Rampage is one of my favorite arcade games. I first played it on the NES and rented it several times over the years. I initially thought the game was a mashup of King Kong and Godzilla. I didn’t know the game’s story, and that is what I assumed it was.
Years later, I discovered I wasn’t playing the whole game. The NES port has removed Ralph, the werewolf monster. It wasn’t until I played the Master System port that I got to play something close to the arcade game. I still love the NES port, but the Master System version is better.
I was a Godzilla fan as a kid, and these games were the best giant monster games for the time. The Godzilla games released in North America during the 1980s and 1990s weren’t all that great. Rampage filled that void for me.
I’m going to look at the games and then some of the possible inspirations for them. There were a lot of giant monster movies released in the last 90-plus years. While there are the obvious ones like Godzilla and King Kong, I’m going to look at a few of them that I think fit better.
I’ll also look at the 2018 live-action film. I’ve never watched it, so I’m going to be hopeful about it. As long as I see three giant monsters destroying a city, I’ll be happy.
Rampage (1986)
This is the game that I remember the most. I played the NES port of the game a lot when I was a kid. It wasn’t one of the games I or my friends owned, but it was always at the rental store in my hometown.
This was one of the mom-and-pop rental places. We didn’t get a Blockbuster until the late 1990s or early 2000s. A few rental stores tried to make it work where I lived, and they either left or went out of business. I’m guessing they all failed because of their ridiculous membership policies.
I’m getting off track a bit. This game was the closest you could get to playing a Godzilla or King Kong game. There were two Godzilla games on the NES, and at least one King Kong game on the Famicom. These weren’t anywhere near the experience you got from playing Rampage.
I played the game at an after-school thing. It was like a babysitter for the neighborhood kids who attended the elementary school near my house. I can’t remember any other kids who went there, and I think I only went to it until the second grade. Anyway, I got to play a few NES games while I was there, and one of them was Rampage.
The first Rampage game is one of my favorite NES games. I have many memories of playing it, and it is something I could pick up and enjoy. It is a simple game that I find oddly relaxing.
Rampage World Tour
This game was released in 1997 by Midway. It is a reboot of the series and has gameplay similar to the NES and Arcade games. Rampage: World Tour was also released in the arcades.
This game was ported to the PS1, N64, Sega Saturn, and Game Boy. The PS1 port was better received than the other version. Most of the complaints were about a lack of content in the game and sticking too close to the original.
I don’t have any memories of this game. It was one of the games that slipped past me when I was growing up. When I reviewed it, I thought it was a fun game. It plays like the original, which isn’t a bad thing.
There wasn’t anything new added to the game. This was a little disappointing, but not entirely unexpected. The gameplay for these games isn’t going to change much, and it didn’t need to. I was more disappointed with how they didn’t add anything to the home console ports.
Rampage 2: Universal Tour
Universal Tour was released in 1999 on the PS1, N64, and Game Boy Color. It tried to make minor improvements to the series formula, but didn’t do much to improve it. I had fun with the game when I went back to review it, but I like the series, so I’m a little biased.
This game introduced more monsters, which is a good thing. One of them would make a cameo in the movie, or at least I think it did. It also added special attacks, which were nice.
Unfortunately, it was basically the same formula. The graphics and gameplay were mostly the same as World Tour. There isn’t too much else to say. It has some cool ideas, but it wasn’t anything more than a solid arcade port that was released at a time when players expected more from a game than what was offered in Rampage 2: Universal Tour.
Rampage Through Time
This was more of the same. Rampage Through Time feels like one of the horror movie franchises that has run out of ideas and decides it needs to jump the shark. The core gameplay is the same as the previous entries in the series.
Midway added two more monsters to the game, which brought the total to eight. This didn’t make things better, as you’re still trying to destroy a city to advance to the next level. What this game did do was make Scumlabs a little more evil as they want to take over the world, according to the manual.
On each stage, you’re given two AI companions. This sounds cool, but then you start playing and realize that they’re really dumb. Most of the time, they’re fighting the player, or are making it hard to advance to the next stage as they bumble around the screen. If you can’t tell, I hate them.
Rampage Through Time received the lowest scores of the series. By this time, arcade gameplay felt tired, especially for the Rampage games. Unlike their Gauntlet series, Midway didn’t do much to modernize this franchise. Rampage stayed the same, and that was a detriment to the games.
Rampage: Total Destruction
I like this game much more than the three PS1 games. Rampage: Total Destruction was released in 2006 on the GameCube and PS2 and released on the Wii in 2007. It was another reboot of the series, and the last release for the home console.
The game has a huge roster of monsters, most of which have to be unlocked. There are also a ton of attacks you can unlock while you’re playing. The developers also added more game modes.
This is still an arcade game. It is closer to the original with a very simple story. The monsters aren’t trying to get revenge on Scumlabs, and everyone seems to be happy that a soda can turn them into giant monsters. It is an odd and cynical look at the actions of this fake company, but I like it.
The gameplay didn’t change too much, but the visuals did. This is a 2.5D game where you can move around the city. This is still a single-screen arcade game, so don’t expect anything amazing.
There are more things for you to destroy and eat in this game. It is nice that they tried to make this game a little different while not deviating from the formula too much. While I like this game, there are problems.
Rampage: Total Destruction was released in 2006, and most players were expecting more from a video game than this one offers. It received average reviews, which is right for a game like this. I’m a fan of the Rampage series, but when this was released, most people weren’t looking for an arcade game on the home console.
Rampage (2018)
This is an arcade adaptation of the movie. As far as I can tell, it wasn’t ported to the home console, PC, or mobile devices. Doing this is an odd decision, and I can’t figure out why it was done.
The arcade game was simply called Rampage. I hate it when this happens. I wish they had called it Rampage: The Movie or something like that. Here is a link to an article about the arcade game (Link).
The game, or something similar to it, was released as a free browser game called Rampage: City Smash. Here is a link to a YouTube video of the the game. This whole thing is a mess. I can’t find a playable version of it, but there are reviews and videos of the game.
It is sad to see this. The game’s release feels half-assed, and I’m not sure what happened to it. From what I can see, the game has disappeared.
A virtual reality game called Project Rampage VR was also released in 2018. It received positive user reviews, but it has been removed from Steam. You can still visit the store page but can’t get the game.
This is like strolling through a graveyard that has been long forgotten. The people buried here don’t have any living relatives, and everyone has forgotten about them. It is a very depressing section of the Rampage series.
These games didn’t seem to have left much of an impression. There hasn’t been another console or arcade game released since. From what I can tell, Warner Bros. owns the rights to the Rampage series, and they don’t seem interested in releasing another game. If there is another movie, then we might get another game.
Inspiration and Speculation
In 2018, a movie was released based on Rampage. It took some liberties with the game’s story by getting rid of SCUM Labs and the whole human experimentation stuff. Now, the monsters are all animals instead of genetically altered humans.
It made me think about all the other giant monster movies and which could’ve inspired Rampage. The obvious ones are King Kong and Godzilla, but where did Ralph, the giant wolf monster, come from? In my search for the films that inspired the games, I fell down a rabbit hole of giant monster movies.
Was this just an excuse to spend a day watching monster movies? Of course, it was. I had a lot of fun watching some good and mostly bad monster movies from the 1930s, 40s, and 50s. Here are a few that I came across.
I should talk about the 2018 movie a bit. It isn’t great. I watched it for the first time in 2025, because I totally forgot it was released. It seems like everyone else forgot about it as well.
The movie felt like a standard Dwayne Johnson action film. It isn’t a good movie, but it is an entertaining one. I didn’t like the changes that were made to the story, but it isn’t that big of a deal. Do I want to see it again? No, but I had fun when I watched it.
I would rather watch a Godzilla film. I find those to be more interesting than this one. There were too many moments where The Rock had to go and be The Rock. It devolved into a standard Dwayne Johnson running around in a dirty white shirt and trying to be a badass.
Looking at the movies that inspired the games, I would rather play them. I like the story from the games a bit more, and I got more enjoyment from them. It ended up being The Rock fighting CGI and making some attempts to be funny every now and then.
Two movies are pointed to as being inspirations for the original monsters in Rampage. Those are King Kong and 20 Million Miles to Earth. Both are standard giant monster movies. They use stop motion and can be fun to watch on a movie night.
I couldn’t find a giant monster movie with a wolf in it—most of the movies I was directed to were werewolf films. One of them, Werewolf of London from 1935, might be it, but who knows?
In the later games, many more giant monsters are introduced. With so many monster movies released between 1930 and 1960, there is no way to pinpoint a movie that inspired them. I spent an entire weekend watching a lot of monster movies, and I have no regrets over doing this.
Final Thoughts
In 2009, Midway filed for bankruptcy, and several game studios purchased its assets. The most notable and long-running of them is Mortal Kombat. It was the only series that seems to have had staying power.
The other series they made were NBA Jam, Cruis’n, and NFL Blitz. Rampage was one of the lesser-known series. These were all bought by Warner Bros in 2009.
Since 2018, there hasn’t been much movement on anything related to the Rampage series. It wasn’t the most memorable name from Midway, and it was always more of an arcade game. It didn’t get the same treatment as the Gauntlet series in the 2000s.
The 1986 game will always be my favorite. The sequels are fun, but they’ve always been more fun with other people. Something feels off when I went to play them by myself. They just weren’t as much fun as they could’ve been.
If you liked this post, please check out my other series and company overviews, such as Koei’s NES Games and the Deception Series.