Observant
readers of this site will notice that I have already reviewed the PC
version of Retro City Rampage, giving it a fairly harsh score based
on both my experience playing the game and the incredible
disappointment I felt after waiting several years for it to finally
materialise. Now that the dust has settled and a new Xbox Live Arcade
version has arrived I felt it was time to come back to it with a
fresh set of eyes and no preconceptions. While the core game remains
the same, there are many notable improvements to the gameplay and as
such I had a great deal more fun with it than the PC version.
The
brainchild of just one man, Brian Provinciano, Retro City Rampage
started life as a homebrew NES game based on Grand Theft Auto.
Entitled Grandtheftendo, it soon grew far too big for its hardware
boots and so Brian made the logical choice to produce it for PC
instead. With the limitations removed he aimed bigger and soon a
whole sandbox world was born. He wanted to stick closely to the NES
roots so began adding references to classic 8-bit games. This soon
incorporated TV and movie references from the same era and, as more
and more nods to classic shows and games were added, Retro City
Rampage was soon a full blown parody game.
