Mighty Morphin' Power Rangers

"You haven't seen the bottom of the barrel till you've been here........"

In the vast, wonderful land that is videogaming, one could pontentially take a long, long trip exclusively through those games considered "strange" by most. Certainly you would stumble upon your Parappas, your dating sims, your horse racing, and your strip Mahjongg games. But the real truth in bizarreness lies within one of the forgotten systems.....

The Sega CD. It was considered a mistake by most due to its heavy reliance on FMV games and rehashes. Here we have both of those, coupled with the most hideous licensing mistake ever.

A couple years ago, circa 1992 or so, that aforementioned system was a coveted item to the average kid who did not have the three hundred dollars for it and didn't really want to save them up. So a Sega CD in the household of, say, the nine-year-old kid I was at the time, was unheard of. Bad thing for a Power Rangers game. Honestly now, most of the people who owned Sega CDs were adults. How many of them wanted to play something so blatantly a kid's game as this? No, there were other bad FMV games for the average Sega CD owner to play. So, in an event anybody could see coming, the game sat on the shelves unwanted and unloved. To prove this point, I will use my copy of the game. Released 1994, this game is actually the original first printing of the game, as it shows no signs of having been re-released. Even all the outdated Power Ranger fan club information is included. The game itself was bought in a Toys R' Us, being the eighth or so copy left. The Power Rangers and the Sega CD were not a match that was meant to exist.

On to the game itself. The obvious mistake of the Sega CD platform was the overuse of FMV games, and this was no different. The game is a Dragon's Lair ripoff. If you are going to rip off a videogame, don't make it Dragon's Lair. That would be a bad idea. There isn't a game out there with less gameplay. What Dragon's Lair relied on was basically the flash of the great animation that played ingame. Power Rangers takes this single, solitary high point and beats it into the ground with a steel chair. The video used is recycled from various episodes of the TV series and is horribly grainy. While aformentioned terrible video is playing, the player is expected to hit the buttons at various points to make the Power Rangers do something. This is where the game loses every last shred of its credibility. Even if you don't press the button, the Power Rangers will still do whatever they were supposed to do. You see, having been recycled television episodes, the levels are only really going one way. No extra footage was filmed for the game, so you don't die in numerous interesting ways, like in the old laserdisc games. Instead, a life bar moves down every time you press the wrong button or button mash when there is no reason to do so.

Ironically enough, mashing is exactly what the game's target audience is bound to do, that is if any of them ever actually managed finding a copy. If you are to lose, or just end the game quickly and painlessly by mashing, you are treated to the exact same death sequence every time. For some odd reason, the Power Rangers' giant robots have been thrown into a river of molten lava. They then go on to philosophize about how that robot was a part of them. Then we all cry. The abruptness of this scene, plus the fact that it can appear in situations where the giant robots are nowhere to be found, just makes the game seem even dumber than it already is.

The review wouldn't be complete without a mention of the episodes themselves. The junk that entranced a million kids back in the olden days of the early nineties. The intro contains thatsnappy Go-Go Power Rangers theme, and the massively dumb line:

"We need a group of teenagers with attitude!!"

The game follows the ungodly lame exploits of the Power Rangers for about seven episodes or so. They open with a thanfully skippable scene of them, ahem, "acting", and then into the boring action scene, and then they turn into the Power Rangers, and then into the Really Big Robot Thingamabob Of Doom. This is the only scene truly enjoyable, as it is just great to see a man stumble about in an outfit made out of cardboard boxes swinging around a plastic Blazing Sword. As for the rest of the episodes, they're all really the same, that is, if one can stomach multiple Power Ranger episodes at the same time.

In the end, your enjoyment of this game is directly proportional to a couple of things. First off, age. Under 5 will get a huge kick out of it. Let them play this instead of Resident Evil next time family visits. Second, ability to mock bad television. This game is an episode of Mystery Science Theater 3K waiting to happen. Third, a strong stomach. A really strong stomach. Either that, or you buy a giant bottle of Pepto when you buy this thing. That might run you more than the game, though. Your choice, one less game in the collection, or every digestive illness in creation. Choose wisely.

Reviewer's Score: 1/10, Originally Posted: 11/01/99, Updated 11/01/99