Power Rangers: The Movie: The Games

While we've already taken a long and detailed look at the Power Rangers Movie, I didn't dive into the litany of spin-off merchandise that it spawned! Today we're going to take a look at the many, MANY video games this film vomited onto home consoles. But I don't know no shit about no damn vimeo games. So I've enlisted the help of my good friend FreezingInferno of Frezno's Raving Rants to help out. See ya next week for Final Face-Off!




Hi, sentai kids! I'm not your regularly scheduled expert on weekday children's karate action entertainment, but for the next mountain of words I'm gonna fake it 'till I make it. I'm FreezingInferno and I write about video games on occasion over on my own big dumb blog. I've gone to very strange places and written some very strange shit, and now our generous webmaster over on these parts has given me a platform to do the same but about this show you all remember fondly. So now I am going to do what I do over there, but over here. Sounds nice, doesn't it? Let's roll.

As you may or may not be aware, in 1995 the nice people in charge of this show decided to make a feature film out of it in an attempt to make a shitzillion dollars off of our poor parents. So it was that they shipped everybody off to Australia, hired that dude whose face melted in Raiders Of The Lost Ark to put on a purple Jay Leno chin (a decision later stolen for fucking Beetleborgs, of all things), and fired out a movie with all the karate, tengus, and slime you could ask for. Backed by the finest computer-generated effects that someone's uncle did on his 486, the film came out and all us kids loved it. Certainly I did. I had it on VHS tape and I must have seen this thing a dozen times or more. Of course, in hindsight, as you can read on this very blog you're on, it wasn't all that... good. Nevertheless, it took in... 66 million dollars? Holy fuck. If you saw this shit back in the day, buy your parents something nice for their birthday, or Mother's/Father's Day. Do something to atone for the mistakes of our easily-impressed childhoods. Of course, the people in charge of this silly show made way more money than that. You need to factor in all the merchandise. Toys and shit. The video games fall under that umbrella, and at last we get to our point; talking about all of the games to be released under the Power Rangers: The Movie banner.

SUPER NINTENDO

Well, right out of the gate we can see a trend that's been blogged about on here by our gracious host continues in spirit. The show's fascination with Tommy Goddamn Oliver has transferred here. He's the only Ranger on the box! YEAH THIS IS MY GAME NOW, THEY SHOULDA CALLED IT WHITE RANGER: THE MOVIE! Hell, he's even the default Ranger to select on the... Ranger selection screen. That's where the cursor is right when you boot it up. Whoever was in charge of this game knew to follow a trend, that's for sure. Anyway, this game is pretty goddamned rad regardless. It's the only one on this list that I actually got to play back in the day. I rented the thing while visiting cousins once and had a real good time with it, even though I was a foolish child and terrible at video games. Now I'm a foolish adult and terrible at video games, but let's not allow that to stop me from waffling a bunch of words about the tie-in to a children's karate film. Right. Even though this game was released under the "Movie" banner, the title's a bit of a misnomer. There's hardly anything from the movie in here. Ivan Ooze shows up at the end! And there might be the Ninja Falconzord in the ending splash screen. No, it'd be far more accurate to call this game "Mighty Morphin Power Rangers 2".

Aside from that title being fucking ridiculous, it's fitting. This is more of a sequel game to Bandai and Natsume's first Power Rangers game on the SNES. That's one I always wanted to play back in the day; magazines made it look cool as shit and there were Megazord fights and whatnot and I was an impressionable child. To go over it quickly (which will be a paradox when this article ends up being 2000 words anyway and brevity dies a cold and lonely death), the original game was a simple beat-em-up. Not a belt scroller a la Double Dragon or Streets of Rage, but a single plane sidescroller more akin to like... Kung Fu. Get used to that comparison. So you picked one of your COOL TEENS and did a sidescrolling level and punched different palette swaps of Putties. At the halfway point a monster from the show comes in and you do a morph. Then you do a sidescrolling level as a Power Ranger and at the end of it you beat the shit out of the monster. Do that again six or seven times, and then do some Megazord battles. That's the game. It's pretty fun for what it is, but I'm sure I would have gone fuckin bonkers over it when I was 10. Maybe you did as well, and have nostalgic memories of it. It isn't shit, is the point. Kind of basic in hindsight compared to the advances in the "punching people in the face" genre that occured in the ten years before the game came out, but you can still throw it on and kill an hour with some fun times and Ron Wasserman chiptunes, y'know?

Alright, what does this game do to improve it? Well, it's not a belt scroller and it's still kind of simplistic if we're being honest. Still, there's a bit of expansion and depth thrown into it. Not too much, now, but just enough to make it unique and engaging. For starters, you have two "planes" in most of the stages and you can jump between them with the shoulder buttons. The game starts off by making simple use of this gimmick; avoiding cars and navigating around holes in the floor and junk like that. The mechanic escalates well enough, moving from that to dodging obstacles in an autoscroller and then to fences that block you from jumping planes and enemies who use different attacks depending on what plane you're on. It doesn't go much beyond that, but it's nice that it has a skill curve to it. The morphing mechanic has been changed as well; rather than just a thing you do at the midpoint, you gain energy from defeating enemies. When you fill it up, you can hit a button at any time to morph into a Power Ranger and kick ass. Crucially, though, morphing both clears all enemies on screen and refills your health in full. It creates a nice variety depending on your play style. Do you morph now and kick everything's ass? Do you hang back and do less damage in favor of maximizing the health refill when you're about to lose a life? It's a way better system than just "oh you're morphed now". Gaining a full power bar again lets you use your cool Power Ranger weapons, but the bar drains even when you're not actively attacking. Helpful for the boss fights, though. Let's talk about them for a while because they're all pulled from the show! It also gives me an excuse to talk about their stages. AWAAAAAY WE GO IT'S MORPHIN TIME OR SOME SHIT

STAGE 1: MIRROR MANIAC

The level itself is a standard enough opener. You go through the city streets and punch putties, go into a grocery store, fight a robot and send its flaming destroyed shell into a bunch of gas cans and light the entire building on fire. Y'know, an ordinary day with ordinary actions for a superhero teenager that children look up to.

At the end of it all you fight Mirror Maniac and he's pretty simple. He's got lasers and a weird fakeout attack where he surrounds you with two of himself and you have to hit the real one. It's an easy tell and an easy boss.

STAGE 2: CANNON TOP

The stage has a real neat opening where your Ranger's on a boat and then the boat hits a rock and you launch right the hell up onto an aircraft carrier and fight Putties and turrets while fighter jets take off in the background every so often and push you back with the wind.

The second half of this level is a little less interesting and has some platforming and slow moments where Putties in the background huck grenades at you. Cannon Top himself is determined to stop your scavenger hunt on a fucking military base or whatever you're doing in this game, and he's a bit of a hard fight. You have to hang onto a thing moving back and forth and kick him in the face, but getting up there will make him shoot straight at you. When you're not hanging, he's dropping missiles onto the ground in random locations. It's telegraphed but the explosions linger, so it's a tricky battle.

STAGE 3: SKELERENA

This is as far as I made it when I was a foolish 10 year-old child renting this game, because the level itself is this autoscrolling snowboarding segment that honestly gives me Turbo Tunnel from Battletoads vibes. It's nowhere near as hard as the Turbo Tunnel (and the Turbo Tunnel itself is gravy compared to what else that game throws at you, but that's a discussion for another time) but it can trip you up if you're not expecting it.

At the end of it all you make it to a river and fight Skelerena who is also on a snowboard... surfboard. What's more, the boss does things! It can be a tough fight because Skelerena will charge you if you're on the same plane, so I find it best to jump planes and get in a quick hit or two. It's slow but it feels dynamic. I like this boss.

STAGE 4: MAGNET BRAIN

So the level starts off with a bunch of trains. What's neat about it is that I guess some of the cars are transporting gasoline or propane or some other volatile thing because you can punch them and they explode and take out every other car on the train. I'm serious, look at this.

Billy blew up a goddamned train. What the fuck.

After that you fight on train tracks for a bit and then face Magnet Brain. He's a little fucker. He uses polarity half the time to push you away, and he's got magnet tornados to shoot at you and pull you into. Oh, and that big magnet staff thing. What a buffoon this fella is, but he's no clown.

STAGE 5: SILVER HORN

Or Silverhorns or whatever, I'm just going with what the computer game is saying. The stage itself is a pretty long one, starting off with that fence gimmick and robot enemies with different attacks based on what plane you're on. Then you fight some sort of big vehicle, and a ninja miniboss, and a ninja miniboss again as you climb up girders.

At last it's Silver Horn. He's not too hard, and he's got ranged attacks with electricity and some annoying balls or something. Basically nothin' to worry about.

STAGE 6: MAIN FRAME

Who the fuck? This boss wasn't adapted from the show, but made for the game. It's just as well, because it's a brain in a jar. What a stupid idea for a fight. You'd have to be an abject moron to think that any game with a brain in a jar as a boss would make for an interesting battle.

Oh.

Well, the level itself is this cool trap factory deal with lots of gravity gimmicks and giant missiles launching. A lot of imagery in this game has Z's on it, which really hammers home the point that the final boss was probably supposed to be Lord Zedd before they slapped Ivan Ooze in to tie in with the big movie.

Main Frame just sits there and lets you hit it, but it has orbs that shoot bullets and lightning and shit so you have to dodge now and then. Otherwise it's a no-brainer. BECAUSE IT'S A BRAIN IN A JAR AHAHAHAHAHAHA PLEASE LAUGH I NEED THIS.

STAGE 7: IVAN OOZE

No stage, exactly. You just start right off fighting him. As befitting a final boss, Mr. Ooze has several nasty attacks. We can see here that he hucks knives at you, but he also makes spikes around him and creates weird jaws that fly at you. Wait. None of this is particularly oozey. That's weird as hell but whatever. Once you beat him an alarm goes off and you have a countdown appear on screen, and now must escape Mr. Ooze's base before it explodes.

Didn't I just make that reference? Whatever. You get out and see the Ninja Megazord or whatever and you win.

This is a very good game! I like it quite a lot, and even though it's simple it's the kind of thing you can throw on for an hour while you're bored and have a good time. Sometimes that's all we need in life. It's genuinely fun, but we're nowhere near finished yet. Oh god, no. It's time to move on to more Nintendo fun, but in your hands! Something you can take with you on the bus! IT'S...

GAME BOY

Good to see we're continuing the trend of shoving our most popular karate asshole on the front cover. We've gone all portable this time, which should be a cause for alarm. Now, I love the Game Boy. It was a portable console that I had some damn good memories of in the 90's... and, being that I was super into this karate show, I was given a Power Rangers game for it! Not this one, but the one previous. The first Power Rangers game on Game Boy is something I'm innately nostalgic for and remember fondly. That does not erase the fact that it's a bit shit. I never had this game for the Game Boy, but I imagine the same would have been true. I would have eaten it up at 10 and would be waffling nostalgically about it today. I didn't though, did I? I only played this recently, 22 years removed from its release. It's a bit shit, isn't it? It is a bit shit, actually, but not terribly offensive. Nowhere near worth the 40 or 50 bucks they would have asked for back then, but here in 2017 it can't hurt us. Besides, I bought Mortal Kombat 2 on Game Boy. At full price! The point is that I was an easily impressed child and would have been easily impressed by this game.

What's it do? Well, it's a sidescrolling "walk forward and punch stuff" game. So we're back in "literally Kung Fu with some bells and whistles" territory with this shit. Punch, kick, jump. It sort of has the same system from the SNES game where you charge up a Morphin Meter and then go into MORPHIN TIME to do double damage, but this time when you do it you get a cool chiptune rendition of Go Go Power Rangers! That's rad... for the ten seconds you'll hear it before you hit a screen transition and it fades back into the bland stage music. How dare you do this to me, game. How dare you.

Oh yeah, and if you fill up the Morphin Meter again while in MORPHIN TIME you can use it as a screen clearing bomb, or to do damage to a boss. I pulled this off exactly once in the game.

It does a lot of other interesting stuff. A stage select, for one! You can play them in any order and then go after Ivan Ooze at the end. Except this isn't Mega Man and you don't gain anything by fighting stuff in a certain order, so it doesn't actually matter which idiot you pick first as far as I can tell. But they are all from the movie (sort of!) so this actually is a goddamned Power Rangers The Movie tie-in game.

Oh, and the character select screen defaults to Tommy. Again. But everyone's in their Ninjetti costumes unmorphed this time! Alright, let's do a boss roundup thing again. This is the order in which I did them so you can mix shit up and read it out of order if you like. It won't change anything, but that's how the game does it so clearly it must be innovative!

STAGE 1: QUEEN TENGU

The stage itself is this confusing mess with spikes and conveyor belts, and halfway in you have an autoscrolling segment where a drill's chasing you and you have to kick dirt away to run from it. That's weird as shit but it took me a bit to get used to.

Anyway, the boss is Queen Tengu. Who I didn't know was supposed to be a Queen Tengu when I played, and I just assumed was a generic Tengu Warrior. Imagine my surprise later when I learned that Queen Tengu was in an earlier draft of the script, along with another boss in this game! Anyway, she jumps down to either side of the screen and shoots feathers at you. You can punch her easy. She's not hard. NEXT PLEASE.

STAGE 2: MAN-SIZED RAT

This level's a gross sewer, or maybe it looks extra gross because I picked Aisha for it and the Super Game Boy color palette for the stage is based on whatever Ranger you choose. So the sewer looks especially full of piss water because of that choice. They try a half-hearted door maze early on but it's nothing major.

The boss is just... a rat. A "man-sized rat" who-- HOLY SHIT WAIT! It's those asshole rats from that one godawfully drawn out three parter! They were supposed to be in the movie too! Now I'm convinced that someone at Saban hurled the first draft of the script at the Game Boy dev team and said HERE'S THE SCRIPT, MAKE THE GAME. Anyway, this jerk jumps up on the platforms and sometimes does a weird Blanka-esque spinning move to try and hit you. He's tedious but not tough.

STAGE 3: MORDANT

Christ, the level looks dreary in monochrome. You run through a ruined city and punch Putties. There's a miniboss in there but I have no idea what it's supposed to be. Look at it for yourselves and see if you know, because I don't.

At the end you fight this idiot pig from the movie who always confused me with where he came from. I thought I must have missed the episode he debuted in for years after the fact. He sucks air in and pulls you towards him while raining fireballs from the sky to hurt you. Get turned into alien bacon, you goofball.

STAGE 4: GOLDAR

Now we're talking. The stage has a little more going for it, being a canyon with the scattered vertical climb thrown in on some screens. It might go on a little long, but that's fine.

Once you hit Goldar, the real shit fit begins. This guy was always a badass, and he can easily kick your ass by hitting you with that sword over and over. This is one of those games where you have very little invincibility time after getting hit. At least you can jump onto the platform and get a good angle to jump down and hit him from. Thank goodness for that.

STAGE 5: LORD ZEDD

Oh my fuck. The man himself. The stage is some construction zone or something, which I think has been in literally every Power Rangers game ever up to this point.

There's another miniboss who I can't discern because Game Boy pixel art can sometimes be a goddamned mess, so have at it, kids.

Finally we come to him. The fuckin' guy, the most evil motherfucker in the galaxy, and hey what the fuck why is he so piss easy? Billy is kicking his ass. BILLY IS KICKING HIS ASS! You made Lord Motherfucking Zedd a goddamn CHUMP! YOU PIECE OF SHIT!

STAGE 6: IVAN OOZE

The final stage, and the longest. Why the longest? Because this game thinks it's Mega Man X and decides that what it needs to do is make you refight every single boss with brief platforming bits in between.

It's the same shit as before... except for Goldar. That platform couldn't be reached this time, so Goldar kicked my shit in multiple times, kind of unfairly. Just WHAPWHAPWHAPDEAD. I pulled through, though, and got to Ivan Ooze.

He... sits in a chair and shoots shit at you. You dodge the shit and kick him in the face. Then he blows up, time to roll credits and--

PSYCHE FUCKERS, A SECOND FORM! You fight him in a swirling space background and he shoots more blasts at you but you kick him in the face and win. That's it. We're done.

This game's passable. I'd have loved it as a dumb child, but today it leaves one wanting. You can certainly do better, both on Game Boy and for Power Rangers games. Still, it's acceptable for what it is, who it was for, and what time period it came out in. I would have been fine if this was my childhood Power Rangers game. I'd probably be more fond of it, but as it stands now it's just ehhh. I can't harbor ay real dislike for it, barring them turning Lord Zedd into an easy boss. I always thought that guy was an ultra badass. Well, we've seen what Nintendone, so now let's hop over the borders of the console wars and see what GEEENESIS DOES!

GENESIS

Well, good lord. This one is weird as shit. At least the box art bothers to have every Power Ranger on it instead of just Tommy this time. Also it starts off with an opening crawl. There's a lot of story cutscenes in this game, and I was hitting the screenshot button every other minute to grab 'em all. We're already a couple of thousand words in and I don't want to turn this entry into a goddamned screenshot Let's Play so we'll skip ahead from most of that. After all this time, I've finally discovered brevity. Who'd have thought? I do want to share this part before we go on, relating to Ivan Ooze.

That's all well and good, but what in the fuck is the Order of Meledian? Was that in the first draft? This isn't like the Game Boy game where we have Queen Tengu and Man-Sized Rats, this is mostly a faithful rendition of the movie's plot. Mostly. We're gonna get to the gonzo shit this game pulls, but first let's take a look at how it plays! The SNES game was basically a sequel to another game with expanded mechanics, and the Game Boy game was a simple sidescrolling punch dudes game. Let's see what the power of the SEGA GENESIS can muster--

Oh, it's just Streets of Rage. Except without the cool variety in characters. Or the varied enemy types. Or the excellent Yuzo Koshiro music. So basically not like Streets of Rage at all. It's the closest comparison 'cause SoR was THE beat-em-up on the Genesis, but this is just sort of stock.

Something I didn't mention until now was that the games are limited when it comes to enemy types, due to the source material. The show is about fighting a bunch of mindless idiot Putties and then a bigger tougher unique monster made out of whatever random object the villain stared at this week. All you ever fight in these games aside from bosses are Putties. While the SNES game palette swapped them and gave them different attacks and whatnot, they also had robots and turrets and shit as well. The Game Boy game had just plain putties along with like... bats? Well, we're on the GENESIS now, what have we got?

Oozemen. Oozemen and Putties. They all act the same, and you just mow down the same enemies over and over until a boss shows up. It's a good thing this game is short because lord almighty does it get repetitive. Still, it would have been fine for a 10 year-old with little sense of quality and a love of the source material. Right. Let's get on to the stage roundup, because this game pulls the absolute weirdest move that a Power Rangers Movie game could have pulled yet. You'll see it. Let's roll.

STAGE 1: OOZEMEN

So we kick things off by beating up Oozemen for like 10 minutes. They have the tendency to grab you and drain your health lots, it reminds me of the old NES Ninja Turtles Foot Clan enemies. Oh yeah, and the timer doesn't kill you if it runs out. It just drains your health once it hits 0. The game's not generous with time either, throwing endless waves of Oozemen at you. At the end...

AW SHIT IT'S IVAN OOZE THAT WAS A FAST GAME LET'S END THIS-- oh he just one shots you to prove how much of a badass he is. Right. Okay. No actual boss fight. Let's go on then.

STAGE 2: HORNITRON AND SCORPITRON

Alright, I'm sorry. We're going to go screenshot heavy here. So you get these cool scenes of Ivan's two Ectomorphicons leering up and being menacing.

Then we get the Ninja Megazord forming, which is way cooler in 16-bit than it was in the shitty CGI of the movie.

Then you beat the shit out of them. Finally! One of these games has a goddamned ZORD BATTLE in it! This is a nice change of pace and these two assholes fight you one after the other, ready to wreck your shit. They're not too difficult, though.

Now here's where things get fuckin' weird. The astute among you will know that we're in the climax of the movie now... on stage 3. What a ripoff! Two stages with no bosses and then we're at the end already? Well... we're not. The Genesis Power Rangers Movie game knows what it's doing. Or it might not. What it does to extend the play time is the strangest shit imaginable. I'll let the cutscene explain.

The shitty wavy effect? Jason, Trini, and Zack on the character select screen? Oh yeah. This is happening. Halfway into a game based on the Power Rangers MOVIE, we have an extended three-stage flashback to The Ninja Encounter three-parter and the Power Transfer two-parter. I just... what in the fuck? Did they have not enough movie to adapt into video game form? You assholes DO know there was an entire part of the movie set on the planet Phaedos, yes? Put in a stage on the beach with Tengu Warriors. Then do another at that stone temple fighting those weird guardians. Maybe add one more in between and put that weird skeleton as a boss fight. BAM LOOK AT THAT! Three stages! No need to literally pad half a game's worth of time before the final battle with a fucking flashback! I have no idea why they did this, but they did it.

STAGE 3: NIMROD/AC/DC

Uh. Okay, so we're in flashback mode and we fight Putties now. But also these three monsters from an entirely different set of episodes show up as minibosses to harass us. Then Lord Zedd makes 'em big. Y'all know what that means?

THUNDER MEGAZORD IS A GO MMMM YES. I LOVE the Thunder Megazord a whole lot. Even though I only ever had a toy of the original Megazord, I love this design.

We have ourselves a three-on-one with these three assholes, and everyone's favorite shogun robot with a lion head loincloth slices them to bits. Then we get this.

They forgot about planet Phaedos, but they remembered all that stupid bullshit with the baby carriage. Oh god in heaven. Moving on.

STAGE 4: LORD ZEDD/GOLDAR

This stage can suck one. It's got infinite Putties in a bullshit cave, but there's a trick to it. You punch a rock in the background. I had to look it up and I hate this. Anyway let's see what's behind this stupid goddamned--

JESUS FUCK

This is visually impressive and imposing as hell... until you realize Lord Zedd literally has one attack where he shoots fireballs out of his hand. You punch his hand and try to not get roasted. That's it. After that you move on to...

Oh my. Goldar's a tough customer to fight here. He's got a lot of attacks and can really punish you if you try to go after him too quickly. Still, he's nothing too major. He even flies away before you drain his health bar! WHAT'S WRONG, GOLDEN MONKEY DORK, CAN'T TAKE THE HEAT? THEN YOU SHOULDN'T HAVE--

Oh fuck me.

We're using the White Tigerzord for this one. Just for variety and also because I forgot to use the White Ranger in this playthrough otherwise. Goldar's the same here, just... him big. Fight him the same as before, curse the time limit (but count your lucky stars because on Hard Mode you get even LESS time) and move on to the next stage. We're on to The Power Transfer now.

STAGE 5: THE POWER TRANSFER

Okay so we're on The Deserted Planet now, looking for a sword or some shit? Alright, what new terrors will we face on this strange new--

OH FUCK THE FUCK OFF. Same fight, same bullshit. The rest of the level is an annoying stretch where meteors rain from the sky. At the end you beat the shit out of a statue and--

Holy fuck, that's Serpentera! Very nice attention to detail there. Anyway, literally all you do is beat the shit out of this statue and then you win. Cutscene time!

Oh thank god. Now we can actually get back to playing this Power Rangers Movie game based on the goddamned MOVIE!

STAGE 6: IVAN OOZE

Yeah, he fuses with Hornitron like he did in the movie and you fight him! In the Ninja Megazord! Cool, it's like we really could have done this three stages ago! He's pretty tough, though. He's got lots of scary moves, including a goddamned suplex that's straight up some Zangief shit and really hurts. Anyway, once you beat the shit out of him...

Why in god's name is the moon on fire? Who cares? You fight him again and he does the same shit. This is your final battle. We had to make you fight it twice, just to be sure! That's how the movie went! What the fuck is a Phaedos? Once you win you're treated to the ending.

GET FUCKED!

And, for completing the game, you get the best reward possible: Bulk and Skull telling tall tales about how they kicked everyone's asses while a fuckin FM synth version of their goofy-ass theme plays.

This game... sure was something. I prefer the SNES one because it's a little more varied and whatnot, but that was also my side in the 90's console war so who am I to judge. Really, the most remarkable thing about it to me is that fully half of a game billed as Power Rangers: The Movie has nothing to do with the movie it's a tie-in to. There was no real reason for this. They could have spent that time making Phaedos levels and have it make more sense as an adaptation of the movie. Instead we get playable forms of episodes of the show, and even those are wildly inaccurate! It's an odd one to be sure, but as I keep saying, a Power Rangers fan with a Genesis in 1995 would have had fun. Unless they already had Streets of Rage for their Genesis, in which case just play that shit. There's only one game left, and it's another Sega joint. Let's see how they pull off the Power Rangers on a color screen! On a handheld that you could reasonably bludgeon someone to death with that guzzles batteries! It's time for...

GAME GEAR

The Game Gear version shares some similarities to the Genesis one, although it's mostly just the same cutscenes only shrunken down to portable Master System size. When it comes to gameplay, it's different from all of the others. Everything so far has, in one way or another, drawn from the beat-em-up genre of running to the right and punching things. The Game Gear game is more of a proper fighting game, taking on foes in a one on one match on a flat plane. This is also similar to the original Power Rangers game for the Game Gear, which was made by the same developers, Banpresto. They did the Genesis one, as well. So now we're right back where we started, with a Power Rangers Movie game that's functionally a sequel to a previous Power Rangers game on the same system. This one at least has more movie stuff in it than just IVan Ooze, but there's just one problem.

I hate it. I confess that fighting games aren't my genre of expertise, so this is partly me being salty that I'm not good at it. Still, this is the least fun I had playing any of these games. Even the Game Boy one I could at least fly through on autopilot, but this has that classic frustrating fighting game AI of blocking everything and chipping you away. Speaking of chipping away, the levels at least offer more than just a straight one-on-one with a monster. No, you fight waves of Putties first. They only take a few hits to go down, but in the later levels it's dealing those hits without getting beat to shit that's the problem. Special moves? As far as I can tell you have one. You've got a lightning symbol that lights up the more you attack, and when it's full you do... something. I didn't know when I played, but looking it up I think it's Forward-Down-Forward and then both buttons. That's all you've got. That's all I've got too, since all you do in this game is fight monsters. No sidescrolling, no platforming, nothing. Just straight up fighting. This will be shorter than the previous walls, so let's run through it and finish off!

STAGE 1: BEAM CASTER

You sons of bitches. You've done it again. Faced with an entire movie to pull from, they panic and just use half of their space on monsters from the TV show. Beam Caster is thankfully not too bad, and neither are the putties that come at you before him. He's not too hard to finish off--

Oh yeah. That's a thing that happens. Well, we have to fight him more... but we get to do it IN THE THUNDER MEGAZORD YEEHAW

God, even in souped-up Master System graphics he looks so good. Anyway, that's that for Beam Caster. Next please.

STAGE 2: GOLDAR

Goldar is an asshole who barely shows up until you deal with so many putties. He'll swoop in and try to attack you sometimes. Then he comes in and he's a little trickier but things are going okay so far. I am spent on talking about stupid Goldar and his silly tricks in these computer games. NEXT.

STAGE 3: JAWS OF DESTRUCTION

So here's where shit got hard. Putties started getting smarter at blocking and I was having a rough time. Still, I got to Jaws of Destruction here. He's a bit of a breather boss because all of his attacks leave him wide open for a counter should you be able to dodge it. Ehh. KEEP IT MOVING

STAGE 4: OOZE MEN

Fuck this. These guys are total assholes. Everything I said about the perfect blocking and chipping away at you is encapsulated in this stage. Fight a bunch of ooze mooks and don't get your ass killed.

Oh, and at the end IVan Ooze shows up and oneshots you just like he did in the Genesis game. And he destroys the Command Center! Look at that!

And now shit gets baffling. Remember how I harped on the last game for fucking around with flashbacks instead of making Phaedos levels? I can tell you 100% that Banpresto didn't forget about Phaedos because they literally explain the entire subplot of the Power Rangers going to Phaedos in cutscene form. You KNOW it's there! Make stages out of it, you fuckers! Don't make me fight goddamn Goldar for the fourth goddamned time! God damn it!

STAGE 5: HORNITRON

No Scorpitron or whatever in this game, you just fight Hornitron. It's just as well because he's a son of a bitch for every other reason I mentioned. I also love the abbreviation there for the Ninja Mega Falconzord. I am an immature man talking about Power Rangers computer games. Let's finish it.

STAGE 6: IVAN ECTOMORPHICON

Fuck the entirety of the way off. Ivan was already hard as shit on the Genesis. Here, he's utterly ridiculous and can tear through your lifebar.

You fight him twice as well, once on Earth and once on the moon. Did I mention this game only has six continues? Anyway, once you beat him you get the same sort of shit that happened last time.

GET. FUCKED! (You can't see him 'cause I guess he was blinking but I assure you he's getting fucked over by the comet.)

That's it. That's this game. I guess it would have been okay if you had the manual and knew all the moves and shit. There's no FAQ/Move List on GameFAQs or anything though. Nobody gives a shit. I probably have written more words about this game than anyone, save the handful of reviews it does have on GameFAQs praising it. I'm not very fond of this one! I do like the Game Gear and think plenty of its games are underrated gems, but this ain't one of them IMO. Oh well.

And so, at long last, we have come to the end of our odyssey. Unless they made a Tiger handheld version of the Power Rangers Movie, but no way in hell am I touching that shit. We're done here. Four games of varying qualities, analyzed to hell and back by a nostalgic old fart like me.

If I had to award a crown to the best of the lot, which I'm making myself do because I'm writing the thing and I'm in charge? The SNES game gets it. It's just unique enough to stand out among the others without being monotonous.

The Razzie award goes to the Game Gear one because it's a bullshit fighting game and I don't like it; even the Game Boy one you could play and not die too much at.

Well. Thank God. We're free. I won't keep you any longer. Maybe we'll see a bunch of new games for that new Power Rangers movie they're making! It probably won't be like the old days where all of them are different. You'll get the same shit on PS4 and XB1, and maybe a janky weird 3DS or Switch one. That's about what we can expect. Alright. We're done. Time to slash this article with a Thunder Saber and make cool Japanese waterfall scroll art appear behind me as I destroy it. HYAAAH! And then everything blows up and Ron Wasserman plays us out. That's it. we're done. Go home.

THE END...?