Retro City Rampage parodies sandbox games, everything else

by JC Fletcher on Jul 19th 2010 11:00PM

If you're not familiar with Retro City Rampage, you'll at least be familiar with the references contained within VBlank's WiiWare game. The retro-style open-world game is filled with jokes about DuckTales, Back to the Future, TMNT Contra, and even the Beastie Boys' "Sabotage" video. And that's just what can be seen in these screenshots!

You might, in fact, be more familiar with the PAX 10 winner than you think. Retro City Rampage began its life as Grand Theftendo, a faithful NES remake of Grand Theft Auto III, back in 2004. Since then, it's become less "faithful" and more "original," and it's moved from the NES to WiiWare, but creator Brian Provinciano has kept the irresistible central idea of a GTA-style game rendered with NES-style visuals.

Retro City Rampage (WiiWare)

Tags: Action, Grand-Theftendo, nintendo, Parody, Retro-City-Rampage, Sandbox, VBlank, wii, WiiWare

Reader Comments (23)

Rad

looks awesome... the color pallet sure messes with your eyes tho

I read about this in Nintendo Power, and I'm intrigued. It looks very ambitious and potentially very fun.

It also provides an amusing contrast to the notorious Bob's Game. Both were pet projects started by twenty-something Italian Americans in the mid-2000s, designed in neo-retro style, and created as tributes to their favorite games (Earthbound for Bob's Game, GTA III for RCR). But now this game is actually going to be published, while Bob's Game has yet to leave the confines of Robert Pelloni's computer. The difference? The fact that Brian Provinciano knows how to market himself and isn't a ragingly egotistical, emotionally unstable douchebag. I'd say Pelloni probably feels pretty stupid right about now, but he still probably blames his utter failure as a developer on corporate conspiracies.

"The fact that Brian Provinciano knows how to market himself and isn't a ragingly egotistical, emotionally unstable douchebag."
Except that was a big joke.

@(Unverified)
Pelloni is either a ragingly egotistical, emotionally unstable, attention-seeking douchebag (a.k.a. exactly what he looks like), or he thinks that acting like one and then mocking people for paying attention to him and acting like he pulled a fast one on them makes him clever and funny. For a number of reasons I'm strongly inclined to believe the former, but in fact even if the latter is true, that would still make him a ragingly egotistical, emotionally unstable, attention-seeking douchebag.

"TMNT Contra"

Man do I wish this was real.

I always wondered what happened to Grand Theftendo after reading about it years ago, i was certain it was canceled most likey from a cease and dismiss from rockstar.
Its nice to know that it didn't get cancelled but instead turn into its own thing :)

Will be picking this up when its released.

@lyons
Come to think of it, if this game turns out to be good, I wonder if Rockstar will hire the guy?

I was wondering when this was going to be put up on Joystiq.

I still love ya' Joystiq, but it almost feels like ya' gave up on the Nintendo-side of news. I know the Wii's not doin' so great with releases, but the news definitely isn't dead... when Joystiq's Nintendo-side was Nintendo Wii Fanboy, it got more news than any other site I would go to - and if didn't have news, it had community questions that got more people involved with their limited library...
Nowadays it's slow on the news and barely optimistic about anything related to the Wii and even DS. Yet it's 360 and PS3 sections are still strong as ever (no comment on PSP).

Not sure what has been happening, but the lack of news on the Wii section (despite there being tons out in other places) just feels like joystiq is giving up on the Wii.

@blahblah55
As for the news itself: Definitely have been looking forward to this game for quite some time... and the article on Nintendo Power got me psyched about it.

@blahblah55
Let's be honest: outside of first-party Nintendo games, there's not much news to speak of on the Wii front these days, especially compared to the 360 and PS3. EVERYONE'S given up on it. And maybe it's for the better. Nintendo has shown with the 3DS that they are still interested in garnering third-party "core" support, and maybe the failure of the Wii in that regard will be what finally convinces them to be more accommodating to third-parties when their next console inevitably comes along.

@gatotsu911

You, uh, weren't paying attention during the gamecube era, were you?

@gatotsu911
Er... not really, there's ton of news going around. Maybe not things considered "news - news" (they're interviews, pre-order bonuses, events, etc) to people, but still news.
Hell, when early joystiq ran out of things to talk about on the Wii, they held talked about the Thursday Game Nights or even just some discussion threads (things such as favorite characters, looking forward-tos, etc).

Nintendo Wii Fanboy used to be ahead of Nintendo Power almost to the point of being 3-months ahead of them! Now?? This was found two months ago on Nintendo Power! They've lost about 5 months on news when compared to Nintendo Power - don't get me started on other websites like Infendo and even WiiNintendo (who now take up their podcast time to talk about games on the 360/PC/and PS3)...
I know Joystiq Nintendo isn't Nintendo Wii Fanboy anymore, but the amount of news and enthusiasm they give the Wii is kinda' pathetic now.
I rarely even come here for Wii or DS news anymore - the 360 and PS3 sections still have jewels not found anywhere else. The Wii is now dirt news and the DS is about as "new" as looking at a release date calendar (still a good amount of news, but nothing ground breaking).

Like I said, the Wii ain't got much good releases (it never had a large amount of good releases within a 3-month period), but it isn't low on news.
News is still out there.
Tons of interviews, games being made news, semi-okay and interesting-concepted games are releasing (still worthy of news considering we get a lot of "mehhh, it was cool" 360 games constantly being reviewed), WiiWare and DSiWare need the ol' in-depth reviews like they used to do with VC, freebies given out by companies at events, and etc etc etc.

Ol' Nintendo Wii Fanboy used to at least make up fun crap to make up for any lack of news, now they just leave it there. ...not only that, but it seems we're about to get biased reviews for Wii games as well (really, ToL got 1 and a half stars? That's a joke. Even lowliest of reviews would give it some benefits, this just seemed outright murder)...

Joystiq should probably just drop their Wii section if they plan to keep going on like this. But hey, that's my unprofessional opinion - coming from a dissatisfied reader. Their 360 and PS3 sections are still good.

@gatotsu911
And before you bring up the whole "You're comparing sites that devote all their news to Nintendo to a site that does it for all platforms?", I'd note that these two sites have been incredibly slow in news compared to the old joystiq. ...nowadays they're getting news that takes joystiq two-to-three weeks to post up. ...they're even getting interviews faster than joystiq now, and that's sad considering the two sites aren't huge names in the gaming blog competition.

@blahblah55
Oops, when I said "(who now take up their podcast time to talk about games on the 360/PC/and PS3)" I got WiiNintendo with Go Nintendo. Yeah, Go Nintendo does that now, not WiiNintendo.