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Midway has always produced top-notch arcade machines, but these were designed to encourage passing punters to part with their hard-earned ten pences for a quick thrill and that was all (this was obviously around the time when 50 pence would feed a family for a week with enough change left over to purchase a small house in the country). The longevity of such arcade games however is more questionable.

Some have indeed gone on to amazing success and been converted for multiple home entertainment platorms. Others haven't done so well. Rampage was a title which did well in the arcades and also well on the home computers of the time, but has since faded in addictiveness somewhat. The release of Rampage: World Tour on the PlayStation and N64 met with little more than apathy. Has Rampage had its day? Midway hopes that the Game Boy Color will prove it hasn't.

For those who have never played Rampage or Rampage: World Tour, the story goes something like this...

The unfortunately named Scumlabs International, a company specialising in toxic waste products, experiences a slight hiccup at one of its many plants. A side effect of this accident is that three lab technicians, Lizzie, George and Ralph are exposed to toxic chemicals which mutate them into huge monstrous creatures - a lizard, a gorilla and a werewolf respectively.

Now you'd think that the object of this game would be to stop the rampaging monsters, wouldn't you? However, the object of the game is to take control of the monster of your choice and to cause as much destruction as possible to the world's cities. This basically involves climbing up and down numerous buildings and smashing hell out of them with your fists and feet. To aid the monsters on their travels you can collect food and various power-ups from the inside of smashed buildings. Hampering your destructive efforts though, are the forces of government oppression - far from wanting to help calm and console our poor mutated white-collar workers, the establishment in Rampage: World Tour sets out to terminate them with extreme prejudice! Helicopters, soldiers, tanks and building defence forces are just a few of the things that Lizzie, Ralph and George have to deal with on their quest to build a better - if flatter - world.

In the arcade, Rampage was tremendous fun. The fact that you were the one causing the damage rather than preventing it, going against convention and 'socking it to the system' was probably what made the game so popular, but somehow this just didn't translate to the N64 and PlayStation versions. Sadly, it doesn't seem to have made it into the Game Boy Color version either.

The arcade version of Rampage: World Tour was especially fun because you could play with two friends. The Game Boy Color version doesn't even let you play with one other person! Another thing which was great was the satisfaction of watching huge buildings topple to the gound in clouds of dust and debris. The buildings in the Game Boy version simply vanish storey by storey as if someone is folding them down from behind.

Even the satisfaction of eating city defence soldiers and helpless screaming civilians just isn't there because there are none of the oh-so-gratifying screams and explosion noises. Instea, an absoltely awful 'classical' tune drones on and on in the background. You can switch off this 'music' (and we're using that word in the loosest sense!) but then you get no sound at all!

In case you're wondering about the significance of the 'World Tour' part of Rampage: World Tour, this came about due to an updated version of the game being released into the arcades. In the original game, the demolition action was confined primarily to the streets of some place called Peoria. In the updated version our friendly monsters get to travel the world, knocking down famous landmarks and scoffing the local florae and fauna.

In the arcade version it was possible to distinguish between well-known foreign locations by the use of famous landmarks, although in general the buildings looked fairly similar. In the Game Boy Color version every level looks exactly the same, with Liverpool totally indistinguishable from downtown LA!

If Rampage: World Tour had featured a link-up mode and the characters had been bigger, the sound effects better and the locations more varied then maybe there would have been some incentive to play it, but as it is, you're better off spending your cash down the local arcade.