Rampart

1990 · Strategy · Arcade

Overview

Rampart (1990) is Atari Games' arcade castle game, in which players rebuild their walls with Tetris-like pieces between cannon battles — a precursor of tower defence.

Deep Dive

Play alternates between building and combat. In the building phase, players fit Tetris-like shapes into the gaps in their castle walls; in combat, they fire cannons at ships in the single-player game or at each other's walls in multiplayer. A player who fails to enclose at least one castle by the end of the building phase loses. The single-player game has six fixed levels, and it is played with a trackball.

Developer Story

John Salwitz and Dave Ralston created the game, with music by Don Diekneite and Brad Fuller. Atari Games gave it a limited release in October 1990 and a wide one in February 1991, and it was converted to the NES, Super NES, Mega Drive, Master System, Lynx and many other systems.