Review: Power Rangers Rita’s Rewind is a thoroughly entertaining, multi-genre retro-style romp

If there’s one thing you can’t accuse Digital Eclipse of, it’s resting on its morals.

Last month the Atari-owned studio released Tetris Forever, the third entry in its exceptional Gold Master Series collection of playable retro documentaries and arguably the best of the bunch so far.

Not content to close the year out with this 5-star collection of retro gems, the studio is rounding off 2024 with an old-school game of its own, one that lends a pseudo-16-bit style to the Mighty Morphin’ Power Rangers (specifically those first few seasons from 1993-95).

The game’s plot attempts to bridge the gap between that original series and last year’s Netflix reunion movie Power Rangers: Once & Always (though don’t worry if you haven’t seen it). That movie’s main villain, Robo Rita, travels 30 years back in time to find the original Rita Repulsa and the pair team up to bring down the Power Rangers.

In a bit of brain-bending time travel shenanigans, the Power Rangers in this game have literally just met Zordon and been given their powers, so they’re completely green – well, they’re red, blue, black, pink and yellow to be precise – and are therefore discovering the game’s variety of colourful enemies at the same time as the player.

It’s an interesting twist on nostalgia because the whole “remember this guy?” gimmick lands differently when the protagonist clearly doesn’t, because they’re only just meeting them for the first time.

Regardless, all of the above is mainly fan service, with entertainingly written cutscene dialogue between each stage. The meat of the game is clearly in its beat ‘em up sections, which are designed with the best of the genre in mind.

Combat is straightforward enough with a standard combo attack, a jump kick, a double-jump and a ground pound. The real game-changer, however, is an upwards thrust attack performed with Up + Attack, which fires your Ranger diagonally into the air.

Your combo ends with a move that pops the enemy into the air, so it’s possible to combo them, launch them upwards, pop them higher with the upwards thrust attack, slam them back to the ground with a jumping kick, then juggle them when they bounce. It’s not necessary to get through the game, but we’ll be damned if it isn’t deeply satisfying to pull off.

Also in the ‘you don’t need to have this but it helps’ category is a knowledge of the beat ‘em up genre. The game has plenty of in-jokes that enhance the experience for those who get them, from the TMNT: Turtles in Time nod near the start of the game, to the subway train with more than a passing resemblance to Final Fight, to the fairground enemies on giant balls á la The Simpsons arcade game.

Interestingly, Digital Eclipse has decided that a straight beat ‘em up isn’t enough for this game, with four other gameplay types appearing in certain stages. Perhaps the most notable of these are the rail shooter sequences, where you take control of your Ranger’s specific Dinozord and take on various enemies before facing a boss at the end.

These feel like more visually impressive takes on something like Star Fox, and some of the later stages can get a tad on the frustrating side, especially one section with a jumping section which leads to instant death.

You can make things easier in these stages, to an extent, by playing as the Pink Ranger, because her pterodactyl Dinozord obviously can’t hit any objects on the ground and doesn’t have to worry about the jumping section. The way its flying is delayed, however – it seems to follow your cursor with some delay, perhaps deliberately to add some challenge – makes dodging enemy bullets quite a challenge.

On occasion you’ll come across road stages which have a similar over-the-shoulder viewpoint to the rail shooter sections but have you riding a motorbike instead. This is armed with a gun (giving us, if you’ll forgive us for being niche, serious NES Mach Rider vibes) and, in our view, these sections handle better than the rail shooter levels.

Add to this a series of first-person boss battles where you take control of the Megazord and have to dodge a giant monster’s attack – which is sort of like Punch-Out!! but not to an extreme degree – and a light gun shooter section on a rollercoaster, and the variety in the game certainly can’t be questioned, even if they perhaps don’t match up to the beat ‘em up sections in terms of sheer bliss.

There are even a few unlockable arcade games, which can be played at the Angel Grove Youth Center (which acts as the game’s hub area in between stages, where you can chat with the hidden characters you’ve rescued, as well as series longstays Bulk and Skull.

Given the game’s 1993 setting, these arcade games have something of an early ‘80s feel to them – a youth centre’s not going to be buying cutting-edge cabinets, after all – and are all entertaining enough in their own way.

Our personal favourite of these is Drive Bomber, which appears to be inspired by Midway’s Spy Hunter but adds an interesting bomb-dropping mechanic which feels like the definition of a risk vs reward system.

The full package, with the beat ‘em up stages, the various other gameplay styles and the unlockable arcade games, should keep you entertained for a while, but only as long as you’re the sort of player who doesn’t mind retreading old ground – as is the way of this genre, this certainly isn’t a long game.

We started a game on Normal difficulty and were watching the credits roll after about two and a half hours, but the replay factor then comes in trying to find the hidden collectibles in each stage, and trying to get an S rank by beating it within a certain time.

The only major downside we had with the game was the heroes’ voices. The music is absolutely superb, featuring a great variation on what is objectively one of the best TV show themes of all time, but each character is limited to a small handful of soundbites that they’ll utter over and over again. It starts to get annoying within the first couple of stages, and there’s plenty more where that came from.

This aside, Rita’s Rewind is an excellent attempt at a ‘new old’ game that Power Rangers fans should consider a must-have, and everyone else should give serious consideration to checking out too.