Review: Burning Rangers | Anime hottie

Sonic team's swan song for the Sega Saturn was like something straight out of the 1980's. It takes everything you loved about children's' anime such as Voltron and Ulysses: a funky sing-a-long theme song, a futuristic setting, a couple of mecha's and a team of heroes in tight spandex, short jackets, white gloves, headbands and dodgy haircuts. This is the world of the Burning rangers. It's almost as though Sega saw me coming! Those pesky devils.

The Burning rangers being a team of futuristic fire fighters, players take control of one of two new recruits: Shou or Tillis. The game is made up of a handful of missions which have you navigating through labyrinths of fire filled buildings to put out fires, stop explosions and rescue any helpless civilians you happen to come across. As you play through the missions you will come across crystals. Crystals are a form of currency which is needed to teleport civilians to safety. If you do not have enough crystals, then a civilian will have to be left to make like Cajun style chicken and burn. Crystals are acquired by putting out fires, but crystals can be shattered if hit with a charged shot from your water pistol. So whilst a charged shot is guaranteed to extinguish a large fire, it could potentially nip all chances of acquiring crystals in the bud. As you make your way through hallways and across areas, fires and explosions can go off at any time. Players are warned of such beforehand via a whistling sound. When you hear it, it doesn't mean it's time to snap yo' fangaz and crank that like Souja boy: it means you need to move fast! By tapping a button your Burning ranger will perform a dodge manoeuvre which will clear them out of harms way. In earlier missions the whistle will sound quite some time before an explosion, but in later missions the time between the whistle and the explosion become shorter, and in some cases are instantaneous. Getting hit by an explosion not only means losing a chunk of your health, but also all of your crystals. No crystals means not being able to save civilians, which in some cases isn't such a bad thing. Some of them sit on the floor in the middle of large rooms like lazy bitches. Unfortunately you're not always able to choose who you save, as wandering into an area with a civilian in clear view will immediately trigger a cut scene and have you teleport them to safety. Some civilians aren't in such obvious locations however, and the real challenge once you finish the game the first time round is going back and saving them all. They're at least kind enough to send you a letter for rescuing them which is quite thoughtful of them. It's the least they could do. Considering you saved your fucking life to save them.

The audio in Burning rangers is fantastic. During missions there is no music, and this works to the games' advantage as it creates a feeling of isolation and being alone. All you can hear is the crackling of fires, explosions going off in the distance and the sound of debris falling in nearby areas. You also have your navigator (the sexy, but cold and disinterested Chris) constantly speaking to you during missions which gives a real sense of being as part of a unit, and also helps break up the silence. At the tap of a button your navigator will tell you exactly where to go. This is a pretty snazzy feature, as not once do you hear the CD spin in the Saturn like crazy as the game loads the speech.

Burning rangers features bosses, all of which are crap. The Burning rangers are essentially glorified firemen with jetpacks, so why they have to fight bosses, I have no clue. The bosses are unnecessary and do not work well into the plot (another thing this game didn't need). The final boss is some space alien looking thing that you fight on what looks like the set from Justin Timberlake's "Rock your body" video. It is not a rite of passage that every third person action adventure needs bosses. Burning rangers certainly could've done without them. All of the bosses aside from the final one is some form of bland looking mecha. The only interesting thing about the bosses is that one of them resembles Pikachu and you can shoot him in the face.

Thankfully the design of the bosses wasn't extended to the main cast, as they're all a well designed bunch. Bright, colourful, camped up to the eye balls, but downright cool. The finger pointing Shou, the cute as a button Tillis, the sexy Chris, the smooth lady killer (but could also be gay and like man booty) Leed and the big black Mr. T inspired Landman. Unfortunately, the supporting cast do not play much of a role in the game. They're in the intro and they're in the ending, but they don't do a great deal (if anything) in between. You'll sometimes come across some of them during missions. But when you do, they're either just stood doing nothing, or they'll say a couple of words and then run off and leave you. It's a shame because the supporting cast are just as cool as the leads.

The graphics in this game are surprisingly good for the Saturn. For a console which was pretty capable, but ridiculously hard to get anything decent out of - Sega actually managed to pull some nifty graphics out of their big black box. Burning rangers looks pretty spiffy. Especially in comparison to some the ghetto looking games that came before. (Only the Sega Saturn could fail to pull off an arcade perfect version of Virtua Fighter 1: which was pretty much cubes and a JPEG image for a stage background). The graphics in Burning rangers aren't perfect. There is some slow down and many a clipping issue, but it's definitely one of the first (and unfortunately last) games on the Saturn which actually rivalled a PlayStation game in the graphics department. Burning rangers made the Saturn look somewhat capable and even now it still looks a bit of alright. A bit.

Burning rangers was a game that had everything going for it. But unfortunately it was released at the wrong time. By the time Burning Rangers came around, the Saturn was already dead. As much as I loved Burning Rangers, I couldn't help but think that it really did need a bit more to it and that it would have benefited from being released on a more powerful console. When the Dreamcast came along and I saw what it was capable of, my first thought was that Sega should've released Burning rangers for it instead. They would've been able to do a lot more with the Dreamcast's extra graphical power, controller and VMU unit. We could've had fully destructible environments, bigger explosions, analogue control, water blasting using the triggers and the VMU acting as a detector for finding nearby civilians. A missed opportunity for sure.

If you own a Sega Saturn and you foolishly do not own this game, then you need to take it upon yourself to hunt it down. It's a must own. Hopefully Sega will resurrect this series and introduce it to the masses who missed out on it the first time round. A re-release on the Wii shop, Xbox LIVE marketplace or PlayStation network would be greatly welcomed.

Burning Rangers is flawed game which is far from perfect, but one which was incredibly fun to play, original, full of promise, cool ideas and most importantly, still holds up to this very day. A Sega Saturn classic and one of Sonic team's defining moments.

👍🏾 One of the Saturn's best looking games
👍🏾 Easily accessible game play
👍🏾 Memorable characters

👎🏾 It can be completed in one short sitting
👎🏾 Terribly designed and unnecessary bosses
👎🏾 Not a great deal of replay value
👎🏾 Not enough interaction or inclusion of the kick arse cast

Verdict: If you're a fun old old school anime and adventure fun, you'll have a blast with this. A great new IP from Sega which deserves more than just one game.