game fan that wants to be one of the few to ever play this game, start planning that summer roadtrip now.