Retro City Rampage has been a work of over seven years, though its retro inspirations reach far deeper into the past than that. Brian Provinciano first conceived the idea as way of bringing Grand Theft Auto to the Nintendo Entertainment System with a version he called Grand Theftendo. But as time passed and the idea got bigger and bigger, Retro City Rampage evolved into the chaotic, reference-heavy game it is today.

You play as “Player,” a nameless character who is tasked with various missions around an open world, top-down city. You’re given full range of motion to unleash your chaos, and can even jump on people’s heads and over cars to maneuver. But if you start bringing down pedestrians, the cops are going to be chasing you down in close quarters, and they’re almost relentless. Killing so many people also triggers a “spree” counter that will rate you on the amount of destruction you just wrought upon Retro City. The controls are tight, as you move your car by switching the direction it’s moving and run around in the direction you’re facing. Bullets fly where you need and I didn’t have any trouble staying alive in shoot-outs.

The open part of the city is full of collectibles such as loot bags, cell phones and hidden weapons. This is also where you get your missions and start unique, weapon-specific spree challenges. The city is also full of bars where you can order “Milk” to drink…and get drunk. Or you can change up your hairstyle to one of over thirty different varieties at a barber shop in town, with more to be unlocked along the way. The key to unlocks is finding unique information around the cities. One example Brian provided was for finding The Simpsons phone number hidden in the game world. From there you can unlock the Homer Simpson haircut, decked out on your 8 by 12 pixel main character. All-in it’s a hilarious amount of customization for such a tiny protagonist.

All the store names and billboards around the city are plays on pop-culture of the past thirty years, and gameplay elements all give a wink and a nod to games of yore. There are green masked men that exit from green vans that aren’t officially Mutant Turtles, but truly look like certain Mutant Turtles. You can also hide yourself inside of cardboard boxes and hobble about sneaking past cops and other undesirables a la Metal Gear. For anyone who’s spent more than the last ten years gaming, they’re going to be full of smiles. But the game is fun enough for those who won’t “get” everything to still enjoy themselves.

The game also features a full-mission story mode in which your character partakes in various heinous acts around the city. The one that I played a demo of consisted of partaking in a bank heist, where I had to literally exit the bank holding a bag of cash over my head. A lot of people died along the way, and the cut scenes provided perfectly cheesy story to fuel things forward. The developer aims to have a total of around 40 missions in the final game. Compounded with the spree challenges set about the game world, there is a lot to do in Retro City.

There are mini-games throughout the world too, such as a memory game played with spade cards (Super Mario Bros. 3 anyone?) as well as a spinning match game in which the prizes are instant-death, instant-damage or a shield power-up. I was able to snag a shield power-up without much trouble, but the fact that one of the shield elements was a bomb, I killed myself with my own shield within thirty seconds of winning the mini-game. Geoff snagged a video of this event, so I’m hoping we’ll be able to drop it in right…HERE:

The game is aiming for a December release on WiiWare, with uncertain other platforms snagging the game around the same time. It certainly packs a lot of punch for a game whose protagonist can fit in a ninety-six square pixel box.

[Retro City Rampage]