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1988 · NES
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Rampage is a game about being a very large problem. You play a human who has been turned into a monster and your task is to knock down every building on the screen, one punch at a time. The NES version gives you two monsters: George the gorilla and Lizzie the lizard. Ralph the werewolf didn't make the cut.
You climb the buildings, punch them to rubble, and eat what you find in the windows. Food heals you. Dynamite and electrical gear hurt, a toaster is trouble until the toast pops, and a photographer's flash can blind you off the side of a building. Helicopters, tanks and soldiers shoot back, and if you take too much damage you shrink back into a person and wander off the screen.
Rampage was an arcade game from Bally Midway in 1986, and Data East brought it to the NES in North America in December 1988. The designers were artist Brian Colin and programmer Jeff Nauman, neither of them arcade fans. Colin wanted a game with no wrong way to play: no set objective, no chasing a high score, no dying. The buildings came from a hardware limit: all they could move in the background were rectangles. In the opening news report, the three humans who mutate are Colin, his wife Rae and Nauman.
The arcade original was set over 128 days in North American cities, starting in Peoria, Illinois, with the cycle repeating five times. Colin reckons nobody was ever going to get through all 768 levels. For publicity he sent each town in the game a mock memo saying it was slated for destruction.
It's dumb in the best way. You punch, you climb, you eat a bloke through a window, and a chopper shoots you. The two-player version is the point: one player is already enough chaos, but two makes it a party.
It does repeat. The cities look largely alike, a corner the hardware forced, and Your Sinclair said being a monster was great fun for a while but could become a drag, unless you played it three-handed. On the NES you only get two.
Caillois described play as a spectrum from paidia, loose and spontaneous, to ludus, where the rules tighten. Rampage sits near the paidia end. Colin set out to make a game with no wrong way to play, and it shows: there's just a city to flatten and, if you're lucky, a friend to flatten it with.
A lot of games ask you to be careful. This one says go and be a monster for ten minutes. That's play too.
Read: The magic circle: the world that rules make →
You have been training these without noticing. Here is how to do it on purpose, and where it pays off away from the couch. All the skills games teach →
In the game. Two monsters share one city, one pile of food and one squad of soldiers, and your punches hurt each other too. Squabble over the roast chicken and the chopper gets you both.
Do it on purpose. Split the screen before the level starts: you take the left buildings, your mate takes the right. Swap who gets first go at the food each city.
Off the couch. Moving house with a mate works the same way. Agree who does the kitchen and who does the boxes before anyone picks anything up, and you're still friends by the time the van's empty.
In the game. Every window is a lucky dip: a roast chicken, a stick of dynamite, a toaster that hurts until the toast pops. You punch first and find out after.
Do it on purpose. Before you smash a window, glance at your health. Low? Leave the lucky dips and go for buildings you can knock down from the ground.
Off the couch. Knowing when you can afford a gamble, the cheeky job application, asking someone out at the end of a good night, and when you're too battered to take another hit today.
In the game. Take too much damage and your monster shrinks back into a little human who wanders off the screen. Continue, and you fly back in on a blimp with a full life bar, minus your old score.
Do it on purpose. Next time you shrink, don't reset. Fly back in and see if you can beat your old score from zero before the city's flat.
Off the couch. Getting knocked down to nothing happens: a breakup, a job gone, a bad year. The blimp still comes. Turn up, full health, score reset, and start punching again.
Verdict · 6/10
Daft, loud and short on depth. Good with a mate and a pizza, less good alone.
