_________________ ___/\________ ____ Sl\ __ \ ___/ \/ \ \ ___/| | \ / |/ / ___) / /__) ___) |^|: / / / \ \ \ / | \ / .-------\_/-----------------------------------------------------------------. | TITLE: Mighty Morphin' Power Rangers (Bandai) | | PUBLISHER: Bandai | +---------------------------------------------------------------------------. | ELEMENT | SCORE (%) (5pt per |) | WEIGHT | ADDITIONAL COMMENT | +----------+------------------------+----------+----------------------------| | GRAFX | ||||||||||||||||| 85 | 17/20 | Looks great, the music cap-| | SOUND | ||||||||||||||| 75 | 15/20 |tures the Power Rangers feel| | MUSIC | |||||||||||||||| 80 | 16/20 |,decent yet simplistic play | | CONTROL | ||||||||||||||||| 85 | 17/20 |control, its only real flaw | | GAMEPLAY | |||||||||||||||| 80 | 16/20 |being lack of originality. | +----------+------------------------+----------+----------------------------+ | OVERALL | ||||||||||||||||| 85 | 81/100 | Review by -- Deputy Dogg --| `---------------------------------------------------------------------------' I'm just about the only person that had faith in this title. When the first pictures of Mighty Morphin' Power Rangers were shown in magazines, everyone laughed and ridiculed it, saying it was for the 'kiddies'. But lo and behold, what we have here is a good looking and sounding, polished beat-em'-up reminiscent of The Ninja Warriors. What draws this comparison is the way the game is setup. The action takes place 'on a straight line' as opposed to the 'Double Dragon/Rushing Beat-move-up-and-down' type scenario. Not many beat-em' ups take this route because it usually means a loss of depth. Ninja Warriors proved that that wasn't necessarily the case and so does MMPR, although it should be noted that The Ninja Warriors had more moves which makes it a more complex game. In fact, something that really detracts from MMPR is that only 2 of the SNES buttons are used. This means more shallow game play, but I guess they tried to keep it simple for the 'kiddies' and It's really not THAT much of a deal (unlike Final Fight 2, though, which died because of the 2 button flaw), since some moves are a combination of pressing the buttons and the pad which increases the number of moves, thus adding more depth to gameplay. When first loading the game, you are greeted with a hard driving rock beat that sounds pretty damn good. You then notice how fluid and seamless the animation is and pretty soon you're involved in a frenzied beat-em'up where you're kicking and taking no prisoners! The frenzied pace seems to wear off after a while, though, and I'm not sure why... Maybe it's because you get accustomed to it or maybe it's just that, at the beginning, you're surprised at how the game actually rocks and you really get into it! I don't know... Anyway, The play control is quite good and you don't have any trouble pulling off your moves. The variety in the play mechanics is pretty decent you can walk, crawl, swim, cling to girders, jump off of walls a la Ninja Gaiden (speaking of Gaiden, when's THAT coming out on SNES?) etc. Oftentimes, though, it seems as if you can throw technique out the window and, for effectiveness' sake, simply start attacking everyone with jump kicks. Anyone who's played Legend will know what I'm talking about. The game layout is the following: play a stage as your human self and, meet the boss at the end of that stage and, Uhh.. Morph (Sorry people, I don't watch the TV show, so I don't know the terminology) into your super self, play a stage as your super self, fight and beat the boss and, finally, get a password. Now, I have to commend the programmers for putting a password system in the game because nowadays, I won't even play a game that doesn't have a save game or a password in it, unless it's REALLY REALLY good. Remember, with hundreds of games at your disposal, it would be foolish to play levels you've already finished over again. So the password system is a definite plus. Unfortunately, the only changes between your normal self and your morphed self are that you look different, have longer reach, and possess one smart bomb. Not bad actually, but bigger changes could have been added... While we're on that topic, let's discuss the differences between characters. Again, they're pretty much the same except for cosmetic differences and perhaps slight differences in reach, speed and jumping ability but I'm not sure about this. One more slight gripe I have is with the way you can't fight back while underwater, whereas the bad guys can! This seems to me as being unfair... Let's take a better look at the graphics and sound in the game... The chara- cter animation is, without a doubt, some of the best I've seen for a game that controls with this kind of responsiveness. Look at Flashback and Blackthorne for instance. The animation is spectacular, but because of it, the game plays at a slower pace and the actions you've triggered by pressing a button take time before they actually occur, since the SNES has to show the sprite pulling out his gun, climbing the ledge, or whatever. In this game, the animation is stunning and the actions occur IMMEDIATELY after you've pressed the button. yep... Bandai did a great job on this one... It's also remarkable how crisp, clean and well defined the sprites and background look. The colorful graphics only help accentuate the Hi-Res effect that the graphics pull off. The backgrounds are quite decent, especially level 5, the cavern level, which has tons of lovely parralax scrolling. Now for the sounds and music. The sounds are Ok I suppose but I didn't really notice them that much. The only thing I can remember thinking about was the swishing sound it made when you'd throw punches in the air, it sort of reminded me of those cheap, old, chinese kung-fu flicks where the guy's lips kept moving even though he wasn't saying anything. The music is EXTREMELY power rangers-like. There are about 2 or three different renditions of the 'GO!, GO!, Pow-er Ran-gerssssss' theme music that come off sounding quite good in the game and, I still have the damn song playing through my mind, as we speak! Don't you hate it when that happens? So basically, the music does its job perfecly. Let's talk originality a little. Although MMPR is definitely not the most original game out there, it IS a good, solid beat-em'up and frankly, there aren't many original games out there nowadays anyway. The market is saturated with Street Fighter 2 clones and thankfullly, MMPR isn't one of them, so it has THAT going for it. The bottom line is this, I don't know if MMPR is worth buying in stores (It probably isn't) but it's DEFINITELY worth downloading, especially considering the fact that there have been virtually NO new releases lately. Pick this one up, I doubt you'll be disappointed. -- Deputy Dogg --