Rampage World Tour

Did You Know?

• The home ports were published in Europe by GT Interactive.
• Rampage World Tour was exhibited at the JAMMA arcade show in Japan but garnered little interest.
• The game was never released in Japan.

Plot

The corrupt Scumlabs corporation causes an accident that unleashes three giant monsters: George, Lizzie, and Ralph. They destroy Scumlabs bases worldwide and kill employees. CEO Eustace DeMonic transforms into a monster to fight them but is defeated on a lunar base. Surviving employee Dr. Elizabeth Veronica attempts to disintegrate the monsters with a ray gun, but it shrinks them; they end up inside her ship.

Gameplay

In Rampage World Tour, each stage requires players to level every building in a city while dodging or taking out military units. If a city takes too long to destroy, jets bomb the remaining structures and end the level with a lower score. The first stage is set in Peoria, where a tourism billboard cycles through regions like the Northeast and Southwest; smashing it while a region is displayed sends the player there. Players can choose to eat or skip World Tour power-ups to decide which country they visit. After grabbing one, the next few levels take place overseas until a Scumlabs plant is destroyed. Purple radioactive waste briefly turns the player into a super monster called V.E.R.N. The game only ends when every Scumlabs city is destroyed, which can cause erratic travel near the end. The arcade version supports up to three players at once. The PlayStation and Saturn versions allow only two players, though three-player support was reportedly programmed and removed at the last minute; the Nintendo 64 version has full three-player play.

Reception

Next Generation reviewed the arcade version, deriding the continued use of sprites instead of polygons, and concluded that the game would make gamers yearn for the original more than ever. Critics agreed the console ports were nearly arcade-perfect, though some criticized the PlayStation and Saturn versions for supporting only two players instead of three. Opinions on the game itself were divided. Many hailed it as a fun revival of an arcade classic; Shawn Smith wrote in Electronic Gaming Monthly that it was enhanced yet retained the original's feel. Jeff Gerstmann gave the PlayStation version a score of 5.7 out of 10 but highly recommended it for its new gameplay tricks and larger levels, saying the only improvement would be three-player support. However, the majority criticized the 2D sidescrolling format as antiquated, and some remarked that the simplicity and repetitiveness of the gameplay, enjoyable in arcades, was not suited to home consoles. Adam Douglas of IGN explained that the series was great for short bursts but not for hours. Sega Saturn Magazine held that the coin-op was a laugh for about ten minutes but grew tiresome due to lack of variety and shallow gameplay, and that the same criticisms applied to World Tour. Smith later showed loss of enthusiasm in his review of the Nintendo 64 version, stating the game is fun at first but quickly grows old. His co-reviewer John Ricciardi disagreed, saying that though it lacks variety it can be engrossing for hours.