In 1993, I was eleven years old, so catching the Fox Kids block of programming after I got home from school was a staple of my daily routine in middle school. While there were cartoons such as X-Men: The Animated Series, Spider-Man, and Tiny Toon Adventures, none were as captivating as the live-action series that featured high schoolers given on-demand superpowers to fight off aliens.
The mouthful of a show titled Mighty Morphin Power Rangers was real life Voltron to me as a kid that nothing else even came close to the thrill of watching it. I admit, I’ve kind of always been drawn to martial arts and combat shows – I regularly stayed up late on the weekends to watch American Gladiators, and I even admit that I enjoyed that terrible WMAC Masters show that came out a few years later – but undoubtedly the Mighty Morphin Power Rangers sparked my interest in things that I’d later gravitate to throughout my childhood. This show explains why I suffered through VR Troopers, Superhuman Samurai Syber-Squad, and even the painfully horrible Big Bad Beetleborgs.
I loved the original series so much that I remember being excited to see Mighty Morphin Power Rangers: The Movie in the theaters. I admit that I still randomly find Trouble by Shampoo popping into my brain like a long-forgotten locker combination. When Rita’s Rewind was announced, given how much I loved Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Shredder’s Revenge, I was absolutely stoked to get a sweet MMPR game that took me back to the SNES days. Unfortunately, for everything this game gets right, it relies on its gimmicks too often to stretch the content.
Mighty Morphin Power Rangers: Rita’s Rewind
Developer: Digital Extremes
Publisher: Digital Extremes
Platforms: Microsoft Windows (Reviewed), PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5, Xbox One, Xbox Series S|X, Nintendo Switch
Release Date: December 10th, 2024
Players: 1-6 local, two online at launch, with up to 6 coming soon afterward
Price: $34.99 USD
Rita’s Rewind puts you at the beginning of the Power Rangers franchise, as all of the original five rangers are present and accounted for: Jason, Trini, Kimberly, Zack, and Billy.
It’s good to see Thuy Trang and Jason David Frank immortalized here alongside their former co-stars, but it doesn’t really make a lot of sense canonically because this is basically based off a mix of the 2023 Netflix special Mighty Morphin Power Rangers: Once & Always and the “back in time” sections that reference the original series.
The premise of Rita’s Rewind is that Robo Rita goes back in time to make an alliance with the real Rita Repulsa in order to alter the course of time to stop the formation of the Power Rangers. It’s fine, you don’t care cause you grew out of watching the show decades ago, you just want to slap around some putties. Rita’s Rewind definitely allows you to fulfill that wish.
Each of the Rangers control similarly, but each of them has an elemental attack for a special move. Jason’s Tyrannosaurus power summons flames, while Billy’s Triceratops power summons ice crystals that trap enemies and then explode.
Not that this is much of a spoiler alert, since you’ll come across specific sections that show a dedicated sixth spot, so upon completion of the game you’ll unlock Tommy – the infamous Green Power Ranger. Unfortunately, his Dragonzord power is basically the exact same thing as Kimberly’s Pterodactyl power, but with missiles instead of laser blasts.
There’s so much focus on the visual here that it feels like they forgot to give the game any actual substance. The game looks great – equally on par with Shredder’s Revenge, down to the CRT monitor filter that would make this game look fantastic on a six player arcade cabinet. That’s where a lot of the praise ends.
The music is mostly fine, though much like Shredder’s Revenge, I don’t like the choice to play a cover instead of using the original theme song – but it’s mostly typical beat ’em up background fodder that’s cool in the moment but not catchy enough to find yourself humming later on.
Each character also has a few limited lines, so why didn’t you just lift them from the show and pay the actors instead of having a cast of people that have never been associated with the show to awkwardly spit out a few lines.
I completely get not having new lines recorded (even though that could have easily happened during the filming of the Netflix reunion special) because Thuy Trang and Jason David Frank have passed away, but c’mon – Dan Amrich doesn’t even remotely sound like Billy Yost who’s still very much alive and well.
That’s a repeated problem with this game. It tries so hard to duplicate the look of Shredder’s Revenge that they forgot to make the gameplay interesting. The side scrolling beat ’em up stages are fine, though there aren’t many different enemies.
There’s just a few basic putty types, a gigantic one, and a bunch of stupid bird enemies, and the bosses. It’s cool to see Goldar, Bones, and other classic enemies make an appearance, but the forced invulnerability moments only serve to draw out the fights. The continued time loop sections are more frustrating than fun, since you’ll continually replay sections if you don’t break the crystal when it appears quickly enough.
Combat consists of a single dash attack, a jumping attack, a rising attack triggered by pressing up and attack simultaneously, a down attack that executes if you attack after that, and a standard five hit combo that’s often randomly interrupted by an enemy attack since they don’t seem to have any ability to be stunned.
The game wants to encourage you to punch once, grab, and then pound a few times and throw the enemy, but that’s not nearly as much fun as just wailing on enemies like a punching bag. On top of this, certain fights are exceptionally more difficult than they should be (the Green Ranger battle is egregious as he continually will stun lock you in his combo on harder difficulties) and the final battle requires a gimmick that’s already annoying enough to land without enemies, but forces you to do it while also surrounded by putties.
The side scrolling sections are broken up by sections where you ride a motorcycle, a roller coaster, or drive your Ranger’s Zord and you’ll be given a reticule on screen to shoot at enemies and other objects, collect power ups, and dodge back and forth.
Nothing special about those sections, but they happen in lieu of actual levels far too often for a 15 level campaign. This is best executed during the Carnival area where the roller coaster section is part of the stage and not the entire thing. Once you reach the end of a Zord section, as you can imagine, Rita throws her wand to make her monster grow, and you’re quickly in the pilot seat of the Megazord.
These sections require you to dodge back and forth, dash, and perform small punch combos in order to build up your sword gauge which allows you to summon your power sword to deliver the final blow, much like the Megazord did in the show. These sections are clunky, unfun, and one time would have been more than enough.
With a few quality of life tweaks, this game could have been so much better than it is. If the Rangers could block like the enemies can, combat would be a lot more interesting than dodge roll spam to get behind guarding enemies, or punch three times then dodge when the inevitable attack comes because you can’t stun enemies.
Even the special move power is fairly weak, and without the ability to level up your damage or improve your Rangers, you’ve pretty much experienced everything that the game will offer in the first few stages – aside from the final bosses gimmick.
On top of that, once you finish the game, subsequent playthroughs with Tommy have no special dialogue or even act like he’s there until the part in the story where you actually meet him. It just feels like minimal effort was made even though it was clear that the Green Ranger unlock was always planned.
There are some pretty deep easter eggs with the collectibles (like the Punk Potion from Season 1: Episode 12, or Zack’s white gorilla costume head from Season 2: Episode 4), there’s an attention to detail that it seems like Digital Extremes started with but ultimately gave up on.
If you’re playing as Tommy, you still wind up using the Megazord to fight the giant monsters, not even a swap to Tommy solo piloting the Dragonzord or considering the Wheel of Misfortune shows up as a collectable, making them form the Mega Dragonzord should have been the easiest thing to do.
It’s baffling how they seemingly started crafting Mighty Morphin Power Rangers: Rita’s Rewind with a ton of love and admiration for the franchise but wound up coming out feeling rushed and unfinished. Here’s to hoping this game gets some additional content and fixes later on, because right now the only thing you unlock after you beat the game is a harder difficulty and a speed run mode.
Nothing too exciting, and certainly nothing that justifies charging $10 more than Splinter’s Revenge did when it released. Perhaps I’m being a little too harsh, but I expect that if you cash in on my childhood, you should at least give me an experience that’s more fun than the game I played 20+ years ago.
