Some games I played in 2024: Mighty Morphin’ Power Rangers: Rita’s Rewind
While I enjoy a good brawler, I tend to stick to the ones I’m comfortable with, but pal ShaolinTurtle very much keeps up with what’s hip and happening, and had been keeping tabs on Mighty Morphin’ Power Rangers: Rita’s Rewind. Ever since Shredder’s Revenge, there’s been a whole swathe of pixelated beat-em-ups based on retro properties — the Karate Kid, Toxic Crusaders, G.I. Joe, even Jay & Silent Bob… and no doubt more I’m forgetting, there’s so flippin’ many!
What made Rita’s Rewind stand out is that it showed more than just standard brawling — shooting galleries, auto-runner vehicle sequences ala Konami’s G.I. Joe arcade game, and even Punch-Out style Megazord battles. It certainly got my attention!
Full disclosure, I did not purchase this game, I simply took part via Steam Remote Play, and have not been back to the game since. My positivity and defence of it might come from not paying for the experience…! The game’s since announced major updates to remedy quirks and feedback, so what I describe is likely a thing of the past.
Shredder’s Revenge made a splash for a variety of reasons: not just because folks lap up stuff based on the TMNT cartoon like nobody’s business, but it looked slick, was bursting with personality, and was also extremely easy to pick-up-and-play. It optimised the formula established by Konami’s arcade instalments with a teensy bit of flourish, but otherwise is very much a casual game that anyone can hop into with very little barrier of entry.
So it makes sense that Rita’s Rewind is also a very breezy brawler. You’ve got your basic combos, different attacks performed by dashing, jumping or falling, and a screen-clearing special you can activate once you’ve built up metre (either by bashing baddies or taunting), in addition to a dodge and double jump. You can also grab and throw enemies, but it’s hard to do reliably, to the point where its crowd-clearing properties are hard to utilise. When it works, it works, but when it doesn’t…!
What won me over were the vehicle sections, running and gunning into the background with SEGA-style super-scaler effects. Presentation-wise, it is absolutely boffo. I love it. There’s not many games doing this stuff any more — because in all fairness, why would they? — but Digital Eclipse nail the vibe.
Its mixture of hand-drawn and prerendered sprites next to low-poly 3D well and truly pops, and as a studio who’ve made their name in respecting and replicating the old-school, it excellently captures the ‘wow’ factor of seeing these big dumb ’90s spectacles, like Star Wars Trilogy Arcade and the like.
Likewise, the Megazord battles take the pattern-driven react-and-respond cadence of Punch-Out but with a frenetic first-person perspective, ducking and weaving between fireballs as you get close enough to clobber them. In multi-player every participant takes turns piloting the mech, round robin style, swapping out after every hit to either opponent.
Playing with input lag on Steam Remote Play does this make a uniquely hellish experience, having to predict where to dodge on account of the half-second of input lag, but learning from each other and shouting out the patterns you’ve picked up on is a great group experience.
The constant problem with the game is… it drags. Everything feels that teensy bit belaboured, from the length of the levels, to how many hits enemies soak up, even the amount of ‘hit-stop’ when landing blows. There’s always just one wave too many, and it all compounds in an experience that’s constantly on the verge of wearing out its welcome. In fairness, my one session with the game was on “Headache” difficulty, so of course it’s going to ramp things up, but the balance and tuning across the board is somewhat uneven.
The brawling portion of the game is handled well, since it’s a genre still well-represented that folks know the dos and do-nots by now. The lack of weapons or objects you can carry, or even a ‘panic’ get-these-dudes-away-from-me attack is a bit odd, limiting your crowd control options to the extremely unreliable throw mechanic, but it’s hardly a deal breaker.
There are complaints the game is sluggish in single-player, and I can definitely see that. Playing with a full team, you’d want to be spread across both halves of the screen to clobber enemies entering from either side — everyone converging on them just means you have to constantly wade back and forth to every incoming assailant. It’s probably the biggest playing field I’ve seen in a 2D brawler, but perhaps hasn’t the speed or movement options to facilitate it.
It’s got foibles, but I’d call it a game in need of tuning more than anything. Things like enemies with single-frame reactions, or non-lethal fall damage that still empties your entire special gauge, it’s quirks that gave the game an unusual meta. Some bosses do absorb so much damage it’s hard to tell what difficulty or number of players they’re tuned for, but it’s by no means a broken game.
It’s the other sections where the balance really feels at odds. These more arcade-y segments put all their chips on whiz-bang spectacle, throwing clarity out the window: Explosions, bullets, dust and debris are flying all over the place, to the point where you’ve no bloody idea what you’re looking at, resulting in friends walking off cliffs or getting mown down by incoming traffic. Even your special attack is so big and blinding you can barely see what you’re aiming at…!
If these hazards just knocked off a sliver of health like in the brawler stages, that’d be fine, but instead they eat an entire life, meaning total party wipes come shockingly easily…! Shaolin and I were the sole survivors of the bridge gauntlet in the final shooter stage, and I only held out because Kimberly is the only character to have a flying Zord, meaning she’s exempt from any and all platforming challenges.
Damage output is the real killer in these portions; it’s the one portion of the game with weapon pickups, yet you’re starved of them when you truly need them. Fighting the Green Ranger’s Dragonzord on my lonesome and watching its health bar go down a pixel what felt like every ten seconds was… an experience. I’m shocked that lock-on isn’t the default in these sections, as avoiding the obstacles is the real challenge — trying to aim at the tiny skittering target behind the visual clutter feels like a wrinkle it could do without.
Meanwhile, the Megazord battles don’t even have fail states! You can get clobbered by the same attack endlessly, but it’ll just keep going. I figure this is in-line with the Megazord fights on the show as essentially a victory lap; to kick you out for sucking too bad would just be mean. It does mean there isn’t a game over screen for everyone to unwind and regroup, everyone’s just taking turns eating fireballs without reprieve.
As alluded to earlier, brawlers have had a strong legacy and resurgence for its ‘language’ to be established, to study what works and what doesn’t, and for players to know what they’re getting into. This into-the-screen auto-scrolling shooter malarkey… not really an established genre! Not something we’ve seen in a hell of a long time! The fact we still call them Space Harrier-likes or Star Fox clones is kinda telling for its prevalence, innit.
Despite the shocking amount of prerelease hype, Steam reviews seemed ignorant to these modes and derided them as distracting roadblocks that got in the way of their beating and upping. I do think the disparity between the modes is a strike against them; the shocking gulf in damage output, the different means of filling your special gauge, how power-ups aren’t even a factor outside of vehicle sections… and the lack of “how to play” screen means you get thrown in the deep end. I’ve only had one attack button ’til now, and I’ve got barely a few seconds to figure out what’s my other punch as a Megazord!
It’s all a bit wibbly-wobbly, but I respect the moxie; it’s setting its sights higher than simple brawling, and looking to truly embody the arcade experience, chaotic spectacle and all. Which is why the savaging received was so depressing, a lot of extremely unfair and hyperbolic remarks thrown its way.
Some of them I will concede did make a shaky launch. The skew-whiff online system where only two games could connect was bad, and tanked a lot of interest in the console ports; why settle for that when Steam Remote Play can bypass it? And the $35 price tag is hard to justify when bigger, more established brawlers were ten to fifteen dollars cheaper. Gotta pay the Hasbro tax!
While every character playing identically is a valid criticism, it seems odd levying that against it when Shredder’s Revenge is just as guilty. Crying and moaning about its sluggishness is hard to accept when nobody’s convinced me their precious Scott Pilgrim isn’t like molasses either. Who could’ve expected the Power Rangers fandom to have bad opinions?
The genre has come into its own as crowd pleasers, something you can happily play with friends of differing skill levels, but hopefully with enough difficulty options and depth to allow richer play. Power Rangers definitely leans into the pick-up-and-play aspect, offering more of a thrill ride than something mechanically complex, and it’s a bummer seeing folks react so unpleasantly to that.
I’m glad I played it. Getting to take part in a full 6-player game really sold the highs it has to offer, and as Digital Eclipse’s first all-original product (not a bonus game included in a retro compilation) , it’s a strong showing. It’s undeniably unbalanced, but given how it has to juggle gameplay balance across multiple modes and single and multi-player, it’s only natural…! Working under Hasbro mandates can’t have been fun either.
But it’s making bold and interesting choices that can have the wrinkles ironed out in patches; they’re hardly irredeemable missteps. I hope the team aren’t deterred from these kinds of projects in future, as I’d love to see more of them.
As its own product, though… well, Shredder’s Revenge is better value for money, simple as that! As said at the start, I tend to stick to what I know, and I can’t see myself being in a rush to return to it, but I did enjoy my time with Rita’s Revenge and hope it leads to promising new things.
