Code Like It's 198x

Rampage

Three monsters, one city, no objective but destruction

Classic GamesSource-checked

Bally Midway's 1986 coin-op let up to three players be George the gorilla, Lizzie the lizard and Ralph the wolf, climbing and punching buildings until they fell, eating the people inside and dodging the army. Activision converted it to the home computers in 1987, Data East, Sega and Atari brought it to consoles and the Lynx, and Midway revived it in 1997 as Rampage World Tour.

Rampage put its players in the monsters’ shoes. Up to three of them stood at the cabinet as George, a gorilla who looked a lot like King Kong, Lizzie, a lizard in the Godzilla mould, and Ralph, a 30-foot wolf man, and spent each round climbing skyscrapers, punching holes in them until they collapsed and eating the people in the windows. Asked whether the game had any objectives, CRASH answered its own question: “No, it’s just sheer physical, meaningless violence.”

Fast facts

  • Made by: Bally Midway, 1986. Brian Colin conceived and designed it and Jeff Nauman programmed it.
  • Players: up to three at once in the arcade.
  • Monsters: George, Lizzie and Ralph, people who had been turned into monsters.
  • Home versions: Activision for the Spectrum, Commodore 64, Amstrad CPC, Amiga and others (1987–89); Data East for the NES (1988); Sega for the Master System; Atari for the Lynx.
  • Revival: Rampage World Tour, a Midway coin-op of 1997, and a Hollywood film in 2018.

Smash, eat, jump

Each screen is a street of tall buildings, and the monsters are dropped in at the bottom. CRASH described the routine: climb the sides, smash out windows or knock holes in the walls, and “once enough structural damage has been inflicted, it collapses in a cloud of dust”. Flatten every building and the city is cleared. A monster still clinging to a building when it falls is hurt, so, as Nintendo Power advised, “jump off of a collapsing building or you’ll be buried in the rubble”.

The army fights back with soldiers, tanks and helicopters, and reviews of the home versions list more: police cars, paratroopers, dynamite throwers and, on the NES, a photographer’s flash and lightning from a passing cloud. Each monster has a damage meter. Food tops it up, and the windows hold plenty of it: Nintendo Power listed fish bowls and passers-by, and CRASH noted the little people “which give you extra energy if you eat them!” Not everything in a window is safe to eat; on the Lynx, televisions and light bulbs gave a shock. When a monster’s meter runs out it turns back into a small human and walks away, and the game ends when all three have “returned to their human alter-egos”.

With three players the monsters could also turn on each other. Nick, one of CRASH’s reviewers, found that “the monsters are all as violent as each other, which can cause a problem when one turns against you!” Edge, looking back in 1998, thought the game was at its best that way, “with the Godzilla-like Lizzie, King Kong copy George and ‘wolfman’ Ralph battling on rooftops”, and called it “the epitome of the eighties coin-op”: “The irrefutable charm of Midway’s Rampage was always its simplicity.”

Coming home

Activision brought the game to home computers, and in November 1987 Rampage was on the cover of CRASH, with a competition whose first prize was “a complete, and very hairy, gorilla suit”. The arcade game had 128 levels, and CRASH’s preview wondered whether the Spectrum programmers could squeeze them all in. The Spectrum version kept the three players, one on the keys, one on the cursor keys and one on a Kempston joystick. It was written by Bob Pape, who had studied the coin-op by playing it in a Swansea arcade with a cassette recorder in his backpack. CRASH gave it 69% in February 1988, calling it “a competent conversion that should appeal to fans of the original”, though one reviewer found it “rather dull” because the army could not be wiped out and the game became “a race to find good food”.

Other versions varied. ACE preferred the brighter Amstrad graphics to the Commodore 64’s, which it found “muddy”. Amiga Computing gave the Amiga version 61% in 1989. On the NES, Data East’s version dropped Ralph and kept two players, George and Lizzie. Sega’s Master System cartridge, at £24.95, also allowed two; The Games Machine gave it 58% in 1989, finding the cartoon characters “undoubtedly the best element”. Atari’s Lynx version, START reported in 1991, let up to four players link their machines and “take on the city as a group”.

Later

Midway returned to the idea in 1997 with a new coin-op, Rampage World Tour, which was converted to home consoles. Reviewing the Nintendo 64 version, Edge began: “It’s almost as if the last ten years never happened.” It found the game “lightweight fun”, a little better with three players. A Hollywood film, Rampage, starring Dwayne Johnson, followed in 2018, and RePlay magazine marked it with an interview in which Colin described his partnership with Nauman as a “Lennon-McCartney thing”. The two were still working together at their own company, Game Refuge.

Sources

  • Computer and Video Games issue 61, November 1986, pp. 122–123: arcade coverage of Rampage; three- and four-player games such as Quartet, Rampage and Gauntlet.
  • CRASH issue 46, November 1987: cover; p. 154, the gorilla-suit competition (the coin-op “from Bally/Midway”); p. 158, preview (George, Lizzie and Ralph as people turned into monsters; soldiers to “swash or eat”; 128 levels; three players on the Spectrum; “sheer physical, meaningless violence”).
  • CRASH issue 49, February 1988, p. 13: Spectrum review, “Authors: Bob Pape” (the routine, damage meters, food, return to human form; reviewers’ comments; 69%).
  • ACE issue 5, February 1988, p. 44: Amstrad and Commodore 64 versions compared.
  • Nintendo Power issue 4, January/February 1989, p. 84: NES version from Data East (George and Lizzie, two players, the hazards, food, collapsing buildings).
  • The Games Machine issue 17, April 1989, p. 35: Master System version (Sega, £24.95, one or two players, dynamite lobbers and draining pools of water, 58%).
  • Amiga Computing volume 2 issue 3, August 1989, pp. 15 and 29: Amiga version reviewed, 61%.
  • START volume 5 issue 6, February 1991, p. 62: Lynx version (televisions and light bulbs; up to four players over ComLynx; $34.95).
  • Edge issue 59, June 1998, p. 81 (Rampage World Tour on the N64, a conversion of the 1997 coin-op) and p. 84 (retrospective of the original).
  • Bob Pape, It’s Behind You: The Making of a Computer Game (2013): writing the Spectrum version (see Bob Pape).
  • Casey Minter, “Game Designer Goes on a Star-Studded Rampage!”, RePlay, 6 April 2018 (web, secondary): Brian Colin conceived and designed Rampage, Jeff Nauman programmed it; the film; Game Refuge. https://www.replaymag.com/?p=8697
  • Wikipedia, “Rampage (video game)” (web, secondary): Colin and Nauman as lead designers; monsters reverting to human form; the 2018 film. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rampage_(video_game)
  • Sega Retro, “Rampage” (web, secondary): the Master System version and the list of other versions. https://segaretro.org/Rampage

See also

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