Rampage 2: Universal Tour

NA release: 30th March 1999
PAL: release: 21st May 1999
JP release: N/A
Developer: Avalanche
Publisher: Midway (NA), GT (PAL)
N64 Magazine Score: 22%

In terms of gameplay, Rampage 2 doesn’t do anything to improve of its earlier N64 game, and it wasn’t particularly entertaining back then. It’s something that can be fun for a short burst in an arcade, but the novelty wears thin very quickly.

Rampage 2 does have slightly better backgrounds than the previous one, with more cities having backgrounds showing off famous buildings. That said, other than one or two select exemptions, you can never smash these iconic buildings – they are just background buildings, which is a rather strange choice, as it might have provided some slight variety to the building shapes and provided a bit of temporary fun. The unique backgrounds also get less common as you move on, with Asia having very few backgrounds – apparently the Taj Mahal is in multiple cities.

The game does have more of a structure than the previous, too. You’ll see your monster move across the map, and you’ll travel the world (rather than random cities cropping up in between all the US ones). I was very surprised when I saw that there was a stop in North Wales, but that turned out to be Dublin. Once you’ve rescued all your monster buddies, aliens will invade.

Alien buildings will crop up, and alien vehicles will replace human ones. They all function exactly the same as the human ones, so the gameplay doesn’t change at all. Even when you go into space and fight your way to the alien homeworld, only the last building is any different.

The backgrounds and structure make this slightly better than the first, but still isn’t very good.

Poor

There are some phenomenally irritating bits of gameplay. The screen doesn’t scroll until you walk right up to the very edge of it, and sometimes a tank will trundle along the bottom of the screen and shoot at you, making your monster fly backwards and land on its backside. Pick yourself up and the tank does exactly the same thing again, and again and again. When you finally manage to catch up with the infernal thing and kick it into oblivion, it just gets replaced by another one. It’s crap.
Martin Kitts, N64 Magazine #29

Remake or Remaster?

It should be part of some classic arcade compilation.

Official Ways to get the game

There’s no official way to play Rampage 2: Universal Tour