Rampage 2: Universal Tour

George, Lizzie, and Ralph are locked up. That's the first thing you see in Rampage 2: Universal Tour, and it flips the whole premise. George is on display in New York City, Lizzie in Tokyo, Ralph somewhere else entirely. Instead of starting as the monsters, you spend the campaign breaking them out, tearing through a chain of stages that runs from Earth cities to alien planets and military bases.

Avalanche Software built the game for the Nintendo 64 and PlayStation, and Midway shipped it on March 31, 1999. It's the third mainline entry, following Rampage World Tour in 1997, and it keeps the arcade DNA intact: punch a building, watch it collapse floor by floor, grab whatever tumbles out. Cars, tanks, and helicopters all become projectiles. The new playable creatures, a giant rhino and a rat among them, add some variety to the roster alongside the returning trio.

The ESRB handed it an Everyone rating for Animated Violence and Comic Mischief, which tells you exactly what kind of slapstick you're in for. Two-player co-op anchors the experience. The formula is thin by design, closer to a quarter-munching arcade cabinet than a deep console campaign, and that repetition was the point for kids renting it in 1999. [edit]

Every stage drops you into a city or an alien landscape with one job: reduce it to rubble. Punching a building collapses it floor by floor, and the debris often coughs up food or power-ups. You can rip cars, tanks, and helicopters out of the scenery and hurl them at whatever still stands. The loop is deliberately faithful to the franchise's quarter-munching arcade roots, built on repetition and the simple satisfaction of toppling skyscrapers rather than deep mechanics.

Two-player co-op is the headline feature, and it's where the game makes its case. The roster expands beyond George, Lizzie, and Ralph with a giant rhino, a rat, and other new creatures, giving each player a different silhouette to wreak havoc with. The ESRB's Everyone rating for cartoon violence fits the slapstick tone exactly: nothing here is meant to be taken seriously, and the game knows it. [edit]

George is caged in New York City. Lizzie is locked up in Tokyo. Ralph is confined somewhere else, and the campaign's throughline is getting all three out. That rescue framing reverses the usual monsters-attack setup: you're not rampaging for its own sake, you're breaking your friends loose, one smashed city at a time. The path runs through alien planets and military strongholds in addition to Earth cities, so the scenery changes even when the mandate doesn't.

The new playable monsters, including a giant rhino and a rat, join the returning trio as the campaign unfolds. By the end, the original cast is free and the destruction has stretched across the galaxy. It's a thin premise, but it gives the stages a reason to exist beyond pure mayhem. [edit]