![]() If you're the kind of person who nods in quiet acknowledgement when that line about being part of a generation of 30-year-old boys comes up in Fight Club, this is the game for you. From Virtual Boys to Ninja Turtles, the game delivers a warm thrill of recognition every time you spot something you've always loved and realise somebody else always loved it too. The pleasure here is the sheer depth of pop culture knowledge on display, in other words, and the sense of a shared childhood it provides. (You have to like Anchorman for this analogy to work.) The best way I can think of explaining VBlank's peculiar sense of humour is this: playing Retro City Rampage isn't like watching Anchorman for the first time, it's like when you and your friends get together and end up doing all the Anchorman quotes. That doesn't mean the whole thing isn't hectic, wall-to-wall fun, though. It has proper jokes in it, but they're often a little heavy-handed in the telling and the end result can fall a bit flat. Set to the game's glorious chiptunes, cut-scenes like this make a real impression.Īs the name "Biffman" suggests, Retro City Rampage isn't the most inspired of games when it's trying to be funny. You'll feel asleep - or whatever the correct phrase is - in the back of a military truck. Before the end credits roll, you'll wield Ghostbuster proton packs and you'll bottom-bounce on enemy's heads. Pluck an 8-bit game or a cherished 1980s movie out of the ether, and chances are it gets a reworking here, providing the basis for mechanics, a level idea or the odd line of dialogue. I stopped to ponder all of this for a second: was I enjoying a riff on Batman, on Gauntlet, on Maniac Mansion, or on old cheat lines? I think it was probably a bit of everything at once - and that's just one instance, just one mission. The house belonged to Biffman, however, who's the Retro City version of Batman, and after locking the superhero out of his own gaff using a big red key, I searched the microwave, which the game informed me smelled of rodent, before I was offered a phoneline hint on how best to proceed from there. Early on in Retro City Rampage I went into a house on the trail of some MacGuffin or other - a typical GTA-type mission. Many of the references are too good to spoil, but here's one to get you started. It's a Pokémon for pop culture references, in fact, and the real pleasure of VBlank's 8-bit charmer is watching thirty years of movies, TV, comic books and video games smooshed together in a manner that manages to be both intricate and strangely throwaway. Go deeper, though, and you'll realise there's a rogue strand of Pokémon DNA in the pixel-art and chiptune mix. Oh, and you can then shoot it out with the cops across the length and breadth of a compact open-world metropolis that looks like it could fit inside a good old NES cartridge. ![]() It's a gloriously wayward GTA demake in which you steal cars, pull donuts and drive over pedestrians. At the simplest level, Retro City Rampage is, well, pretty freakin' simple.
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