Even though both beat-em-ups and 90s nostalgia have been riding high recently, I didn’t have a revival for the original “teenagers with attitude” on my 2024 Bingo card—making Mighty Morphin Power Rangers: Rita’s Rewind all the more pleasant a surprise.
This arcade-style co-op adventure returns to 1994, literally and figuratively, as an evil cyborg version of the nefarious Rita Repulsa sends herself thirty years into the past to finally beat her arch-nemeses. Players step into the spandex of the original Power Rangers just as they’ve received their powers and battle the combined villainy of “Robo-Rita” and the original iteration of Rita.
In a similar manner to Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Shredder’s Revenge, Mighty Morphin Power Rangers: Rita’s Rewind spans over a dozen nostalgia-laden stages and incorporates a fairly simple engine for up to five simultaneous players. The majority of those stages are your standard beat-em-up fare: clobber hordes of disposable enemies until you reach the boss.
Each Ranger has a basic suite of attacks—simple punch combos, leaping or dashing attacks, and so on. These charge the special gauge, which allows them to unleash a screen-wiping power attack once full. At this point in the beat-em-up renaissance I’m starting to hope for a little more mechanical complexity; Rita’s Rewind has a tight core of side-scrolling stages, but mashing the simple attack button is only stimulating for so long, even carried by multiplayer hijinks and nostalgia.
“Mighty Morphin Power Rangers: Rita’s Rewind spans over a dozen nostalgia-laden stages and incorporates a fairly simple engine for up to five simultaneous players.”
Luckily, Rita’s Rewind does have a relief valve in this department, in the form of its mech-based levels. True to the source material, street-level brawling can only go so far, and eventually Rita powers up her minions. The Power Rangers summon their Zords to keep up, and the game shifts into full-blown arcade shooter.
These frenetic levels have the players chasing the boss through the mines where the Ritas are mining the mysterious “Time Crystals” that are central to their plans. The Zords must shoot down opposing enemies and obstacles, dodge projectiles, and grab power-ups to take down the boss.
With the arcade inspiration comes some arcade inconvenience, and Rita’s Rewind is particularly stiff for these segments. The Zords, for all their hype in the source material, feel like glass cannons. Simple mistakes can be costly, from losing excessive health from simple attacks, losing a life from simply falling down a hole, or having to redo whole chunks of the stage. On the other hand, the Pink Ranger’s Pteradactyl Zord has a bit of an advantage, since it can simply fly over several pitfalls or attacks.
At the very least, these segments in Mighty Morphin Power Rangers: Rita’s Rewind don’t give the impression of being balanced well for single-player. However, they’re still exhilarating, and a welcome change of pace that does justice to the original show’s structure.
Thus, Rita’s Rewind’s run-and-gun stages give way to another showdown, where the Zords combine into the Megazord and take the big bosses on, Kaiju-style. These are practically can’t-lose scenarios where the Rangers have to dodge incoming attacks, close in on them, and mash attacks to fill their gauge. The gameplay remains very arcade-like here, akin to a boxing game, complete with flashy animations of the heroes recoiling inside the cockpit.
“Mighty Morphin Power Rangers: Rita’s Rewind easily earns a spot on the beat-em-up Dias alongside Shredder’s Revenge.”
An entire game based on any of these three level styles might get tedious, but staggering them through the campaign as an episodic format makes Mighty Morphin Power Rangers: Rita’s Rewind a prime candidate for the best Power Rangers game to date.
Any fan, or even anyone who casually watched the show on cable TV thirty years ago, might expect the grand reward at the end of the story: unlocking the Green Ranger. (The game does little to hide that this is coming.) This, in itself, is likely a dream scenario for many of my fellow Millennials. To its credit, Rita’s Rewind even expands the multiplayer to six players at this point, so no one has to sit out.
(However Tommy’s Dragonzord is only added to the run-and-gun levels, and there’s no crowning moment for him to form the Mega Dragonzord. By the time you unlock him, the game is already cleared, so he’s only useful for multiplayer or seeking out the remaining collectibles and bonus objectives.)
This scenario would be sweeter still if the Power Rangers had a little more variety in their gameplay. Aside from the Pteradactyl Zord being able to fly, voice lines, and the animations for special attacks, there’s not a whole lot of differentiation between them. This is somewhat true of the on-screen version of the Mighty Morphin Power Rangers too, but some variance in their innate skills, or even a level-up system, would’ve gone a long way.
Outside the stages, players can explore the Juice Bar where the teens hung out in the show, talking to the NPCs that can be rescued throughout the levels. It’s a simple feature, but laden with throwbacks to the show. Three arcade machines can also be unlocked for a moment’s diversion.
For all my quibbles, Mighty Morphin Power Rangers: Rita’s Rewind easily earns a spot on the beat-em-up Dias alongside Shredder’s Revenge. It’s a short yet tight campaign at a steal of a price, bolstered by decent multiplayer replayability, and oozing nostalgia—right down to the default CRT filter and the blisteringly cool soundtrack. Whether you just like retro beat-em-ups, or grew up arguing over who got to play which Power Ranger on the playground in those simpler times, you should check out Digital Eclipse’s tribute to the era, especially if you can assemble your own team of “teenagers with attitude…at heart.”
