Remake This: Redneck Rampage

The post-Duke Nukem era was a time when loads of developers went absolutely crazy with 3D Realms’ BUILD engine, and while there was a whole variety of average, throwaway nonsense proferred up from the depths of developmental fervour, some of them were genuinely entertaining products that pushed use of the low-tech, 2.5 engine a little further on.

1997′s Redneck Rampage was one such solid effort. Developed by Xatrix Entertainment (who later became mission pack-tastic Gray Matter), it used Duke Nukem 3D’s bad taste factor as a starting point a good few extra miles round the track.

Drinking moonshine, eating moon pie, shooting up angry pigs you find lounging around in the bedrooms of the tumbledown ranch shacks you’ll explore.

There was a boss called Ass Face, and even a downloadable “Cuss Pack” to add even more swearing, as Arkansas hillbillies Leonard and Bubba shotgunned their way through their local area, mowing down conveniently labelled “clones” of their friends and neighbours, who’d been created by an invading alien force.

This, of course, was a convenient conceit to basically let you blow up lots of buck-toothed, goggle-eyed hicks without causing too much political controversy.

Not particularly inventive so far, perhaps, but our favourite feature of Redneck Rampage was its rather unique treatment of inventory powerups. If you ate too much pie, you’d fart a lot, which would alert enemies to your presence. If you drank too much booze, you’d get drunk, causing your view (and, obviously, accuracy) to lurch around increasingly erratically, until in the end you’d fall over completely, open to attack for a few seconds of tense unconsciousness.

For XBLA? Just run it through the Duke Nukem conversion machine. That handy rewind feature would be pretty useful for letting us undo those whisky-related excesses, too.