Sega mistreated their fans with their handling of the Saturn console. That’s no secret. They failed to localize many of their best titles, and after the first few years what we did get was released in small quantities. Worse yet most of their best titles haven’t been remade or ported anywhere else. Because of this there are a ton of super rare Sega Saturn games. Burning Rangers is one of these. It was Sonic Team’s final game released for the console. This received no ports, remakes, or even reprints. It took me a year of looking for a good price, and that was decades ago. Today we’re going to take a look at this Sega classic and see if it is worth the high price and headache of tracking down. As it turns out this is one of the best Sega Saturn games of all time.
Burning Rangers is based on a pretty unique premise. You play as a member of a futuristic team of sci-fi firefighters. If you haven’t guessed by now they’re called the Burning Rangers Your simple goal is to extinguish flames and rescue survivors while navigating maze-like structures. It’s the futuristic elements that allow for the unique gameplay twists, but we’ll get to that later. What’s cool is that you get your choice of playing as one of two characters; Shou and Tillis. Both are rookie members of the Burning Rangers team. The game begins during their training, and soon thereafter they’re sent on their first real mission. I really like the premise of this title. It’s unique to say the least. Burning Rangers leans very heavily into the anime tropes. If you don’t like that then this one will get under your skin right away.
This is a console that wasn’t well known for it’s 3D generating properties. Sonic Team went all out here and pushed the hardware to its limits. Burning Rangers is a fully 3D action shooter where you navigate a series of four different futuristic indoor levels. The rooms and corridors are numerous while often being multi-tiered. Your characters are surprisingly agile thanks in large part to the suits that they wear. Not only can they jump unreasonably high but you can also activate jet packs to reach elevated platforms and areas. While in the air you can also perform various rolls and even backflips. For a 3D game of this era that amount of control is very impressive. Even moreso considering this is a Sega Saturn game.
As I mentioned one of your primary objectives is to extinguish flames. The Burning Rangers aren’t traditional firefighters. They are from the future after all. Instead of firehoses they use special guns to fight the fires. Generally the flames come in only two varieties. There are red and blue fires. The red ones can be doused with just a couple of normal shots, but the blue require a more powerful charged blast to get under control. Pretty simple, right? When destroying the basic flames with your primary attack they leave behind crystals which are really important in the game. The charged shot does not leave any of these behind unfortunately. While you can use this more powerful blast to put out regular fires more quickly it’s not recommended.
The reason I say this is because the energy crystals aren’t just there for points. These are found laying around in each stage but sometimes you have to go out of your way to find them. They serve two purposes. In an obvious nod to Sonic the Hedgehog when you take damage these come spilling out of your character. This gives you a brief opportunity to re-collect them. If you’re hit again with none in your possession then you lose a life and have to start the stage over. The other reason you’ll need these is for your secondary mission. Littered throughout each stage are incapacitated survivors. You need to spend five crystals to transport them to safety. This raises the stakes when it comes to collecting the crystals. It’s also the primary reason why you don’t want to get hit by any enemies or hazards.
Speaking of foes the game does actually have some. Aside from the fires themselves that is. In various areas you’ll encounter robots that attack using fire. In addition each area of the game has a boss encounter that’s a little more interesting than just big flames. These encounters are interesting in that they require actual tactics unlike the majority of firefighting scenarios. The primary hazard you’ll encounter is explosions. These environments are on fire, after all. In speciifc areas you’ll be given an audio cue when the area is about to blow up. Quickly pressing down on the directional pad causes your character to dodge by leaping backwards. To be honest I never found this to be intuitive. Sometimes you’ll get the notification several times in a row, and occasionally the game failed to register my input in these situations.
Speaking of controls they’re pretty good overall. Burning Rangers can be played with the standard Saturn pad or the 3D controller. I preferred the latter thanks to the analog stick which makes it easier to move in three dimensional space. Burning Rangers requires a fair bit of platforming and I found that the characters were responsive enough to accommodate this. My only complaint is that the controls are perhaps too busy. Sometimes I just wanted to jump to reach a height but would instead perform a roll or flip. It’s nothing too detrimental but you’ll lose precious time when this issue rears its head. The camera on the other hand can be a bit unwieldly. You turn it either left or right from the direction your character is facing with the shoulder buttons. This kind of snaps instead or rotating. Because of this you won’t always get a good angle.
One of Burning Rangers’ big features is it’s voice navigation. There’s no mini-map here to show you where you need to go. Instead you have to rely on your navigator. Her name is Chris, and she’s a member of the Burning Rangers too. Pressing the X or Z buttons has your character raise her on the radio, and she gives a singular direction here. It’s a really neat idea for the time, but it does have its limitations. For example sometimes Chris will say something too vague like ‘jump’ or ‘go up.’ This is vexing when there’s nothing above you. Other times she’ll simply state you’re going the wrong way. When it works it’s awesome, but when it doesn’t the repetition of trying over and over can be annoying. It doesn’t help that the levels are designed like make-shift mazes so you’re going to be relying on Chris a lot.
While there are some frustrating elements in it Burning Rangers is quite a bit of fun. It has that classic Sonic Team polish and charm behind it after all. The environments are all enclosed but the level designs are interesting enough, and navigating them is a treat thanks to all of the control options. Just when shooting fire to extinguish it begins to get boring the game throws a new twist your way. These include things like swimming and zero gravity segments. I also really like the classic mechanics powering this one. I’m talking about the crystal gathering and rescuing of survivors. The crystals and how they function largely like the rings in Sonic titles is a twist that works surprisingly well. Exploring is fun, and these items as well as the survivors gives you plenty of reason to do so.
If there’s one weakness here it’s the amount of content in this disc. There are just four different levels and while the length of each is decent you can burn through the game in just a few hours. I liked the world of Burning Rangers, and was only disappointed that I didn’t get to see more of it. To their credit Sonic Team did try to pad this one out a bit. For one thing your performance is graded upon the completion of each stage. Unfortunately in this case I never felt the urge to go best my prior ranking. This just isn’t compelling enough in my opinion. You also unlock a level randomizer upon completing the game. This switches rooms and corridors around. Unfortunately I found this to be just the same rooms but in different order. Again it’s just not compelling enough of a reason to keep returning.
Burning Rangers is easily one of the most technically impressive Sega Saturn games. It looks better than a lot of PS1 games in this same time period despite the hardware struggling with 3D graphics. The characters animate fluidly with a lot of different frames. The environments also look pretty good. While there’s a lot of pixelation and weird dithering (on the flames especially) it’s forgivable. The thing I really liked is the lighting effects. There are some areas that are pitch black and illuminated just by your characters’ light. The effect is pretty good for 32-bit hardware. The soundtrack is also fantastic. There’s not a lot of music here, but what Burning Rangers does have is excellent. I’m sure this was done to keep the voice commands clear. The best part of the audio is the theme song. Burning Rangers Go is sure to get stuck in your head.
