"Raise the roof!"

Movie tie-in games have a history of not living up to the source material. Movies based on TV shows have the same problem. So what chance does a movie tie-in based on a TV show have? As it turns out, not a lot.

Mighty Morphin Power Rangers: The Movie (SNES) is a beat-em-up that does not even attempt to follow the plot of the movie, other than having the same final boss, Ivan Ooze.

At the start of each level you and a friend, provided you can sucker a friend into playing this game with you, pick one of the six power rangers that were in the show at the time. When they are in their regular human form, each has slightly different moves, though there is no difference in their effectiveness on enemies. They simply vary in ridiculousness from a scooping motion and a slap, to the only Asian character having a jump kick (everyone else jump punches). Our own MrColinP has thoughts on the racism present in the Power Rangers franchise, but I’ll let him lay those out in his own way. In your Power Ranger form, all the sprites are re-colors and they all use the same move set.

In each level, you make a standard left to right progression with no options to backtrack, similar to most brawlers. Instead of having the Y-axis to move along, you are only allowed to move in a straight line. There is one exception: You can hit either the L or R button to jump to and from a second straight line in the background. I’m not sure what the thought process behind this was, other than that it alleviated the need to figure out the hit detection for up and down movement.

Enemies consist almost solely of the shows’ generic baddies, the Putty Patrol, of which there are a few different versions. White ones, purple ones that are slightly stronger (but only until you are in your Ranger form), orange ones that sometimes crawl along the ground pointlessly, etc. There are also bosses taken from early seasons of the show. Why they didn’t use any more characters from the movie is beyond me. The other strange part of their behavior is that, unless you are right in front of them, they will usually walk off screen without ever trying to stop you .

"Background Characters Don't Mind The Fighting"

When an enemy is defeated, they drop a lightning bolt. Collect enough of these and you can power up to your ranger form. If you haven’t managed to do so by the time you make it to the boss, it will power you up for the heck of it.

"It's Morphin Time!"

This is one of the few times when a game was so ridiculous, words just weren’t enough. So I bring you a crappy YouTube video I took on my digital camera:

Mighty Morphin Power Rangers the Movie The Videogame is not great. It is the kind of game that is silly enough that you can play it with a friend and have a few laughs at it’s expense. There are a lot of better brawlers out there. Heck, there are even better Power Rangers games out there. Unless you have a very high tolerance for cheese, I would give this one a pass.