Primal Rage - Primal Rage II

By 1995, Atari had begun production of Primal Rage's sequel, simply titled Primal Rage II. The game, however, was never released even though a test arcade cabinet briefly appeared playable at the Golf Land arcade in Sunnyvale, California. A dragon-like boss, which was rumored by video game magazine Gamepro to be implemented in a future release of the original Primal Rage, was the main antagonist. Though the game never came to be, the story was later adapted into a novel called Primal Rage: The Avatars.

The game was to feature new characters that took on the form of humans and were called the Avatars. Another prehistoric fighter which took the form of a Smilodon named Slash Fang (originally called Saber Tooth; he has been around as long as the other gods have, but he never fought for any land) was also planned to appear in the game as well. A boss monster known as Necrosan (what appears to be a living dragon skeleton) which was originally planned for the original game was promised to appear. The original characters were going to remain as well.

The plot centered around in the years after the gods fought again. It turns out the meteor that crashed on Urth was actually an egg and hatches a being known as Necrosan. The gods fight it but their efforts become useless. Necrosan then imprisons them in a state of semi-suspended animation, forms minions of his own and starts to wreak havoc on Urth. The gods then choose human Avatars for themselves that take on a human form. The Avatars fight the minions of Necrosan, release the gods from their prison and battle Necrosan. The warriors would be Xiao Ming, avatar of Slashfang; Malyssa, avatar of Vertigo; Arik, avatar of Sauron; Keena, avatar of Talon; Shank, avatar of Chaos; Sinjin, avatar of Diablo; Kaze, avatar of Blizzard; and Tor, avatar of Armadon.

Much anticipation centered around the upcoming game. Unfortunately, it wasn't the same for the production. The game didn't get very far in production and Atari felt that the game wouldn't generate enough sales. They later announced the cancellation though not many people knew about it. After that, Primal Rage's popularity died down. A supposedly finished machine of this was shown at the California Extreme 2001 show. The machine had the original board and most of the original art.

In recent years, posthumously screen shots have been released on the Internet of what was finished for the game and what was made of the game has also been passed around. Also, the characters of Slash Fang and Necrosan were released with the other god characters in the short-lived Primal Rage action figure series.