1st June 1988
Ramparts
A medieval smash 'em up eh? I was a bit dubious about this game before I even saw it. Medieval plots have never been wholly successful or convincing and I had a feeling that Ramparts would be no exception.
At first I thought someone had given me a copy of Activision's Rampage, even the logo was the same, a massive hand smashing the word Ramparts. Okay, so copying game formats isn't a new pastime, but for a label like Go! whose titles up to now have been expensively programmed original games with more than a speak of genius, this brilliant photocopy of a legitimately licensed arcade conversion is a bit of a let down.
You control two knights who have been turned into building sized monsters, who are hunting down the wizard who made them that way. Their quest is conducted in the usual way, smashing every building down which gets in the way, shimmying up each building and pulling bits off it, uncovering either bonus points or explosives, which improve or terminate your game respectively. You know the sort of thing.
To hinder your progress, there are witches on brooms in the sky, swooping and firing spells at you, siege catapults trundling along the floor lobbing boulders at you, and the occupants of the castles throwing everything but the kitchen sink at you. So that's what you're up against. It's quite a hard game, but with no real incentive to continue and no visible goals to head for, so progress is slow and getting to the end of a screen is more of a relief than a triumph.Rampage itself wasn't a brilliant idea for an arcade conversion, as the coin-op relied on the quality of its graphics for most of the enjoyment of the game. So trying to capitalise on the success of a game which wasn't all that hot in the first place is a rum idea. Making a good, original game would have been a better idea, and a lot more fun to play.
Obvious counterfeit of Rampage, with knights instead of movie monster. Disappointing.
Other Spectrum 48K Game Reviews By Phil South
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