A licensed game that turned out better than expected...
I played this game back when it first came out. I couldn't have been no more than 8 years old. Power Rangers was all the rage. Everybody watched, and the people who didn't, no one really cared about. So naturally I got my hands on this game, and immediately went to playing it.
Years later, I started reliving my childhood and playing SNES games again, and this could still hold up.
Despite the release date, this game is based on the first season of the original Power Rangers series. That means that all five of the original cast members are represented here: Jason, Zack, Trini, Billy, and Kimberly. Rita Repulsa wants to conquer Earth so you pick a ranger and head through 6 levels, defeating waves of putties and monster bosses.
Sounds simple, right? And it is. MMPR is a beat 'em up, but not entirely in the traditional sense. The game is strictly 2D sidescrolling. There's no illusion of depth or a y-axis. You only go left and right. But it strangely works for this game.
Your options are just as simplistic. Though the character you pick attacks differently, everyone has one 3-4 hit combo. You can also jump and crouch. There's not a lot to do there but you'll quickly find yourself using all of these maneuvers to survive later on in the game, when enemies start using ranged weapons and throwing projectiles at you. When you morph into a ranger, you're given much more to do. You now have a weapon, you can throw objects, climb onto things, jump off of walls and even propel yourself off of people's heads. Even better, you have a power attack which varies from the ranger to ranger, such as the blue ranger slapping enemies around by spinning his trident or the pink ranger shooting an arrow. There's also a bomb attack that's a fullscreen attack that kills everything. Needless to say, turning into a ranger is usually the highlight of a level.
The actual levels themselves are broken down into two halves. The first half, you'll run around in your human form fighting putties until you reach the end of that portion. Once you do, you'll see the boss for the first time and morph on sight, then chase them to the second half of the level. Here you'll usually do more fighting, but the level layout tends to change to reflect your new ranger abilities. And this is one of the best parts of the game: you're never doing one thing for too long. Just when you think you've had enough of putties, you morph and go to the next section which starts to play out like a platformer, so while you're climbing to the top, things are attacking you from all sides. There's also the final level, where you get control of the Megazord, which is a nice change of pace and a good way to end the game.
Graphics are pretty much okay. The human sprites look just like their TV counterparts (though Trini's breasts seem to have grown a cup size or two) and even fight like them, so Zack does his breakdance fighting and all. My main gripe was with the rangers and the putties. The rangers all share the same sprite, just recolored to fit them. But the ranger sprite is massively muscular and masculine...which doesn't work for the females since they are supposed to have an alternate costume that fits their physique. So the pink ranger looks like a ripped man running around in a tight pink suit! They also share some of the same animations regardless of their weapon, so the pink ranger ends up swinging her bow around like the red ranger's sword. The palette swapping technique plagues the putties too. Instead of bringing in more monsters from the show to serve as normal enemies, you mostly get to fight multi-colored putties. Of course, the color determines their strength and fighting style, but it still would have gone a long way t get more enemy variety. There are a couple of other things that attack you in the game, but the putty to other obstacle ratio is still 20:1.
The sound is impressive, in the fact that it sounds in tune with the show. It's quite an accomplishment when a licensed game can recreate the atmosphere of its source material, and I actually like some of the level themes better than actual music from the show. The show's theme is present here too (or course) but in instrumental form. It actually plays again during the final boss fight, but the "Go go power rangers!" lyrics are used through some godawful sampling procedure. You can tell the recording is low quality because it cuts off before they finish singing the phrase. I could have done without the sample singing.
Overall, this is a fun game to play and has plenty of replayability due to the playable characters, though it could have been a lot more fun if more polish was put onto the game, such as better ranger sprites and more enemy variety. There's also the suspicious lack of a 2 player mode considering this is a beat 'em up.
There was an improved sequel released later based on the MMPR movie, as well as fighting game that took advantage of giant zord combat.