This year’s Summer Games Fest (RIP E3) kicked off yesterday, and while many viewers walked away decidedly underwhelmed, there were a few standout titles.
For retro-inclined gamers like myself, the big reveal was absolutely Digital Eclipse’s Mighty Morphin Power Rangers: Rita’s Rewind, a 5-player—online and local!—beat ‘em up that seems to channel popular old-school brawlers like Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Turtles in Time, X-Men (1992), Battletoads and Double Dragon.
Or as I saw one random commenter eloquently put it: “Power Rangers is getting the Shredder’s Revenge treatment,” the latter of which was an awesome 2022 and well-reviewed homage to all the aforementioned throwback co-op side-scrollers. It simultaneously resurrected and raised the bar for a dormant genre. Quite the feat.
Rita’s Rewind has been born out of collaboration with Hasbro’s Retro Arcade, an outfit that is aiming to bring back a lot of these beloved IPs in nostalgia-inspired game form, like the soon to be released G.I. Joe: Wrath of Cobra.
TMNT fans adore Shredder’s Revenge, and if Digital Eclipse can deliver Rita’s Rewind to PC and ‘multiple consoles’ by the promised end of 2024, while sporting even half Revenge’s quality and depth, then we might have something amazing to look forward to.
The upcoming game, which features a new story about a robotic Rita Repulsa traveling deep into the past to meet her younger self so she (they?) can alter time and stop the Rangers once and for all, looks to be embracing pixelated graphics plucked straight out of sweaty 1993 arcades. It has been over 30 years since Power Rangers exploded into toy catalogs and the pop culture consciousness at large, so why not keep the visuals time period-appropriate? This actually looks even more pixelated than the Power Rangers SNES game I rented back in the ‘90s. Impressive.
The kinetic trailer predictably and appropriately uses the TV show’s rockin’ theme song that, even after all these decades, still makes me want to run around the school playground like a maniac and pretend I’m piloting my own Zord. Friends, I’m filled with greasy cafeteria pizza and expired chocolate milk, so today’s lunch recess is going to be long. I am fired up. I call dibs on the Blue Ranger.
The gameplay footage shows off all kinds of interesting 16-bit environments, including an amusement park with Ranger-colored roller coaster vehicles, as well as 3D-ish Mode 7-esque third-person action segments that would have wowed Super Nintendo owners as they chugged Crystal Pepsi back in 1994. We also see lots of classic villains make appearances, like Goldar, Bones, and my personal favorite (I had the action figure!) Eye Guy. There’s even a first-person Megazord bit. Had that toy, too.
Fine. I’m completely sold.
While you can currently wishlist the game on Steam, there’s no set-in-stone release date for Rita’s Rewind, although Digital Eclipse is saying the title will launch by the end of the year. I’ll be there day one, for sure, waiting with my deformed Auto Morphin Trini.
Now if only we could convince McDonald’s to run that 1995 MMPR: The Movie promotion again. Those toys were the GOAT, even if they did smell like a dirty deep fryer.
