Rampart was the OG tower defense game, released for several older consoles. The game was primarily known for its 2/3 player mode, where the singleplayer contained only 7 levels. However, the SNES version of the game contained an extensive singleplayer campaign with just under 50 levels. The game follows a 3-phase system: battle > repair > place cannons > battle. Failing to build a wall around a castle results in losing a life, where destroying all enemy ships completes the level.
In this TAS, I complete the game in Super mode (larger maps, more cannon types, map obstacles), on Veteran maps (larger and more awkwardly shaped maps), and on Tough difficulty (less build time, more map obstacles, ships move very fast and sporadically). This run, while fast, does not aim for speed. Placing a piece, moving the camera, and capturing land all generate lag frames and extend the game's timer, but I still do them. It would be fastest to do almost nothing during the build phases, and that would be boring (my projected fastest time with ideal lag reduction would be somewhere around 25 minutes).
- Playaround - contains major speed/entertainment tradeoffs
- Plays on hardest difficulty
- Manipulates luck
Ships move very fast and at random. I have tried my best to manipulate them into moving the way I want, but you can see me struggle with this and even miss some shots in the later levels. You'll successfully manipulate one, and then you'll shoot at another ship and mess up the manipulation, making the ship move differently and causing a miss. Speaking of ships, some will focus only on firing the cannon at your walls, some will dock at your shore and release grunts (the little cannons on wheels), and the red ships will move sporadically and fire enhanced cannonballs, creating fire squares that cannot be built on for several rounds.
Depending on how many castles you've surrounded, you receive more cannons. The default cannon is the best for singleplayer, but there's also an enhanced cannon (costs the same as 3 normal cannons but only deals 2 damage a shot, not worth it in singleplayer) and a propaganda blimp (turns a ship to your side, still needs to be destroyed to win the level).
Surrounding a body of water will convert it into land. This might be a bug. Placing a wall on a gold square will turn it into a grunt. I'm sure this one's a bug. Super mode starts on level 2 for some reason.
Levels with ships will always start with the same number of them and cannot be manipulated. However, you CAN manipulate your next piece in the building phase by stalling the placement of your current piece by any number of frames. I use this a lot.
- Level 2: destroy all enemy ships.
- Level 3: destroy the enemy barge. All cannons on it need to be destroyed for it to sink.
- Level 4: be greedy - surround as much land as you can to get more score.
- Level 5, 6: destroy all enemy ships.
- Level 7: defeat the kraken - make it enter the water 12 times to win. It doesn't matter how many times you hit it at once, it will always enter the water when hit.
- Level 8: be greedy.
- Level 9, 10, 11: destroy all enemy ships.
- Level 12: be greedy. I wanted to take some creative liberty here, hopefully you can actually tell what I drew.
- Level 13, 14, 15: destroy all enemy ships.
- Level 16: destroy the boss ship. From what I can tell, any damage to it is purely cosmetic and it needs to be hit 25 times to go down.
EDIT: I messed around with the pre-game settings, and it seems that playing on Super mode with Recruit maps (instead of Veteran) starts you on level 1, and then goes to the levels shown here. Meaning that the only difference between recruit and veteran super maps is that veteran skips the first one. Thankfully the level only has 4 enemy ships to start, meaning it would be over in a single battle phase and not move onto the building phase (so you aren't missing any ultra sick speed building on it). In case you're curious, here's what level 1 looks like:
Memory: I actually dig this TAS. The building phases have some good creativity in them and even in some of the shooting phases there were some fun leading shots. The audience enjoyed it too.
Accepting to Moons.
