MIGHTY MORPHIN POWER RANGERS: THE MOVIE
Original Release: Banpresto, 1995, Genesis
A game mostly based on the movie, but kinda randomly pads out the middle with "flashback" levels based on an arc from the TV show
Mighty Morphin' Power Rangers: The Movie (Genesis, Banpresto, 1995)
Where to Buy: Amazon
How to Emulate: coming soon!
Review by: C. M0use
Beat-em-ups often take the knock of being repetitive and mindless, but the level design with this one is actually one of the worst legitimate examples of that I've ever seen. The first full two levels have the Mighty Morphers fighting nothing at all but the same Oozeman over ... and over ... and over ... and over ... and over. And you don't even really belt-scroll as you fight, the screen holds up to throw an absolute shit ton at you, then you scroll through a bunch of empty territory (with frequently repeating backgrounds) to get to the next freeze point.
There are only mild improvements and changes as the game goes on. Most of the final six levels pull the same pattern with the David Putty Patrol, with only occasional visits from guests such as the S. Sentinels. Who do manage to spice the routine up a little bit, and are actually the first real challenge in the game when all three gang up as the final boss (they're very aggro about back attacks and they hit fairly hard). But then the game introduces a new cop-out when they immediately reappear (in "giant" form) as the Zord boss fight in the following level. Same thing in the next two levels with some annoying disciple of Baxter Stockman.
With four lives to start the game and a bunch of healing tokens and bonus credits dropped by the enemies, along with a huge life bar, the biggest challenge in the game is actually that the level timer can run out on you as you're chewing through the insane amount of clones you have to fight. This seems to have different effects on different levels, though. In the first fight against Baxter Samurai I ran out of time, and apparently just won on points as he retreated and let me continue on my way. The Zord fights that close out every second or third level are a little more challenging as you sometimes fight two foes back-to-back with no chance to heal, but nothing in the game is really very tough.
It's a weird title overall, polished in its presentation, the Rangers have a bunch of moves and each has their own little set of voice clips, everything looks good, the music is pretty good ... but the level and enemy design is just incredibly repetitive, to the point it's hard to believe an otherwise professional team put this together. It kinda reminded me a lot of Banpresto's Sailor Moon beat-em-up for the Genesis/SNES in that way, except that title was better overall and had more variety than this ... also two completely different developers.
To end on a side note, one of the big gripes about the movie seemed to be that it subbed out a bunch of the original TV show cast (who were in contract disputes at the time) ... an interesting element of this one is that though it uses the movie setting, it seems to sub in the original TV actors.
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