3/5 ★ – RawMetal's review of Bloody Roar: Primal Fury.

System: Nintendo GameCube Started: 2002 Ended: 2014 Flashback Review I mentioned in my Super Smash Bros. Melee review that both Smash Bros. Melee and Bloody Roar: Primal Fury were the two games I played constantly at a local electronic shop inside a shopping mall. Eventually, I got a Nintendo GameCube for Christmas, including the two games in my collection. I was a fan of fighting games at the time and Primal Fury was my first introduction to the Bloody Roar series. Other than Smash Bros. Melee, I played this game a lot with my brother and cousins' way before I met my school friends who were into fighting games. It was definitely a blast playing it, despite the mixed reviews from the veteran fanbase who grew up playing the first three games. Bloody Roar is a unique fighting game that lets every playable fighter transform into a beast fighter. It plays like any 3D fighting game like Virtua Fighter and the Dead or Alive games; with the same old ring-outs, stage transitions, and special move combos, but its main selling point is transforming into an animal. The GameCube version does look better with its 3D graphics and Primal Fury has exclusive anime cutscenes, while the Xbox version, which was released under a different title Bloody Roar: Extreme, has 3D character models. Comparing the two versions. I think the anime cutscene is better. Since this was my first and only Bloody Roar game, I haven’t played the other entries in the series. Veteran fans might be pleased or disappointed that Primal Fury is supposed to be a soft reboot of the franchise and even a slight expansion of Bloody Roar 3 with extra maps, modes, and new characters. In Primal Fury, the characters were redesigned, and the user interface and soundtrack look different. One notable change was that they changed the blood, and Primal Fury replaced it with red liquid sparks. I guess the GameCube version was aimed at a younger audience like me at the time, but Bloody Roar 3 on the PlayStation 2 was rated T, and they actually showed blood. This game does suffer from a bit of a budget problem. The lip-sync for the English dubbing is way off whenever a character wins or loses a match. Even when a full English sentence is finished, the character’s mouth is still moving. And to make things worse with each character ending you finished in Arcade Mode, there was no voice sound for every character, so you had to read subtitles with no voice actors, and it felt like this game was unfinished. Bloody Roar: Primal Fury was a fun game that I enjoyed as a child and 100 precenting it in 2014 as a young adult was a good accomplishment. There is an Xbox version shortly after the GameCube version was released, but it is the same game but with a different title: Bloody Roar: Extreme. At least the GameCube version has anime cutscenes, which kind of makes it worth playing if you are into 2D animation. Most fans would prefer the original Bloody Roar 3 for its rougher look, but they love anime, they would prefer the Primal Fury version. I would love for Bloody Roar to make its return after 20+ years of hiatus. However, the franchise used to belong to Hudson Soft until they were defunct in 2012, and now it belongs to Konami. Unfortunately, the series has been tucked away in their vault for so long that it has faded into obscurity. But luckily, the IP has been brought up in the fighting game community in short bursts. So, there may be chances for it to make a comeback. Either way, it would be the best and possibly the worst thing that could happen. The best thing is that Bloody Roar returns for new generations of fighting game fanatics to get into. But the bad is that since this game is all about humans that can transform into wild furry animals, it might always come down to a certain fanbase with an extreme passion for animals for it to take the series over as the new audience. That’s up to Konami to decide on that one.