Rampage

Genre: Arcade

Publisher: Data East

Total time played: 3 hours

Short review: Take control of a King Kong or Godzilla knock off and destroy every major city in North America.  An awesome premise for a game that becomes boring and monotonous in about 5 minutes.

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Interesting links related to Rampage

• Video Review (Aqualung)
• Complete Playthrough (2 hours and 30 minutes)
• Rampage the Arcade Game
• Soundtrack

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Rampage is a game I rented several times as a child and every time I regretted my decision. I just kept thinking the game would be better than it was.  The box art showed two giant monsters knocking down buildings and technically the game delivered that exact premise.

Throughout each level you destroy a famous US city but unfortunately none of the cities have any distinguishing buildings.  It would have been so easy to put a casino in Las Vegas or the Empire State Building in New York but instead you  spend 128 levels knocking down the same 4 or 5 buildings while trying not to die while being attacked by tanks, army men, storm clouds and helicopters.

At the start of each level you are presented with a screen that says which day (level) you are on, the name of the city you are destroying and either a game tip or newspaper headline.  At first I got excited that I would get a tip after each level but quickly realized out of 128 levels there are maybe only 15 different tips/headlines.  So, not only are the levels monotonous, the in-between level tips are also monotonous.

If you do die, and you will die, all you have to do is hit the B button and you continue on the same screen immediately. Basically you have unlimited lives and there is no consequence for dying.  I understand in the arcade every time you die you have to put another quarter in the machine which gives you a reason to try to stay alive but in the home version there is no penalty so the game because very monotonous.

The hardest part of the game is to not get frustrated before you finish all 128 levels.  Luckily I have a Retron 5 which means instead of leaving my NES paused for days while I prod through the levels I can save the game and start in the same spot whenever I choose.

After suffering through 128 levels I was hoping for a better ending…