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Primal Rage is another of those games which perpetuates the ridiculous myth that dinosaurs were a fire-breathing race of violent mutants with special powers who had nothing better to do than smite each other in concoluted battles over scraps of territory, with the eventual goal of ruling the world alone. Of course, this is absolute rubbish. What do these programmers take us for? I mean, we've all seen The Flintstones.

We all know that dinosaurs were in fact a peace-loving species bred and domesticated by pre-Christian humans. Different dinos were available for opening cans, hoovering the carpet and cleaning the lint out of your belly button. Some of them were even kept as pets, and these were the lizards which eventually evolved into modern cats and dogs. Just as the others evolved into can openers, vacuum cleaners and Victor Kaim, inventor of the Remington Fuzz-Away. Gah, games designers must think we'd believe anything!

You might think Mortal Kombat, with its gory Death Moves, or Killer Instinct, with its occasionally pervy finishing moves, have the edge when it comes to outraging repressed pro-censorship Sun-reading types. But Primal Rage, even though it features rather unconvincing Ray Harryhausen-type Claymation dinosaurs, probably pips them both to the post.

That's because it features a number of moves which glorify - tee hee - bodily functions. The most conspicuous of these characters has to be the ape-like Chaos, with his Flying Butt-Slam, Power Puke and hideous Fart of Fury flatulence manoeuvre.

Although the groos-out biscuit is definitely taken by the finishing move, which sees a character urinating upon his unfortunate opponent. Tip: Don't let your mum know about this or she won't like you buy it!

Humans, eh? Give 'em half a chance and they'll all start acting like extras from One Million Years BC. If acting is the sort of word you'd use when describing One Million Years BC. But anyway, the point is that each of the dinos featured in Primal Rage has their own clan of fur-bikini-ed (or pant-ed if they're blokes) worshippers.

If you're good and clever and manage to stun your opponent, one or more of their followers may run out into your path. True beat-'em-up experts will now know the move which allows them to bend down and eat the little blighters, which in turn boosts your energy. What saps those pesky homo sapiens are.

Ask any paleantologist, and he (or she, we're not sexist here are we birds?) will tell you that the translation of the Latin word dinosaur means "a big lizardy thing with a whacking great tail and a puny little brain like one of them remedial kids at school". And tiny brains do indeed feature in Primal Rage.

If your feeble prehistoric cranium takes too much of a battering, your dinosaur is stunned senseless. Just in case you're a bit remedial yourself, the programmers of Primal Rage have made it pretty easy to tell when this is about to happen by including a Brain Energy bar underneath the usual body energy bar. So you've got no excuse.

If you fancy your chances against the last series of ghost bosses you'd better sharpen up your chomping jaws, because there's a special bonus round just before the final conflict. Your job here is to eat lots and lots of human beings in return for extra points and (most importantly) energy to help you in your quest for dino domination.

Fat people will obviously have an unfair psychological advantage here.

Incidentally, you may come across a hidden bonus game where both Armadon characters can take turns bowling out a few human pins.

Conversion of the popular dino-bashing coin-op.

Destroy and humiliate a number of resurrected quasi-prehistoric creatures.

Primal Rage didn't exactly do a lot for me in the arcades, mostly because it was situated alongside Virtua Fighter 2 and Tekken which were, admittedly, unfair technological composition. But as a Megadrive game, Primal Rage works brilliantly.

Fair enough, if you've got Mortal Kombat and Street Fighter and you're getting sick of the whole one-on-one scene you might not be too enthusiastic about it, but fans of the kaboodle will doubtless be more than enamoured with its special move-tastic combo-mungous lovelytude. Basically, if there's room in your collection for another beat-'em-up, this is probably the one to fill it.

It's not the biggest game of the year, but Primal Rage is a more-than-fair conversion of the popular coin-op. I personally find it more playable than the coin-op, which was a little too frantic to appreciate. The four-button arrangement works nicely, and both controls and special moves combine to produce a beat-'em-up that genuinely offers something different.

The graphics are highly impressive, considering their origin, and Probe have built-in longevity with hidden gameplay and tournament options. I'd be happy for this to join my collection.

Graphics 90%
P. As kitschy and far out as a plastic T-Rex.
N. Who is Ray Harryhausen anyway?

Animation 91%
P. Brilliantly unconvincingly animated dinos with real personality.

Music 91%
P. Definitely adds to the experience. A decent soundtrack.
N. Somewhat lost in the heat of the battle.

Effects 90%
P. Nice FX to accompany the specials. Someone farted for the sake of authenticity. Dedication!

Playability 90%
P. As much beating up as any other beat-'em-up.
N. Perhaps not sufficiently different for non-thrashing addicts.

Lastability 89%
P. Not easy, that's for sure, and there's loads of opponents to face. Plus the final round is more than taxing.

Overall 90%
A great beat-'em-up which may have been beaten to its niche. Fans of the coin-op and dino-nerds in general will lap it up.