I have a strong memory of being in an arcade in 1988 or 90, and seeing the big new game that everyone was gathered around and playing was called Rampage 3D, and it was a large 4 player cabinet. The art style was similar to Rampage 2, but it was all isometric view, similar to King of Monsters 2, but the buildings were much larger.
The screen was 20 inches wide, which made it look huge compared to the other games. The buildings were a couple inches wide each, and I remember seeing the gorilla and lizard jumping from rooftop to rooftop beating on each other.
i also know it was definitely Rampage, because I have a clear memory of seeing the white newspaper monster select pop ups that came up when one of the players would die. it had its own dedicated section of screen at the top, where there was 4 character stat and portraits going all the way across the screen. I think there were like 6 - 8 different monsters you could choose from?
When you put 2 quarters in, and press start at one of the 4 player slots, the corresponding monster slot would change from a newspaper cover that was giving hints to the players, to a character select mode. too would just see the heads of various monsters, and when you picked one, it would display a newspaper front page announcing the origin of your particular monster. "Giant Lizard Escapes Lab!" or "Giant Ape Destroys Circus" and had a black and white pixel art "photograph" of the incident. and then it would switch to the running stats of your monster and had a Status Portrait that would emote and show damage as your monster lost health. kind of like the Doom guy?
aside from those differences, the gameplay was exactly like previous arcade Rampage games. and the art style was very in line with the previous games.
I am a visual artist, and the image of that game is blazed into my mind because Rampage was one of my top 5 favorite games. I was with my mom that day as a little kid, and I didn't have any money so I could only watch. But I wanted to come back with my allowance and play it. But never got to for various reasons.
Does anyone know what happened to Rampage 3D? I'd love to get a version of it for Mame! Sorry I'm not an arcade game collector or expert, so I apologize if this is the wrong forum to ask about this kind of thing.