Rampage

STORY / GAMEPLAY
After a bizarre experiment went wrong, three everyday Joes transformed into giant monsters (a 50 foot tall Gorilla a Lizard and a Werewolf)! You can select the one you like the most and terrorize the city! In a desperate battle for survival you climb skyscrapers and smash the walls with your fists searching for edibles that appear inside the shattered windows. Grabbing inedible items like TV sets and toasters will inflict some damage (your stamina is indicated by the energy bars at the top of the screen). Up to three players can join and play at the same time. Damaged buildings will eventually collapse into rubble but a moment before you must leap off as getting trapped on the collapsing debris masonry will leave you weakened! The nation's military and police forces might also bent on your destruction so try to avoid (or punch) the troops who fire at you from the windows and the gunships that are constantly circling overhead. You can also punch -and be punched- your fellow monsters. Upon losing all of your energy, you revert back to your human form hiding your nakedness as best as you can, shuffling off-screen embarrassment. When a whole block of buildings is demolished, a new city block appears ready for round two. There are 50 cities and the monsters spend three days in each one which equals to 150 different screens! The game is fun to play, either in two or three players mode or even in single player (the CPU controls the other two), offering addictive gameplay and easy-to-master controls.

GRAPHICS / SOUND
The C64 conversion has colorful graphics and the city blocks are nicely designed, pretty close to the original (arcade) version. As in all 8bit conversions, the sprites look funny and are nicely drawn and animated! The action is quite fast on the Commodore in contrast to the CPC and ZX conversions. The game's sound is great, with some really good and noisy sound effects when damaging the buildings or when buildings are collapsing.