Building, Defending the Fortress

As arcade games go, Electronic Arts’ “Rampart” is pretty good. It’s fast, anxiety inducing and too often over faster than you think is fair. It’s all that the designers of video games could desire in their endless efforts to vacuum quarters from the jeans pockets of teen-agers.

Rule of thumb: Computers aren’t made for video games. A PC works--well in this case--but using it to play a game like “Rampart” is like driving a Grand Prix race car to the corner market.

That said, “Rampart” is worth its weight in loose change. You build and defend a fortress from opposing armies or navies. The game is designed for one to three players, and the rules of engagement change significantly when you switch from playing the computer to playing another human.

In the basic game, the computer’s ships bombard your fortress from offshore as you pummel them back with your massive shore batteries. When a round ends, you have just about 30 seconds to repair your walls before the bombing begins anew. That’s much harder than it sounds. The mastery of “Rampart”--and the crux of the game--lies in your ability to manipulate the random selection of geometric pieces that make up the wall. In the multiple-player modes, the means of destruction change, but the blast-’em-build-’em-back ethic of this electronic warfare remains.

As a video arcade game “Rampart” has a lot going for it and, even as a computer game, it might have some appeal to younger players who haven’t graduated to the more sophisticated realms of gaming. But it’s not likely to satisfy experienced game players. And it could leave novices wondering why they dropped 8,000 quarters on a computer.

Rampart

Rating: ***

IBM and compatibles; hard drive required. List: $49.95.

Computer games are rated on a five-star system, from one star for poor to five for excellent.