“Let’s make a 90s video game!” This sounds like a pretty good idea to us at Digital Eclipse in 2022, when the first seeds of Mighty Morphin Power Rangers: Rita’s Rewind has taken root.
Arcade video games were in full swing when MMPR launched in 1993. The 16-bit home era was well underway, and the original PlayStation was still a year away from release in Japan, so the Coin-operated games still rake in tons of tokens. So if we want to give the Power Rangers the high-energy arcade game they always deserved but never got, let’s create the ultimate version of the game that never existed.
The result is Mighty Morphin Power Rangers: Rita’s Rewind, a love letter to the series that launches December 10 on PS5 and PS4. We hinted at the game being more than just a fighting game when we announced the project this past summer, and with around 70% of the gameplay focused on defeating Rita’s army of Putty Patrollers Repulsa, anyone who wants to clean house with melee attacks and combos should feel very comfortable. The remaining gameplay is inspired by Sega’s innovative hyper-scale games, such as Space Harrier and Out Run. Before polygons ruled the earth, these games simulated 3D movement with a series of fast-moving 2D models. They’re designed to deliver fast-scrolling, in-your-face action, and we think they’ll be a perfect way to help MMPR fans take down some of the Rangers’ most famous enemies.
Case in point: Players can look forward to traveling through the canyons and rooftops of Angel Grove in the first segment of Rita’s Rewind, learning about the twisty time travel plot and encountering villains. The feud simply shouldn’t have appeared so early in Rangers history. But after fighting and defeating Goldar, Rita Repulsa predictably threw her magic wand down from the moon palace to give her champion a second chance – and turn him into a giant. the size of a skyscraper.
That’s when super-scale gameplay comes into play. Each Ranger jumps into their appropriate Dinozord and charges into the Z-axis in hot pursuit, blasting every obstacle and enemy with powered-up weapons like missiles and dual lasers. The gameplay really draws on Sega’s heritage, going back to games like Galaxy Force and After Burner – constant movement, waves of stubborn enemies and powerful attacks to knock them out of the way your.
Once Goldar is captured, gameplay switches back to a first-person fighting game, with the Power Rangers forming the mighty Megazord to take on the boss head-on. It’s his face versus your fist, again using the 2.5D visual approach commonly found in classic video games. Each player has the opportunity to take down the boss, contribute whatever they can to the cause, and ultimately defeat the boss using the Power Rangers’ ultimate weapon: teamwork.
Combining all these different genres seemed like the right thing to do to keep Rita’s Rewind fresh, but it was also a fun thing for us. We love the brawls, but they can get repetitive; We hope that the combination of racing, explosions and kicks will make Rita’s Rewind an attractive game for players who have always dreamed of what Jason, Trini, Zack, Billy and Kimberly would be like. What if they walked into a video game in the mid-1990s.
In fact, one of the concepts that drives much of what we do at Digital Eclipse is the desire to create games the way you remember them when you played them, even if your memories have warped those experiences. a little sweeter and more interesting than the real thing. back in the day. Our goal with Rita’s Rewind was to create a game that could exist and certainly should have existed, but probably wouldn’t have with all this diversity in one place. Since we’ve had the benefit of looking at video games in the rearview mirror for 30 years, we’re taking advantage of that to try to deliver something better than you might remember.
Rita’s Rewind launches on PS5 and PS4 on December 10, and you can pre-order it now. When that day comes, we hope you’ll enjoy going back to the 1990s with us, both for the Power Rangers history and the arcade gameplay – even if it’s your first time visiting.
