Sorry for the delay on this review but as I like to play the games on the original hardware a few issues popped up with the mailing of the game but enough excuses from me. Here is my review for the Genesis/Mega Drive version of the Mighty Morphin Power Rangers game.
The version on this console is a 1 on 1 fighting game like the popular Street Fighter II and Mortal Kombat at the time and developed by the hands Banpresto (now part of Namco Bandai). The 1 player Scenario Mode acts as the main story with you taking control of one the main rangers fighting against a bad guy and after the first round victory it is time to fight them in the Megazord.
To start with only the five original rangers are available in scenario mode but after defeating the evil Green Ranger in the second stage he becomes playable along with his Dragonzord. Each playable character has two basic attacks and a set of different special moves. The A button does a normal attack, B does a fierce attack, the direction pad moves your character while double tapping cause you to dash and combining the button causes different combos.
Each Ranger section of the fight takes place on the same bridge stage which seems very lazy to me but each Megazord battle has its own stage design from a field to the moon and are all well designed. The character sprites are all unique and each character has a unique move list that reflects them. Annoyingly there are black circles meant to be shadow which would have worked if they didn’t keep flashing. But the graphics as a whole look excellent.
The music other than the rendition of the main theme doesn’t stand out to me. The cut-scenes between fights are well done for the time and the Megazord forming is a pleasure to watch. Plus Rita saying “You made my gnarly monster fall, now you’ll pay when he gets tall!” is fantastically cheesy. The great thing is there is an adjustable difficulty level using numbers so nearly anyone can play. There is also a good amount of combo attacks to keep the game interesting but may seem shallow to big fans of fighters.
GRADE
While I think this would be a fun game for anyone into Power Rangers I can’t see this entertaining anyone else for a good amount of time. As a fighting game I think this would be great for any novice out there but if you have played a number of these games you might feel this game is a little lazy with re-used stages and short 1 player mode. The game looks fantastic for the genesis, the gameplay will only keep the bigger PR fans interested. Given more time this game would have been great but just feels like a cash-in for Power Rangers and fighting game. 3/5
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