Rampage (NES) Playthrough - NintendoComplete
281A playthrough of Data East's 1988 action game for the NES, Rampage.
Two years after making a huge splash on arcade floors, Bally Midway's hit game Rampage stomped its way into homes across America by way of this US-exclusive NES title by Data East.
Rampage gives you (and a friend if you make use of the 2P simultaneous co-op feature) direct control of a giant monster and sets you loose to destroy anything and everything in your path. Playing as either George (King Kong in all but name) or Lizzie (a girl Godzilla), the goal is to destroy the United States, one city at a time.
Each of the 128 single-screen stages (referred to as "days") ends once you've leveled the area. You do this by scaling each building, punching wildly as you go. Once a third of the building has been smashed, the entire structure will collapse in on itself.
Of course, the people in these cities won't allow you to do as you please unimpeded. Tanks and helicopters will pelt you ordinance while soldiers fire at you from open windows, all making for quite a chaotic scene. It's nothing that you can't handle as a 50s-era B-movie apex predator, though.
You can stomp anything that gets underfoot, punch aerial attackers out of the sky, and eat anyone or anything in the part of a building that you're currently destroying. Noshing on people and beneficial items (food, booze, money) will restore health and/or increase your score, but you'll have to exercise some caution as some of the tasty treasures you'll find (toilets, cacti, candles, etc.) will stun or hurt you.
You don't really have to worry too much about saving your own skin, though, since you'll immediately respawn so long as you hit the B button before your character escapes from the screen. You're given unlimited lives, so there isn't much challenge to be found in Rampage. Beating the game is more a test of your endurance - all 128 stages must be cleared in a single sitting - than it is a test of your dexterity.
(Remember SNK's Guerilla War? https://youtu.be/vMznsm2xPzU It did things much the same way.)
While that might seem like a lot to ask, for as simple and repetitive as the game is, I rarely find myself bored by it. When I was in elementary school, my friend Danny got it as a Christmas present, and whenever we'd go to his house after school to play, the hours would fly by. Our games usually only ended when his mom would come in to announce that it was dinnertime. Maybe it's because of the fond memories of those times, but even now, an afternoon can disappear in a blink when I sit down for a game of Rampage.
Sure, the graphics are ugly, the music sounds like it was pulled out of Paperboy, it's missing a character from the arcade game, and the gameplay makes a teaspoon look deep, but with Rampage, I never cared much about any of that. I enjoy it the same now as I did when I was eight years old.
Not bad for a so-so 8-bit adaptation of a three-and-a-half decade old arcade game.
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No cheats were used during the recording of this video.
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