[typing]
Bally Midway's Rampage is one of those arcade classics that still holds its own.
The concept is simple enough to learn in seconds,
the sprites and animations are enjoyably detailed for 1986,
and the gameplay provides compulsive and challenging arcade goodness.
It was a frequent favorite in the arcades,
so it's little wonder that it received home versions
on almost every system imaginable
over the next couple of years.
The one I want to take a look at today is the hard-to-find boxed MS-DOS release,
converted over by Monarch Development
and published by Activision in 1988.
While it's an awesome game to have on any system,
seeing this one play on an old-school IBM or Tandy PC is just something special,
and having this box makes it even better.
Speaking of the box, inside it you get the contents in a clear plastic container.
with specially-made spots for 3½-inch and 5¼-inch floppy disks.
This only came with 360K 5¼-inch disk originally,
but the previous owner wisely made a 3½-inch backup copy.
This is doubly useful if your PC has the 5¼-inch drive set to Drive B,
since the game always looks to Drive A to verify the disk each time you start it up.
Also inside is a nice, crisp registration card,
a command reference guide, which is useful
for figuring out a few of the obscure keys in this version,
and a simple instruction manual that's even shorter than the reference guide.
There's not really much to the game at all,
as you'd expect for an '80s arcade game,
and I wouldn't have it any other way.
Starting up Rampage with the correct disk in the correct drive
will present you with a quick graphics mode selection,
and we'll be playing in EGA mode throughout this video.
You then get a splash screen
with a basic approximation of the arcade cabinet's attract screen,
and a version number,
with this one being the updated release, version 1.1.
From here, you're given the same choices as the arcade game.
You can choose to play as George, Lizzie or Ralph,
requiescat in pace,
and you can also customize the control scheme for each of them.
If you are a self-inflicted social outcast and playing alone like me,
then deactivate the other characters.
Otherwise, they'll just stand around doing nothing.
And, hey! Look!
It's Rampage on the PC! Holy crap!
How cool is that?!
I don't know what it is, but it never ceases to amuse me
when I see a popular arcade game running on a computer in my home.
Even if it's almost thirty years old.
It takes me right back to being a 10-year-old again,
when I'd go to the local bowling alley or roller skating rink
and drool over games like Raiden II, Area 51 and Rampage,
wishing so badly that I could play them at home on my computer.
Well little did I know that each of these games had obscure PC releases
and I could have actually made that fantasy happen, but
what was I supposed to do, look on the Internet?
We only had, like, 15 hours a month for that.
And that was with a 28K modem spread across four people in the family,
and that ain't gonna happen!
Anyway, what was I saying?
Rampage for DOS. Right!
Uh, so, it's Rampage still, except not as good and kind of a letdown.
I mean don't get me wrong, it's not *so* bad for an EGA DOS game from 1988.
The basic gameplay is still here.
You play as one of three monsters
mutated from one of three human beings,
roaming around the United States, causing total mayhem.
You start in the state of Illinois and go on from there.
And the goal on each map is demolish every building
by smashing them with your monstrous fists.
The whole time you've got the military causing you problems,
with sharpshooters, demolitionists, helicopters and tanks
all trying to take you out however they can.
These soldiers can be eaten for more health,
and there items to find inside buildings that'll help as well,
but overall there are way more hazards than there are beneficial items.
If and when you die, you revert back to your naked human form,
and waltz off the screen in shame.
Game over.
And if it was your friend that was playing with you that dies,
eat them too. Waste not, want not.
And all that sounds fine.
It gets the idea across, and it plays...
decently, all things considered.
But, yeah, these days where you can play the emulated
arcade original using any number of methods,
there's just no real reason to play this version anymore.
For one thing, the sound effects are pretty devastating,
and not in the way you'd expect for a game about devastation.
[PC speaker rumbling sound]
It uses the PC speaker,
which is understandable for 1988,
but it's as harsh as expected and doesn't do the gameplay any favors.
And that's unfortunate, because while most of the gameplay is still here,
there are quite a few concessions made to get it working,
even compared to some of the other home versions.
The most obvious concession is the understandable graphical downgrade,
with everything being far less detailed
and smaller in scale.
They did their best to get all the climbing, punching, jumping and smashing
as close to the original as possible,
but it feels much slower and imprecise.
And buildings don't have as many spots on them to smash up.
And they also take more hits to come crashing down,
which makes this an even harder game than the original.
And you also don't get the random citizens
that make easy targets for food and health,
which throws the difficulty even more out of balance.
Mix that in with the sluggish movement of your monster,
and the slowed-down gameplay that makes it difficult to make quick decisions,
and you'll find yourself on the receiving end of death quite a bit.
I mean, the arcade game was no cakewalk either,
but I found myself dying way more way earlier in this DOS version,
and I've tried this on everything from a 386 on up to my Pentium II machines.
This is as good as it gets.
Still...
I kinda like how WEAK this version is(!),
if only for the retroactively comforting memories.
It's a kind of strange nostalgia
where I find myself missing
not having perfect home versions of arcade games
because it made the actual arcade cabinet that much more special.
It makes me miss the time where PC hardware just wasn't quite there yet.
And it was anyone's guess as to whether or not
a developer could actually make it work.
Every arcade version was a gamble
and you never knew if you could believe
the screenshots on the back of the box or not.
Computers were expensive, unruly beasts
with command prompts, arcane config files
and IRQ conflicts.
They were simultaneously super-powerful
and yet horrendously incapable
of providing a true arcade experience at home.
But that didn't stop developers from trying their best,
packing it into an attractive box,
and placing it on store shelves around the world.
And that's why I love going back to play things
like Rampage for MS-DOS.
Even if it's not really worth playing at all.
[guitar music plays]
And if you enjoyed this episode of LGR,
I've got some others to choose from here,
so you can click these,
or stick around and see new videos
showing up every Monday and Friday here on this channel.
And as always, thank you very much for watching.