Have you ever just wanted to rampage all over 8-bit worlds, just like you can rampage all over modern-day 3-D worlds in the Grand Theft Auto series? Have you ever wanted to make fun of '80s culture, both on and off the small screen? Have you ever sat down and thought, "I wanna be bad enough to defeat the evil good guys?" (The last three words are from actual ad copy for this game.) If so, then it's high time you got ready for the upcoming Retro City Rampage, coming soon to your console or Windows box of choice, via GOG.com, Steam or its own Web site.

The story casts the player as The Player, whose black leather jacket and slicked-back hair have joined him out on a friendly day in the finest Grand Theft Auto tradition. You've been stealing cars and killing dudes all over the streets of Theftopolis. Naturally, this gets messed when the Evil Good Guys try to stop him from being a murderous psychopathic criminal. He can't put up with that and decided to go on a rampage, complete with 50 missions, every one of them a parody.

In just 10 minutes of sample play, The Player was sent to the past in a not-TARDIS, picked up by not-Doc Brown to go Not-Back-To-The-Future, helped not-Solid-Snake (complete with true-to-the-NES horrific translations, as he "feel" asleep indeed) take out a base in a short stealth segment, and returned a not-Flux-Capacitor picked up on the way to not-Doc-Brown. Obviously, they need help building a new time machine while shooting and beating up people, jacking a few cars, and generally being All Sandbox Criminal Type in an 8-bit world full of small sight gags.

Retro City Rampage was originally a one-man experiment in porting Grand Theft Auto III to the NES, and it shows. With a three-quarters, top-down perspective, Retro City Rampage fills Theftopolis to the brim with sight gags in a classic color array and a limited pixel count. It even simulates an old TV around the edges to stick to classic proportions. With that said, the game's development on modern systems allows for a lot of chaos on-screen. Bullets from your guns and those of the Evil Good Guys can fill the screen. All of this with no frame rate drop, as the game runs at 60 frames per second without a hitch.

That isn't even including the two-and-a-half hours of chiptune soundtrack, though sadly, the E3 floor wasn't conducive to hearing a lot of it.

If you are ready to be a real Bad Dude in the most radical stretches of old-school worlds, Retro City Rampage's release could be your chance to be more awesome when it drops this summer.