Some things are just meant to be. Peanut butter and chocolate. Movie theaters and popcorn. The Cleveland Browns and failure. By all rights, Power Rangers and a mid-90s arcade beat ‘em up should also be on that list. It just seems like something written in the book that determines cosmic history, willed into existence by a higher power. But it never happened. Yes, there were a couple of middling SNES/Genesis sidescrollers, but like most console beat ‘em ups at the time, they were limited by their at-home hardware. We never got a proper, glorious four-to-six player arcade cabinet, or even a game designed like it was made for one. At least, not until now. With Mighty Morphin Power Rangers: Rita’s Rewind, developer Digital Eclipse has taken it upon itself to give us the Turtles in Time/X-Men/The Simpsons-style Power Rangers beat ‘em up we never got. A couple underwhelming gimmick sections mean Rita’s Rewind doesn’t quite manage to carve out a place for itself amongst the genre’s all-timers, but it is a pretty great beat ‘em up that’ll make you want to suit up and take a trip back through time.
As someone who absolutely loves arcade-style brawlers like this but doesn’t have much nostalgia for Power Rangers specifically, trust me when I say you don’t need to know “The Lore™” to follow Rita’s Rewind. In the distant future, the year 2023, Robo Rita decides to go back in time with her past self, Rita Repulsa, and take out the Power Rangers. The 2023 lineup can’t stop her, so it’s up to the original 1993 crew to step up and take care of business. (Time travel, baby! We’re making diagrams out of straws.) The story is pretty simple here, but it allows Digital Eclipse to write in some funny moments and interactions (the Ritas, despite working together, don’t get along) and put certain enemies in areas they shouldn’t be.
That setup also adds to the whole “this is a 90s arcade game” feel, just like the CRT filters, excellent, guitar-heavy soundtrack that can stand beside the genre’s best, and the absolutely stunning pixel art. Arcade games like Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Turtles in Time and X-Men – as well as modern follow-ups like Shredder’s Revenge – worked in part because they nailed a vibe, not because their stories made logical sense, and Rita’s Rewind gets that. You’re not here for the lore; you’re here to kick some butt as a Power Ranger.
In a lot of ways, RIta’s Rewind adheres to the standards of the modern, retro-style beat ‘em up. The gameplay isn’t overly complex: you’ve got a basic attack combo, a throw if some mook gets too close for comfort, a double jump, rising and falling attacks, a running kick, a dodge, and a screen-clearing super attack you can unleash once your meter is full. If you want to pull off a sick combo beyond that, you’d better be playing with a friend who is willing to throw dudes at you so you can juggle ‘em. Streets of Rage 4 this ain’t.
What it is, then, is a three-hour beat ‘em up built on the fundamentals that make the genre great: characters that are just interesting enough (the Rangers — Red, Blue, Yellow, Black, and Pink — are more or less the same functionally), enemies that are fun to fight, cool environments that range from a theme park to a toxic waste dump, enticing Easter eggs and unlockables to hunt down, and unique boss fights, like the excellent one against Bones or the goofy brawl with Chunky Chicken. Rita’s Rewind has all of that. It feels great to play, the levels are memorable, the enemies force you to adapt on the fly, and the bosses are a ton of fun. And, of course, it’s all even better in co-op – as of launch, you can play with up to six people locally (except for on PlayStation, which is currently capped at four, but Digital Eclipse plans to bring that number up to six in a future update), though unfortunately online co-op is still to come in a free post-release update and will be limited to two players when it does arrive.
All that is to say: beat ‘em ups are kind of a magic trick, the secret sauce can be hard to identify, but you’ll know when it’s not there. In Rita’s Rewind? It’s definitely there. But Digital Eclipse wasn’t content to just trot out a good Power Rangers-themed brawler and call it a day. One of Rita’s Rewind’s highlights is its Super Scaler segments, which plop you into either the cockpit of the Megazord, the driver’s seat of a motorcycle, or behind the controls of your own individual Zord. These sections are, for the most part, pretty great, though certain ones can be frustrating.
In general, they operate like arcade classic Space Harrier. You zoom toward the screen through a pseudo-3D level, chasing down a boss that Rita has jumbo-sized after you’ve beaten them in a fistfight, or just rolling through Putties if you’re on your bike. These sections are both visually impressive and a ton of fun as you dodge incoming fire, shoot down enemies, and acquire power-ups like missiles or the Double Shot. I loved all of the motorcycle segments, but the Dinozord ones were more mixed, partially because of some pretty crazy difficulty spikes.
Taking the wrong hit or missing a jump in your Zord can cost you one of your limited lives, and it’s hard to dodge all of the stuff coming at you because there’s often so much on-screen at once. Certain Zord segments took my co-op partner and I several tries just because we kept losing lives to single hits or missed jumps. When they work, these segments are great, and provide some interesting differentiation between characters (the Pink Ranger’s pterodactyl is unique in that it can fly, for instance, making it easier to avoid attacks). When they don’t, however, they can be pretty miserable. Every continue I spent during Rita’s Rewind was in a Zord level. There’s certainly more good than bad here, but the bad… well, it’s notable.
The Megazord sections, which serve as the cap to any given boss fight, are also more mixed. You can’t lose during these encounters, which is awesome, but they can be frustrating in a different way. You pilot the Megazord in first person, dodging the boss’s ranged attacks and charged strikes until you can get close enough to land some punches, which charges your Power Sword, in stages, for the final blow. Getting hit knocks you back and you lose any charge in a stage you haven’t fully built up (and in co-op, taking enough hits switches pilots, as well). That’s all fine and good, but the issue is that the boss can just jump away from you when you get close, so your goal is not only to get in without making too many mistakes, you also have to get lucky and hope the boss actually lets you punch them. And if you’re bad at dodging their projectiles, it can get very old, very quickly, especially in co-op. (In another bizarre twist, these levels add a lot more to your score than the beat ‘em up levels do, which feels odd given that Rita’s Rewind is a beat ‘em up first and foremost.)
So the Super Scaler levels are a mixed bag, but the additional one-off ideas certainly aren’t. Whether it’s a Super Scaler section aboard a rollercoaster, the obligatory elevator level, or wild time travel mechanics, Rita’s Rewind is at its best when it’s experimenting. Take the time travel, for instance. Sometimes, Rita’s goons will have large tanks carrying the crystals that make time travel possible – damaging these tanks will cause time to rewind, putting you and your enemies in exactly the same place you were before the attack. It also resets your super bar, so you can spend it, trigger the rewind, and do it all over again until you take out the crystal. It encourages smart play while livening up otherwise standard encounters.
Speaking of cool one-offs, between missions you’ll hang out at the Juice Bar, where you can talk to professional losers Bulk and Skull, check in with Ernie, and see how any of the characters you’ve rescued over the course of the adventure, like Mr. Caplan and Ms. Appleby, are doing. The coolest thing about the Juice Bar, though, is the arcade games you can play. These are brand new, original games designed to answer one simple question: what arcade games were the Power Rangers playing during their downtime?
Each one is missing a part, but if you find it out in one of Rita’s Rewind’s levels, you unlock that game for good. They’re pretty grand, whether you’re playing Karate Chopshop (think Mortal Kombat’s Test Your Might), Drive Bomber (a racing game where you try to blow up other cars and avoid the damage your bombs cause), or Nanopilot (Asteroids, but you’re trying to protects cells from invading viruses). They’re really fun, and my co-op partner and I often found ourselves stopping by for a run or two between missions. If I have one complaint about the Juice Bar, it’s that I wish you could change Rangers here between missions instead of having to back all the way out and re-select your save file. That’s kind of a bummer, especially since there’s no option to switch Rangers if you need to use a continue.
That said, Rita’s Rewind isn’t short on replay value. Beating the campaign unlocks the Green Ranger to enable that sixth (currently non-PlayStation) co-op slot, and there’s high scores to chase, S-ranks and deathless runs to achieve, new difficulties to conquer, collectibles to find, and a speed run mode. There’s plenty to do here after you’ve rolled credits for the first time, and I can see Rita’s Rewind becoming a staple in my beat ‘em up library.
