WELCO METOT HENEX TLEVEL - Mighty Morphin' Power Rangers

Publisher: Sega Developer: Sega Released: 1995

This series has covered enough FMV games at this point that there’s no reason to go on about all the things wrong with the medium. And, of course, Sega invested heavily in the medium and tried to weather the storm for quite a long time. One of the latest FMV games it released was Mighty Morphin’ Power Rangers, based on the television show of the same name.

If you’re old enough to remember television in the nineties, then you probably remember that Might Morphin’ Power Rangers was a phenomenon, becoming stupidly popular in the US almost overnight. It featured the story of five teens “with attitude” that had been chosen to become a fighting force known as the Power Rangers. They would protect the world from the evil Rita Repulsa, her minions and her army of “Putties.”

When in trouble, the teens take the form of the Rangers, and gain access to giant robots called DinoZords, which can then combine to create an even more giant robot called MegaZord. Pretty much every episode ended with the Rangers’ enemy growing to a gigantic size, forcing the team to bust out MegaZord and have a gigantic battle. The whole thing looked really similar to the old Godzilla movies, with stunt people in kinda ridiculous costumes play fighting in front of cheap looking miniature sets.

Power Rangers was brought to the US by Haim Saban, featuring re-purposed footage from Toei Company’s Super Sentai franchise, Kyōryū Sentai Zyuranger. The Super Sentai franchise had been running in Japan since the mid-70s, generally featuring a single or team of heroes fighting giant monsters using animals or machines that combine to form an ultimate fighting being that saves the day.

Oddly enough, the series that really kicked off the formula that was used over and over again in these shows was the live-action Spider-Man series that aired in Japan in 1978 and 1979. Unlike his comic origins in the States, the Japanese version of Spider-Man featured a motorbike racer who transformed into Spider-Man whenever he donned an alien costume, which gave him his powers. And while he could climb and had super-human strength, pretty much every episode ended with him summoning his space ship, the Marveller, which would eventually transform into the giant robot, Leopardon. The whole thing is totally bizarre. I suggest you watch some of it.

Spider-Man even struck ridiculous, dramatic poses when entering a scene or giving orders to Leopardon, something that Mighty Morphin’ Power Rangers had in spades.

Anyway, getting back to the game. As FMV games go, Power Rangers is pretty impressive. Not only is the video all full-screen, but since the entire thing is built of heavily edited footage from the show, the quality of the acting and special effects matches the source material exactly.

In fact, that’s one of the things I really love about this game. Because it uses actual show footage, it’s presented as a series of episodes, mostly having to do with the origin of the team as well as the creation and subsequent destruction of the Green Ranger.

Prolific Sega producer Tony Van was the man behind the game. He and his team built the game from scratch to production in about four months. Tony produced some pretty big cartridge games, but he had a hand in a lot of the FMV games churned out by Sega as well.

In an interview with Sega-16, Tony talked about how incredible Dragon’s Lair was back in the day, but that he hated how difficult and linear the games were based on having to make the right decision at every point or else it’s game over.

With Power Rangers, Van added a life bar to the game, so that a wrong move only cost you a bit of health. And if you screwed up, you could still try for the proper move before the appropriate icon disappeared from the screen.

So while this is a standard FMV game - pushing in the direction that appears on screen or tapping the right button when you’re prompted - it’s one of the most playable FMV games you’ll ever see.

It’s kind of a shame, though, that it was on the Sega CD. The expensive add-on limited the market for the game an extreme, and I doubt many of the Power Rangers’ target demographic actually had access to one. Still, for fans of the show, this is a pretty great little game even despite its flaws and the obvious limitations of the FMV genre.