Dan Geeks Out: Video Game Review #391: Burning Rangers

Burning Rangers

Sega Saturn

Nostalgia Factor:

I've been absolutely dying to play this game since it first came out back in 1998. By that time, the Saturn was on its last legs. The system was set to go out in a blaze (pardon the pun) of glory with two big releases: Panzer Dragoon Saga and Burning Rangers.

At the time I was a junior in high school. There was a Best Buy a few blocks away from my school. This Best Buy was always so good at keeping Saturn games stocked. Almost every game I owned was from this location. Every single day I would stop by this Best Buy, checking the shelves for Burning Rangers and Panzer Dragoon Saga. I intended to buy them both. Every single day I would go home empty handed. After a few weeks of this, I finally worked up the courage to ask a worker if they were ever going to get these games in. The worker told me that they were not.

I looked everywhere for these games. And I mean everywhere. The mall. Other Best Buys. The electronics department in various chain department stores. Thrift markets. Toy stores. Nowhere were these games to be found. Eventually I just gave up and moved on from the Saturn.

In the ensuing 24 years that have passed, I have continued to keep my eyes open for these games, with no luck whatsoever. By the time I thought to look online for these games, their prices had skyrocketed to hundreds of dollars each because of their rarity.

This is one of those cases where I don't feel bad emulating, because I never would have been able to get the chance to play this otherwise. Why I didn't think to do this earlier, I have no idea. But this is it. The time has come. I finally got to play Burning Rangers - a game I've been wanting to play but unable to get my hands on for 24 whole years.

Story:

This game takes place in the future. You play as one of two characters, Shou or Tillis. These characters are new recruits to the Burning Rangers - a squad of firefighting, jetpack wearing heroes who save people whenever there is a space disaster.

Aside from a tutorial at the beginning of the game, you have four missions to select from. Each mission takes you to a different location where you must put out fires and rescue civilians from imminent death. Each location has its own little self-contained storyline attached to it, like each mission is one episode of an anime. And this game definitely feels like an anime.

Gameplay:

Burning Rangers is a hard came to categorize. You don't have very many firefighting games out there. But this isn't just a straight up firefighting game; it has sci-fi elements to it as well. You fight robots, fly around in a jetpack, collect gems, shoot a laser gun, all that fun stuff.

Controls are a little rough. You have three basic functions - moving, jumping, and firing your weapon. Your weapon puts out fires for you, and in turn these fires drop gems when they are extinguished. Gems act like rings in Sonic the Hedgehog. When you get hit they all scatter. But you can pick them up again immediately for protection. If you get hit with no gems in your possession, you die.

Charging up your weapon unleashes a large blast that pretty much wipes out any fire immediately. While there's a definite plus to the efficiency of these blasts, using it means that the fires won't drop gems for you when you extinguish them. So there's a bit of a trade off.

Having gems in your collection not only keeps you safe in the event you take damage, but you can also use these gems to rescue civilians from the site of the disaster. If you don't have at least five gems in your possession, you can't activate the teleporter to save the civilian - and that's a problem. The good news is that aside from one level I don't believe it really matters how many civilians you save or not.

How you navigate is very interesting. You don't have a stage map at your disposal, nor do you have an arrow pointing where to go. Instead you hit a button where you ask someone from HQ where to go next. And they'll tell you over an intercom. Think Doctor Malcolm guiding Ellie Sattler through the power station in Jurassic Park. Go right. Go left. Turn around. That kind of thing. I liked this little wrinkle and I'm surprised more games don't do things this way.

The camera control is the worst thing about this game. I'm usually not a camera complainer, but it is pretty bad here. Turning around, going the other way, trying to get a solid grasp on your location: all of that is made difficult by the choppy camera system. Controls are very loose, too. It feels like you are just kind of floating around the levels sometimes. Collision detection is bad. Jumps can be hard to pull off. Locking onto enemies with your weapon is an unpredictable affair. The controls are not well-defined at all in this game.

If I had to compare the gameplay of Burning Rangers to anything I've played in the past, I'd have to say Nights into Dreams. But even that's not a great comparison. The similarities: the game isn't combat based. You have to be fast. You have to collect gems. The graphics and the control schemes are somewhat similar. So are the boss battles, which you are timed and graded on. But that's where the similarities end. Again, it is very hard to classify this game.

Graphics:

I have a feeling this game's graphics are a point of contention for a lot of people. For someone who grew up in this early era of 3D gaming, I love it. I love the blocky characters. I love the jagged pixel corridors. I love the vibrant colors and the atmospheric setting. I love the animations. I love the draw-in distance, and how entire walls can disappear depending on the camera angle. Everything is so charming and fun and so very late 90s. And it's also very flawed.

If you didn't grow up in this era of gaming, you might have a very tough time with Burning Rangers, to the point where you might even call it ugly or messy. And I couldn't even fight with you on that point, because I could totally see where you'd be coming from. I personally love this game's look, however, and I could play games that look like this all day every day.

Sound:

This game has a lot of unique audio qualities. During the game's introduction with the anime scenes and the singing and all the classic Sonic R-esque cheese that accompanied it, I fully expected this entire game's audio representation to be over the top in that very unique Japanese way that many Sega games are.

But once you start playing the game, things get quiet. Very quiet, actually. There is no stage music. All you hear are atmospheric sounds and the chatter of your fellow Burning Rangers over the intercom. Gems make noises when you pick them up. Your character makes noises when he or she jumps. So this isn't a silent game. Just a very atmospheric one. And it works perfectly.

Voice acting ranges from pretty bad to passable. It fits the anime/Sega cheesiness mold perfectly.

Overall:

At long last I can finally say I was able to play through Burning Rangers. While I'm not sure if the game's quality justifies the phrase "it was worth the wait", I still had a pretty good time with it.

If you're looking for something short, lighthearted, and a lot of fun, go no further. This isn't a horribly deep game. You play through each level, put out fires, open doors, collect gems, follow the directions you receive over the radio, and rescue as many people as you can. At the end of each level you fight a boss character. Then you move onto the next one.

The whole game can be completed in one afternoon. There is some replay value to be found, however. I enjoyed the opportunity to go back through each stage to try to rescue all the civilians that I'd missed. I liked looking for secrets I missed the first time around, or coming in with the knowledge needed to avoid those pesky fire traps and wall blowouts that try to suck you out into space. Since each stage is timed, scored, and graded at the end, I was always trying to do better than I did on my previous playthrough.

That said, this game is only four stages long. If I had been able to find this game back in 1998, I might have regretted my purchase after beating the game in one sitting. Maybe it's a good thing I had to wait 24 years to play it?

This is a good game, to be certain. But I can't say it is a great one. Worth the 24 year wait? Let's just say I hope Panzer Dragoon Saga is better than this.

THE GRADE:

40th Birthday Mop Up Duty Celebration Tour:

1982 reviews:

1983:

1984:

Frogger II: Threedeep!