We Built This (Retro) City: VBlank on RCR’s eight-year history, soundtrack talent

Unveiled earlier this month, Retro City Rampage is a love letter to 8-bit games and 80s/90s pop culture, written on top-down Grand Theft Auto stationary and addressed to WiiWare. The downloadable title has you exploring an open world, taking on missions, and stumbling over dozens of gags appealing to the NES generation – those kids who grew up on ninja turtles and Snoop’s Doggystyle album.

We spoke with the man behind Retro City Rampage, VBlank’s Brian Provinciano, and found out how he turned an NES homebrew project he started tinkering with eight years ago into a commercial WiiWare title, and the composers he’s enlisted for the game’s soundtrack (you’re sure to recognize at least one of them!).

As fans who’ve followed Retro City Rampage might know, the game started as an homage to Grand Theft Auto III, appropriately titled Grand Theftendo. It took place in Portland and replaced the PS2 title’s 3D graphics with 8-bit sprites. Provinciano explains, “The title aimed at recreating a GTA III experience on the actual 8-bit console”

“Its development reached the point where you could roam around the entire populated city, use weapons, grab cars, collect hidden packages and play some simple missions – so it was fully running. In the big picture, though, that’s really only about 5 percent of a complete game.”

He continues, “Taking it from there to a full game like you see today is where the real work begins. From the added functionality for the varied missions, detailing AI, tuning the controls, adding tutorials, menus, to improving the tools, there’s a lot past that.”

His goal for Grand Theftendo was to deliver a 2D 8-bit experience that was functionally equivalent to the 3D Grand Theft Auto III, which he believes he achieved. Provinciano’s focus eventually shifted some time around 2005, though: “I no longer wanted to impress the world with a technological feat but instead with something that’s just so fun to play, you can’t put it down.”

So, he transformed the project into what eventually became Retro City Rampage, no longer constraining himself to the NES’s hardware or Grand Theft Auto III’s tone.

“The decision to make an original game and leave everything behind was the best possible one I could’ve made,” says the developer. “I created an outlet for my creativity, and the freedom to do anything. It was then when I began rewriting everything in a non-hardware specific manner, building new tools which would streamline development, and getting increasingly more ambitious. After all, I now had the freedom to do anything!”

“From the story to the tech, as everything began nearing the finish line, it became more and more exciting! As weapons or power-ups went in, ideas sprung up for new missions. As the characters progressed, their dialogue began writing itself. The game itself pulls you ‘into the zone’, and more ideas than you know what to do with style flying around!”

Though Provinciano mostly worked on the game by himself during his spare time (he turned Retro City Rampage into his full-time job around a year ago), creating the artwork, AI, tools, menus, and everything else from scratch, he’s depended on three composers for the soundtrack and sound effects, two of which he’s named: industry veteran Leonard Paul and Jake “Virt” Kaufman!

“I also contracted some additional art from a couple others – primarily for vehicles and cutscenes, and had a couple more artists work on the poster/box art. It’s also received a lot of attention from playtesters including [1UP’s] Frank Cifaldi, who’s given a lot of great feedback on its design and story, even tossed in some ideas of his own.”

Stay tuned for part two of our interview with Retro City Rampage dev Brian Provinciano, in which we share new screenshots and talk about the game’s vehicles, Grand Theft Auto: Chinatown Wars, and lots of 8-bit junk!

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