Rampart
| Developer: The Kremlin | Graphics: |
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| Publisher: Domark | Sound: |
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| Year: 1992 | Difficulty: |
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| Genre: Strategy | Lastability: |
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| Number of players: 2 simultaneous | Rating: |
6/10 | |
Here we have the grandfather of all tower defense games—a genre where you strategically place guard towers to defend a base, castle, city (or garden) from increasingly relentless waves of enemies.
Originally an arcade game from 1990, it was ported to a wide range of platforms. The gameplay is divided into three phases: positioning your cannons wherever space permits, firing at enemy ships (or your opponent’s castle in multiplayer), and then hastily rebuilding your walls before the next assault.
The shooting phase is straightforward—you move a crosshair and fire, accounting for the target’s motion and the time it takes for your projectile to reach it. Your firepower depends entirely on how many cannons you have, which in turn hinges on the usable area within your walls. This is where the third phase comes into play: patching up breaches to ensure your castle is encircled by an unbroken line of fortifications. Think of it as a variation on Tetris, where you’re placing randomly shaped wall segments under a strict time limit. Any gaps left in your defenses render the cannons inside that section useless. If a position becomes too tough to defend, you might have to abandon it and rebuild around a smaller, more manageable fort. The game ends when all castles are lost, or when none can be fully enclosed by a continuous wall.
This original concept paved the way for innovation many years later. However, I have one big gripe with this game: the time limit. Generally speaking, I dislike time constraints in strategy games—they often feel like a cheap way to disguise limited or repetitive gameplay. Add in the imprecise mouse controls, and you’re looking at a fast track to a meltdown.
Fun fact: the original arcade version supported three players simultaneously. Also, I find it surprising that the digitized voices are reproduced more faithfully on the NES version than on the Amiga.
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