Rampage : World Tour

Rampage: World Tour for PlayStation is Midway's 1997 side-scrolling destruction game and a follow-up to the 1986 arcade original. Designed for Midway by Game Refuge, the game brings the series' giant-monster premise to PS1 with a colourful 2D presentation. George the ape, Lizzie the lizard, and Ralph the wolf were once Scumlabs International employees until an accident involving toxic waste transformed them into enormous creatures. Their response is to escape the laboratory and begin a destructive trip through cities around the world.

Each player selects one of the three monsters and moves across a single-screen cityscape, climbing buildings and attacking from their façades. Punches, kicks, grabs, and eating attacks reduce structures to rubble, while people, food, and other items can restore health or offer temporary benefits. Soldiers, tanks, helicopters, and aircraft fight back, so the objective is not simply to smash scenery: players must keep their monsters alive while clearing the city. When the buildings are gone, the tour advances to the next location.

Rampage: World Tour expands the original Rampage formula with larger stages, more animated destruction, and an itinerary that can branch. In the opening city, a billboard can direct the monsters toward different regions, while World Tour pickups can send them overseas for a run of foreign cities. The broader goal is to find and wreck Scumlabs sites around the globe. Purple radioactive waste can temporarily change a monster into the powerful V.E.R.N., giving the familiar building-smashing routine a short-lived shift in abilities and appearance.

The campaign's cartoon monster-movie story runs through the action rather than replacing it with long narrative sequences. Scumlabs is the recurring target, and its operations give the world trip a destination beyond a high-score chase. George, Lizzie, and Ralph can cooperate while also competing for food, points, and the most destruction, which suits the series' arcade roots. A stage can also end with a reduced score if players take too long and incoming jets demolish what remains of the city.

This PlayStation edition is a home conversion of the 1997 arcade game, whose concept and design are credited to Brian Colin and Jeff Nauman, the designers associated with the original Rampage. The PS1 credits identify David Schwartz as Sony PSX programmer/producer, alongside PlayStation-specific art and sound contributors. Midway published the game, while GT Interactive handled European publication. It should not be confused with the later Rampage 2: Universal Tour, nor with the Nintendo 64 version of World Tour, which has its own conversion work and retains three-player play.

For local PlayStation sessions, Rampage: World Tour supports one or two players simultaneously. That is an important platform difference: the arcade original accommodates three players, and the Nintendo 64 conversion also offers three-player functionality, whereas the PlayStation and Sega Saturn ports are limited to two. The PlayStation game nevertheless preserves the central appeal of the series: choose a monster, scale a skyline, wreck every building in reach, survive the military response, and keep moving until Scumlabs has been wiped from the itinerary.