Primed to kick ass.
Ultraverse Prime is a 1994 Sega CD Beat 'em Up game developed by Malibu Interactive and published by Sony Imagesoft, being based on the Malibu Comics series of the same name.
Like the name suggests, players assume control of Kevin Green a.k.a Prime, on the trail of his kidnapped girlfriend, as he battles his way across the city against mutants and robot mooks. Gameplay-wise, it's pretty much a Spider-Man and Venom: Maximum Carnage clone with the players controlling Prime instead of Spidey, without much of a plot (for players who never read the comics, that is) other than controlling Prime to beat up enemies.
Notably, this game was packaged alongside Microcosm, another 90s arcade-style action game, as a two-in-one release for the Sega CD.
"It's Prime Time!"
- Absurdly Spacious Sewer: The second stage, an unrealistically tall and huge sewer filled with hordes and hordes of mutated mooks Prime needs to clean up.
- Action Bomb: There's a mook whose head is a literal Cartoon Bomb. They will trigger themselves to explode in order to damage Prime, though Prime can take then down before the countdown or, alternatively, let them explode on their own.
- Airborne Mooks: Enemy mooks on Jet Packs and hovering Attack Drones. Somehow Prime can't fly into the air and swat them out during gameplay, he needs to jump and hit them like every ordinary arcade punch-em ups... despite displaying the ability of flight in two other stages.
- Amazon Brigade: The stage in the forest contains literal Amazonians, warrior women in armor, as enemies.
- Auto-Scrolling Level: Two levels have Prime chasing after a truck and a train, where the level runs automatically as Prime flies forward while dodging missiles and punching drones and aerial mines.
- Battle in the Rain: The level in the city streets where it's raining heavily as Prime fights enemies around him.
- Bigger on the Inside: The container truck Prime chases in one level looks around fifteen to twenty meters at most (the whole truck isn't shown during the chase level but it's seen in the background of another stage after it crashes). But when Prime infiltrates the truck, it's interior is a long, meandering corridor that stretches on and on and on for a while, as well as plenty of space for Prime to maneuver when legions of enemy mooks start teleporting around him for a smackdown.
- Cthulhumanoid: Another minor mutant enemy, Prime can sometimes battle green humanoid mooks with bulbous, tentacled faces. Defeating them somehow reverts these guys into a gigantic green octopus before they disappear from view.
- Cyber Cyclops: One recurring enemy type (the second-most frequently encountered), a robot with a single eye and an Arm Cannon.
- Cyclops: Organism 8, the first boss, a gorilla-like mutant monster with a single red eye.
- Drop-In Nemesis: Most stages starts off with empty areas, seemingly devoid of mooks, until Prime enters; at which point enemies that literally teleports all around Prime to fight. Especially in the container truck infiltration; Prime enters the supposedly-empty container, only for mooks to teleport around him, two to four at a time, and the entire stage have Prime fighting them until the truck reaches it's destination.
- Evilutionary Biologist: The villains, led by one simply called The Doctor, seems to be these, given the number of mutant freaks Prime fights throughout the game. And they even have the experiments pulled off on themselves, when the final stage have Prime entering their labs and seeing multiple scientists ingesting potions turning them into worm-humans.
- Flying Brick: Prime, just like the comics, though his power levels have been somewhat downplayed to maintain balance so the game doesn't become a ridiculously simple Curb-Stomp Battle every round.
- Forgot About His Powers: Sure, Prime being unable to kill mooks with a single punch despite being strong enough to lift cars with his bare hands can be written off as maintaining gameplay balance. But then there's the stage in a volcano base where The Ground Is Lava; if Prime falls in, he gets incinerated and dies, and must take caution fighting mooks without missing a step. Even though two earlier stages shows him with the ability of flight.
- Grievous Harm with a Body: Prime can use mooks as impromptu clubs and clobber them into their colleagues, given his strength.
- Groin Attack: What Prime does when he executes a low-kick hit on human-sized mooks. Getting the foot of a Flying Brick into the gonads can't be a good way to go...
- Human Hammer-Throw: Prime can pull this off by grabbing a disorientated mook (or even bosses) and spin them in circles before flinging them.
- Killer Gorilla:
- Giant gorillas are an occasional enemy in the game, though they appear in larger quantities in the jungle level.
- The second boss - codenamed "Hideous" - is a human mook who ingested chemicals turning him into a gorilla-like monster towering over Prime. He turns back human in a cutscene after his defeat.
- Literally Shattered Lives: The transforming blob mooks who can assume a humanoid shape to attack Prime shatter to bits after a single hit.
- Lizard Folk: Humanoid-alligator hybrids that can walk on two legs and wears clothes appears as enemies, appropriately enough, in the sewer stage.
- Mecha-Mooks: While a good chunk of the game's enemies are humans (or at least flesh-and-blood), some of them are robotic in nature, including literally faceless humanoid androids, the one-eyed robot brutes (whose heads literally pops out on wires when punched in the face!), and those enemies whose craniums are literal bombs.
- Mirror Boss: Wrath, the boss of the second-to-last stage, fights exactly like Prime. Their sprites are the same size, they both move with equal speed, and they even share identical uppercuts, grappling throws and high kicks.
- Monstrous Scenery: In the forest stage, where there are multiple Man Eating Plants in the background (and sometimes the foreground) while Prime is in the center of the screen, fighting mooks left and right. Sometimes the plants will make a snapping motion, as if they're trying to bite at objects onscreen, but they can't reach anyone and are pretty much background filler.
- Mutants: Besides humanoid alligators, the sewer stages also contains deformed, mutated humanoids as enemies. There's also Organism 8, the first boss, a mutant who melts into a green puddle when defeated.
- Put Their Heads Together: One of Prime's special moves, allowing him to knock out two enemies at once if they're close enough to be grabbed.
- Shout-Out: One of the game's mutant enemies is called a C.H.U.D.. They even look similar to the mutants from the movie!
- Storybook Opening: This game appropriately begins with a comic book cover featuring Prime as it's opening (since, in real life it's based on that comic). Then the game goes into the book itself once the player hits start.
- Strong as They Need to Be: Prime's power during gameplay can be somewhat inconsistent. He can lift cars and dumpsters with his bare hands, and yet his punches does the same amount of damage on human (or flesh and blood) enemies like other similar arcade punch-em-ups, even though logically he should be able to send human-sized enemies halfway to Venus with each punch. And NO, it's not because of some Thou Shalt Not Kill moral obligations forcing Prime to pull his punches, he can smash objects on enemies to perform a One-Hit Kill.
- The Worm That Walks: The final stage in the laboratory have Prime encountering various scientists, who reveals themselves to be a mass of worms disguised as humans by turning their skins inside out, becoming a giant worm in a labcoat while smaller worms forms limbs and legs to assume a humanoid shape.
