Retro City Rampage is a 2D action-adventure game with heavy focus on the parody of pop-culture, retro video games, and open-world action-adventure genre. The story follows The Player, a criminal who works for a crime syndicate. One day he steals a time-traveling telephone booth that sends him several decades into the future. Shortly after his time-machine breaks and now with the help of Doc Choc, a time-traveler and Emmett Brown parody, he seeks for the parts to repair the booth.
The gameplay can be described as if original GTA was ported onto the 16-bit console. It mostly has a top-down perspective with several 2D side-scrolling transitions. The game is set in the big open city which player can freely explore. The game has many story missions, side missions and challenges. Like in GTA games, violent actions made by the player can attract police that would try to neutralize him. The wide a range of weapons and tools can be acquired in shops, as rewards or from enemies.
The DX version was initially released for Nintendo 3DS via eShop. This version rebalanced weapons, has several gameplay tweaks and features the “prototype” version of the game which was first made as NES ROM.