A 1986 arcade game from Bally Midway.
The idea is simple. The "heroes" of the game are Really Big Animals who used to be just normal people, but something mutantaneous happened to them one day: George, who mutated after eating some megavitamins, is a giant gorilla similar to King Kong, Lizzie, who previously bathed in a radioactive lake, is a giant lizard sort of similar to Godzilla, and third is an unique variety, a giant wolf (naturally, my personal favorite =) called Ralph (with an exclamation point after the name, if we are to properly spell it) who ate some pretty unusual sausages.
Your job in the game, as one of these big creatures, is to wreck all buildings of a city. You can eat various things in the game to get bonuses - sometimes these effects are pretty fun (eat a stick of dynamite and your monster coughs fire for some time). You can also terrorize the National Guard (who desperately tries to shoot you from foot, helicopters, tanks and from the windows of the buildings), eat people - even your coplayers after they turn back to normal people when they die, and push around vehicles (two players can also play ping-pong with a tram along the rails). And newspapers show amazing headlines between the levels...
Actually winning the game is absurdly hard - home versions are easier to beat. The game is obviously more intended to relieve stress in small doses...
- The arcade game reportedly has 768 days; This is going to require a lot of patience, not to even mention coins. =)
- Morgon77 tells me that Atari Lynx version was winnable after 100 levels - a scientist had found a cure for this interesting transformation.
- Chris-O says NES version ends after around 127 or 128 days, with a congratulatory message after Lizzie knocks California off the map. (Or Hawaii, as Servo5678 says with a hint of hesitation. Anyone knows for sure?)
So, it can get boring in MAME if you keep getting more credits (so, please, use the '5' button very sparingly for maximum enjoyment =).
All levels are the same style, except the background graphics can change a bit depending on which part of the world the city you wreck is...
Overall, the game is definitely a classic, a very humorous version of all gigantic monster movies and an inspirator to many followers - and sequels. Some of the recent sequels include Rampage World Tour series and the loosely related Rampage Puzzle Attack.
The arcade game runs with two CPUs, according to MAME - a Z80 for game, and 68000 for sound.
There's also some place in FurryMUCK that has this game - but with the twist that the characters are actually entering the game, instead... I was Ralph =)
Commodore 64: Several versions exist for home computers. I didn't like the Commodore 64 version that much, mostly because C64 had only one fire button and it degraded this game's playability very much. The graphics aren't that great either, Ralph looks like a rat. However, the menu music (by Russell Lieblich) is really good (better than the one that is missing from the arcade version, anyway =), and is among one of my favorite SIDtunes.
Sources:
http://www.klov.com/R/Rampage.html
The information given by MAME