Article:
In RETROspect #2: Primal Rage

 The Beat 'em up had it's absolute tour de force during the 1990s, with absolutely every conceivable conception smacking several shades of pixel out of each other. Some made it to franchise, becoming staples of the genre and in many ways icons of the early console age. Many others however, were cast into the purgatory of forgotten titles, brought out again only to provide amusement when combined with numerous mind altering-substances

(Shaq-Fu anyone?).

Amongst the numerous incarnations of robots, ninjas, demons, sentient clay and vanity projects, there was a game released in 1994 that had I not been six at the time, would have caused me to do myself a mischief.

The game is set on a post apocalyptic husk of a world, where any semblance of civilisation and technology has been abolished by a fallen meteorite and humans have reverted to nothing more than tribal cave dwellers. The radioactive cadaver of the world, freshly renamed "Urth", soon devolves into primordial rain-forests and frozen wastelands.

Before this time however, in fact way before the first age of humans, a number of gods had walked the earth. Each one representing a different facet of sentient existence: Hunger, Survival, Life, Death, Insanity, Decay, Good, and Evil.

A being from another universe had observed these gods and deemed them a threat to the Earth, so using a powerful magic, he banished the mightiest of these to a tomb within the moon, causing an imbalance and throwing the rest of the gods into suspended animation. Many years later, the meteorite that caused the fall of civilisation and the realignment of the continents awoke these gods, who needless to say were a little bit kranky after their naps.

This is where it is the player's responsibility to step in and take control of one of these gods as they enter into a final battle to claim ultimate superiority over the planet. And by the way... THEY'RE FREAKING DINOSAURS.