Village Gamer

Vblank Entertainment‘s Retro City Rampage: DX, a beefed up remastered version of the original game is now available from the Nintendo 3DS eShop (February 20th for Europe). Priced at $9.99, it not only packs more punch, it’s $5 less than the MSRP on other consoles! Over the past year, RCR’s development team has continued to support Retro City Rampage, the PC version receiving its 16th update just a couple of weeks ago. All of these improvements and additions paved the way for the greatly enhanced Retro City Rampage: DX —which takes things even further.

[youtube:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dn48mX-pciM]

Weeks after the initial release in 2012, updates made vehicles faster, added more checkpoints, tutorials, hints screens, and missions were reworked. The changes made huge improvements to the game, and RCR:DX’s changes go even deeper, putting RCR:DX miles ahead of the original 2012 PC and console versions. Every single mission’s been tweaked. Vehicles. Weapons. Challenges. Visual Effects. Visual Enhancements. Checkpoints. Difficulty. Challenges. Features. Player feedback and quality have been of the highest priority.

• Missions – Every mission and minigame has been tweaked for the ideal experience on 3DS, and a better experience overall. Certain missions have been edited to improve pacing. In Death Cam VHS, for example, you won’t need to clear so many enemies during the melee section. During the car dodge tutorial, you won’t need to jump so much. It’s little changes like this which just make it a smoother ride.

• Controls & Weapons – Controls have been tweaked. You can now jump while firing weapons, making dodging enemies even easier. Previously, once you fired a weapon, you would need to wait for it to finish before you could jump again, but not anymore! Weapons have been rebalanced, some boasting more damage, many with more satisfying effects. The cars and explosions also feature more effects — although it also includes “8-BIT” mode if you want a simpler, more ’80s experience.

• Arcade Challenges – The weapon updates noticeably improve the Arcade Challenges, but many challenges have been reworked themselves as well. Second-Rate Sprees, for example, now run 30 seconds instead of 60, making them a tighter experience and motivating you more to repeatedly play them for higher scores. For example, the speed shoes challenge also eliminates the exploit of running up and down alleys to pile up chains.

• Hijacking Weapons – The city now has more to do, populated with weapon trucks. Getting the right tool for the job’s now a lot more convenient. You can purchase your weapons or try your luck and attempt to hijack them. It’s quite a challenge for new players, but once you’ve mastered the game, you can write yourself a five finger discount on your arsenal.

• Losing The Cops – The wanted level system and police AI have been changed to be even more fun. You can now more easily evade the police by clearing the screen of them, something which feels right at home thinking back to classic arcade games. Clear the screen of three or more police and they’ll drop a Cop Coin which lowers your wanted level. You can still spray your vehicle or find coins around the city to get the cops off your tail, but this makes it much more fun and convenient. The more easily evaded police have been balanced out with slightly more challenging AI, livening up the metagame of cat and mouse.

• MiniMap, Touch & UI – The minimap is now larger and displays more than just missions and challenges, also displaying weapon, spray and power-up shops, as well as enemies. You can also set it to display other locations, such as shops. I can say first hand that this makes navigating the city much better as you’re able to see all of the roads and alleys ahead, choosing the optimal route to a destination. You can zoom in to the minimap in the pause menu and select weapons by touching the bottom screen, or change the radio station (even on foot). The entire front end/UI has been redone for the 3DS, including the HUD. Important HUD elements now appear as overlays on the top screen when necessary, and the less important elements on the bottom screen.

RCR is also available now on WiiWare (which can be played on both a Wii and Wii U in Wii Mode), PlayStation®3, PS®Vita, Xbox LIVE Arcade and PC / Steam.