Burning Rangers Review

 Just like angels with burning hearts we'll face the risk of our liiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiives!

I might not know a lot about the Saturn's library or Sonic Teams development history at the time. But I know one thing, Burning Rangers is one of the best hi-speed platformers on the 6th generation I've played so far.

In the year 20XX, firefighters are mecha suit equipped superheros with jetpacks, water lasers, and the abillity to speak dolphin. Fighting evil green fire that literally fights back, mutant plants, fish, corrupted robots, the cold unforgiving vacuum of space, and a final area thatsdanvdsakl [REDACTED LEVEL 5 CLEARANCE REQUIRED]

Uh, well aside from that. The basic gameplay of Burning Ranger is.... Sonic with a jetpack. Honestly I don't know how else to describe it, you have strong momentum that you can carry into aerial movement, hovers, boosts, dodges, glides, it's a ton of versatility and it works well as a "high speed dodging explosions in an inferno" anime kind of feeling the game clearly wants to evoke. The soundtrack tends to come in toward the later half of the stages, keeping things relatively tense or exciting once you're more comfortable with the layout and obstacles, while the mission complete screen gives you a live replay of the level with the best goddamn theme to come out of the Daytona USA composer.The final boss in particular is a massive highlight, challenging and exciting with a hell of a good score to accompany it.

The level design is.... not so hot, almost like a sonic game huh? You have mostly cramped corridors and tight spaces that clearly were created with hardware capabilities in mind. Leading to the Mario 64 problem where the camera gets caught on things a lot and you feel like you can't go as fast as the game could potentially reach. The worst of this is kept to the middle two stages though, leaving the first as a good intro and the last as a nice highlight of the best parts of the movement. Even including an area that's just open and you're flying between floating platforms. Which given the draw distance, clearly shows why they didn't do it sooner.

It's a breezy playthrough by modern standards, clocking in at just under two hours for me personally. It has replay value in the form of a randomizer mode for stages, re-ordering hallways and doors with the mission control guiding you through so you don't get lost. It's a nice touch and appreciated, though hard to judge from a modern perspective. I didn't touch it anyway.

All in all, Burning Rangers is a game begging for a remake or followup. Modern audiences are all about fluid controls and short but exciting gaming experiences, while the firefighting and citizen rescue can help guide the design in a way that sonic can't quite equal. Since, y'know, they could cut out the combat relatively easily and make it purely about momentum and platforming. I picture something like Cloudbuilt, just hand crafted stages designed for the controls and to maximize speed and speedrunning potential. Come on Sega, show some love to the Saturn series that time forgot.

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