Rampage is one of Midway’s best arcade games from the late 1980s. Its popularity resulted in it being a hot license when it came to producing home versions, which is why it’s on every console and computer format of the era. This particular ad is for the Atari 7800 version, which is not very good.
Ultimate Mortal Kombat 3 was one of the last big releases for the 16-bit consoles for Acclaim, who by that point was shifting resources onto the Saturn and PSX. The game is kind of impressive, given what the developers were working with – weak systems and limited cartridge space, but it is quite compromised when compared to the full arcade experience. Sheeva was the only character lost, but the number of stages was severely limited.
Primal Rage II features human fighters rather than the dinosaurs and primates of the original. There’s a plot driven reason for this, in that a being named Necrosian imprisoned the gods in a state of suspended animation. In order to fight back, the gods gave themselves human forms. Apparently the humans would eventually be able to change into their dinosaur/primate form. The story for the game was eventually released in a novel entitled Primal Rage: The Avatars. Action figures for some of the Primal Rage II characters even made it to market.
Nothing says Christmas like a bit of ultra violence. Enjoy the day!
Mortal Kombat 3 came out on just about every major platform, including the PC, the version which this ad is pitching. The PC port was actually a remarkably high quality port. The first release was DOS based and was quite possibly the most faithful port of the game. The later Windows based release was based on the PlayStation version, which isn’t quite as good.
Total Carnage is a spirtual successor to Smash TV, but ditches the game show motif for more of a parody of the Iraq war, complete with a comical interpretation of a Middle Eastern dictator (General Akhboob). Unlike Smash TV, Total Carnage bombed in the arcade, and thus was not widely ported. This ad is for the SNES version, but you can also find it on the Amiga, PC, Amiga CD32 and Jaguar, along with an emulated version in the more widely distributed Midway Arcade Treasures 2 for the PS2, Xbox and GameCube.
Mortal Kombat Gold is an upgraded port of Mortal Kombat 4 which launched alongside the Dreamcast in North America and PAL territories. The game brings back several popular MK characters that were missing from the vanilla release of 4 such as Baraka, Kitana, Cyrax and Kung Lao. However, the game was well and truly overlooked upon release due to the stellar debut of Soul Calibur on the same day.
Warner Bros. has decided to make the most of their acqusition of Midway’s back catalogue by throwing 31 of Midway’s arcade classics into a new package called Midway Arcade Origins for release on the PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360 later this year.
The games are: 720°, A.P.B., Arch Rivals, Bubbles, Championship Sprint, Cyberball 2072, Defender, Defender II, Gauntlet, Gauntlet II, Joust, Joust 2, Marble Madness, Pit-Fighter, Rampage, Rampart, Robotron 2084, Root Beer Tapper, Satan’s Hollow, Sinistar, Smash TV, Spy Hunter, Spy Hunter II, Super Off Road, Super Sprint, Toobin’, Total Carnage, Vindicators Part II, Wizard of Wor, Xenophobe, and Xybots.
Sound familiar? Almost all of these games can be found on the three Midway Arcade Treasures packages released on the PlayStation 2, Xbox, Gamecube and PC. Backbone is still listed as the developer of the new collection, so don’t go in expecting new and improved emulation.
The sheer number of Mortal Kombat II ads we have in our archive is testament to just how heavily advertised the game was. It was one of the major battlegrounds of the 16-bit era: the newly formed ESRB allowed Nintendo to soften their stance towards violence, leading to a Super Nintendo version that was on par with its Mega Drive equivalent in the gore stakes. We put this one up just for that absurd EGM quote.
After the surprise success of Rampage: World Tour, Midway continued the series with Rampage 2: Universal Tour, but didn’t really take the time to fix the problems – namely the lack of variety – that affected the first game. Unlike World Tour, this one wasn’t released in the arcades, though a prototype exists.
