HANDS-ON: Power Rangers Rita’s Rewind is a superb retro-style beat ‘em up

This year’s Summer Game Fest had a healthy selection of new game announcements, from Lego Horizon Adventures to Civilization 7.

For a certain generation of players, however, the biggest reveal of the show was a retro game instead. Well, sort of – it was a brand new title designed to look like a retro game.

The studio responsible is Digital Eclipse, the retro specialist behind some of the best classic game compilations released in recent years, from Atari 50 to the Street Fighter 30th Anniversary Collection.

While the team is mainly known for these retro compilations, however, from time to time it also dabbles with making brand new games that have a 16-bit aesthetic.

The likes of Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Shredder’s Revenge, Space Jam: A New Legacy – The Game and Volgarr the Viking II have been handled by Digital Eclipse, all of which look distinctly old-school but were made in the present day.

Based on what I played at Gamescom, the latest example of this has the potential to be the best of the bunch so far. Mighty Morphin Power Rangers: Rita’s Rewind looks to do for Saban’s series what Shredder’s Revenge did for the TMNT, and it looks set to be similarly sensational.

Like the Turtles game before it, Rita’s Rewind is designed to resemble a 16-bit beat ‘em up, albeit one that clearly wouldn’t have been possible in those days given the limitations of the era. A new-school take on an old-school aesthetic, basically.

The call back to the 90s extends to the game’s plot too. Starting in the present day, the Power Rangers’ long-time nemesis Rita Repulsa is now reincarnated as a robot called Robo-Rita. Going into how this happened would take too long, but if you’re interested it all takes place in Power Rangers: Once & Always, a 30th anniversary movie made last year for Netflix.

Annoyed that she still can’t destroy the Power Rangers even in her new mechanical form, Robo-Rita creates a portal which she can use to travel back in time to the early ‘90s. There she teams up with her original human self, and the pair decide to work together to finally end the Power Rangers once and for all.

Naturally, it’s up to the player(s) as their Ranger(s) of choice to put a dampener on the plans of this newly formed Rita-Rita alliance by kicking lumps out of anything that stands between them.

Because it’s set during the early ‘90s series, the player can choose between the original five Power Rangers (at least, the western versions) – Red Ranger Jason, Black Ranger Zack, Yellow Ranger Trini, Pink Ranger Kimberly or Blue Ranger Billy. There’s support for up to five players in co-op mode, so if you can manage to corral four other chums you can get the full squad together.

“There’s support for up to five players in co-op mode, so if you can manage to corral four other chums you can get the full squad together.”

Gameplay is the key as always, and the two beat ‘em up stages I played were shining examples of the genre at its best. The pace was fast, the hits felt satisfying to land, and pulling off combos was a treat.

The jump kick goes down diagonally at speed, similar to the one in the legendary TMNT: Turtles in Time, and enemy AI – at least on the default difficulty – is just easy enough to build a healthy combo but just smart enough to cause you problems if you let them gang up on you. Perfectly tuned for a good time, essentially.

While newcomers to the genre can just get by with button-mashing, advanced players can add a little style to their play with other moves to help them keep their combo going. By hitting Up + Attack at the same time you can launch an enemy up into the air, which can then be followed with one of those jump kicks to slam them back down again. Pulling this off looks cool as hell.

While I loved what I played of Rita’s Rewind so far, there’s still quite a bit about the game for which the jury’s still out, more than in other beat ‘em ups. That’s mainly because it doesn’t just adhere to that one genre, but rather delivers numerous different genres throughout the adventure.

As seen in the game’s trailer, some stages have you taking control of your Ranger’s Dinozord, or riding on a motorbike or a rollercoaster, as you take part in shooting gallery stages – these appear to imitate the Super Scaler tech seen in Sega games like Out Run or Space Harrier and look very cool, but having not played them yet all judgement must be set aside for now.

The same goes for the Megazord boss fights, which appear to be one-on-one fights played in a first-person perspective, again in some sort of old-school scaling style. I’m confident in saying the beat ‘em up stages will be fantastic but these others are still something of an unknown quantity. As much as I love Turtles in Time, for example, the stages that divert from the ‘normal’ gameplay and go on-rails aren’t as fun, so hopefully that isn’t the case here.

So far, so great, however, and Rita’s Rewind looks set to be the best Power Rangers game to date. As long as Digital Eclipse can nail the landing and deliver similar quality with its non-beat ‘em up stages, this is one that’ll almost certainly make fans “go go” to their wallets. Now, how about letting us unlock the Green Ranger…