Mighty Morphin Power Rangers Rita's Rewind
Image: Digital Eclipse

The beat ‘em up genre has had a grand resurgence in recent years. We've been treated to genre-defining entries like Streets of Rage 4, River City Girls, and the fantastic Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Shredder's Revenge. And now, following the success of the heroes in a half-shell, Atari 50 developer Digital Eclipse is taking on the other quintessential '80s/'90s team of colour-coded teens with Mighty Morphin Power Rangers: Rita's Rewind.

The game kicks off years in the future with the Rangers moments away from thwarting Robo Rita's plot, so she decides to send herself back in time to team up with the present-day Rita Repulsa to finally stop them from battering every one of her goons. The story is told through standard text bubbles and character portraits, but the spritework is very well done, with the big man Zordon looking crisp as ever.

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Rita's Rewind is a side-scrolling brawler where you can take the reins of the five main Power Rangers as you battle through each stage to take down the latest monster of the week. The game has five-player local and online co-op, and it's drop-in or drop-out at any time, making for a very easy game to set up. We played with Chris Kohler from the Digital Eclipse team and took the fight to Rita.

However, compared to Tribute Games' Shredder's Revenge, which had different stats and movesets based on who you picked — the best turtle Mikey being fast with short range and that nerd Donatello having fantastic reach etc. — every single one of the rangers plays the exact same; the only difference is the cosmetic effect on their special move (with the attack being the same).

On one hand, it's decent knowing that you'll be able to fight the same even if someone picks your Ranger of choice, but it does have us worried about the replay value. And from what we could tell, there's no levelling system or unlockable techniques to contend with either.

Mighty Morphin Power Rangers Rita's Rewind
Image: Digital Eclipse

During the hands-on session, we played through what seemed to be the first level, a pretty standard first-stage beat-‘em-up affair, but it's undeniably fun. The stage was filled with fun easter eggs and nods to the franchise, with little secrets scattered around for those brave enough to look (although some references were such deep cuts that they could've been entirely made up and we’d be none the wiser).

Despite their more limited movesets, you can get some nasty combos out with Power Rangers, and there's already a solid amount of enemy variety to keep you on your toes. We played the demo on Easy, but we were told that what would change in each difficulty isn't decided yet, however, you will have to deal with more foes if you have more players in the game, so it theoretically shouldn't be a cakewalk in five-player.

We got to the end of the stage and the main man Goldar was there, ready to throw hands with us. And after a pretty solid boss fight, the demo came to an end, which was the most disappointing part of the whole affair.

Talking to Kohler, we were told that each stage takes the format of an episode of the show. So after we beat Goldar, it would’ve been time for Rita to make her monster grow. That would mark the appropriate time for the team to jump into their Dinozords and chase down the enemy. From a brief video we were shown after the session, the Dinozord chases look to be based on Sega's Space Harrier franchise.

Mighty Morphin Power Rangers Rita's Rewind
Image: Digital Eclipse

However, the part we're all waiting on was also shown to us: Once you've hunted down the enemies, it's time to unleash the power of the Megazord.

This was the biggest tease of the entire session, as the section we were shown plays out like a first-person version of Punch-Out where it's time to take down Rita's best with the power of friendship and giant robots. We were told that in co-op, each ranger is in charge of their own section of the Megazord (one controlling sight, another controlling an arm, and so on). We were gutted that we didn't get to try this out by ourselves, as it seems like one of the coolest parts of the game – and if it's as interesting as described, one of the coolest parts of any game.

Mighty Morphin Power Rangers: Rita's Revenge seems like a great co-op experience and a love letter to fans of the show. but we're not as sure it'll appeal to non-fans through its mechanics due to their relative simplicity. Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles may have the Power Rangers beat in terms of core combat (and having a Ghostface Killah / Raekwon banger on the soundtrack), but the stage variety on show in Rita's Rewind may make the Super Sentai brawler one to look out for too.

Mighty Morphin Power Rangers Rita's Rewind launches on Switch later this year.