Retro City Rampage

Retro City Rampage is an open-world NES-style callback to the original Grand Theft Auto games. The game was in development for around a decade, starting out as a blatant demake of Grand Theft Auto III until turning into more of a general tribute to 80s gaming (and other media).

The game is also known for its many quirky ports, including an even more downscaled MS-DOS port, a proposed Game Boy Advance port, and the enhanced DX+ version for Wii...released in 2020.

Prerelease Info

Unused Sprites#

To do:
Find the correct palettes + there's far more.

An unused "Story Mode" button that can be found around the title screen tiles, likely used when the main menu wasn't finished.

A very rough text box that reads "LOCKED", also found around the title screen tiles.

Unused Border#

This border is a template that was later reused by the Super Video Brick border. The color of the template is a little bit darker from what was eventually used.

Template	Super Video Brick

Xbox Live Arcade Demo Borders#

The Windows version of the game has some borders left over for the Xbox Live Arcade demo.

English	French	Italian	German	Spanish

Hidden Comments#

BIT.TRIP Retro City Level Placement Instructions#

To do:
Check if some of the objects listed are unused.

In the files CF26579F, 77DC18D6, 135BA077, F5C7F937, DEB3DD49, 7EF4E7C7, and 6A5FB873, there is a comment on how to manage the settings for the BIT.TRIP minigame.

# FORMAT    ###################################
# time in seconds (ie. 1.25) | electro note number (ie. 0 means ElectroHit_00, 5 means ElectroHit_05) | Object name (types listed below)

###############################################

# OBJ TYPES ###################################
#   Gold
#   Gold_Med
#   Gold_High
#   Gold_Higher
#   Gold_ExtraHigh
#   Plus_Med
#   Plus_ExtraHigh
#   Gator
#   Fire
#   BreakDancer
#   JackHammer_S
#   JackHammer_SE
#   SportsCar
#   Truck
#   TrashBag
#   TrashCan
#   Crate
#   MailBox
#   ConHorse
#   ExplosiveBarrel
#   Spring
###############################################

Virtual Meat Boy Comment Leftovers#

The file A7CA0F94, which is the first Virtual Meat Boy level, has a few developer comments left in as well.

#should blend to this value for this many seconds, not blend to the next

#-money spent on arcade machine, best $ spent on win

Build Message#

An unused message that's loaded into memory at 0x5A0AA9, only meant for internal testing builds.

Retro City Rampage (Win32)��<Internal Build>

This build was created for:

%s

If this is not you, please contact
rcr@vblank.com with information
regarding where it was obtained.

Developer Credit#

In the ROM files for ROM City Rampage (747E67D6 and C87FC3A3), Brian Provinciano's name is pasted over every area where graphics or code aren't used. This example is from 0x2BBC0.

ÿ¿¿ÀÀà¿¿a_@
þúú���úú�üüüüüô�
¿¿¿¿ÿÛÿ@@@@�<��
úúúúþ¶þü�����x��
Brian.Provincian
o...BBrian.Provi
nciano...BBrian.
Provinciano...BB
rian.Provinciano
...BBrian.Provin
ciano...BBrian.P
rovinciano...BBr
ian.Provinciano.
..BBrian.Provinc
iano...BBrian.Pr
ovinciano...BBri
an.Provinciano..
.BBrian.Provinci

Wii Channel Cutout#

The bottom half of the player's body sprite on the Wii's channel is cut off. This sprite is also noticeably different from the one used in-game.

Wii Channel	playerpose.tpl	In-Game

Text debug mode#

There is a secret text debugging mode. If it is enabled the game will, on startup, try to launch a windows batch script called "maketext.bat". If the file does not exist a message box with error "Failed to process text. Please launch makefiles\\maketext.bat manually." will be displayed, but the game will still launch. Instead of the main menu we are presented with the text debug menu, here we can see every string the game uses in every language. Some entry have a purple speech bubble symbol next to the index number, this mean the text is part of dialog and it is said you can press "ENTER" to see the dialog but this does not seem to work.

Text debug menu in-game

Revisional Differences#

Wii/WiiWare#

Loading Screen#

WiiWare	Wii

Classic Controller#

WiiWare Rev 0	WiiWare Rev 1	Wii Rev 2 (Europe Exclusive)
		N/A

Autosave#

WiiWare Rev 0	WiiWare Rev 1	Wii Rev 2 (Europe Exclusive)

Common Sense Warning#

WiiWare Rev 0	WiiWare Rev 1	Wii Rev 2 (Europe Exclusive)

Copyrights#

WiiWare Rev 0	WiiWare Rev 1	Wii Rev 2 (Europe Exclusive)

Vblank#

WiiWare	Wii

Title Screen#

WiiWare Rev 0	WiiWare Rev 1	Wii Rev 2 (Europe Exclusive)