Can We Get a Power Rangers Game That’s NOT Mighty Morphin, Please?

During Geoff Keighley’s Summer Game Fest Opening Night Live show, we got a look at a brand-new Power Rangers game, Mighty Morphin Power Rangers: Rita’s Rewind. A throwback to the old-school style of SNES-style brawlers not too dissimilar to Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Shredder’s Revenge, this looks like a fun, lighthearted entry in the Power Rangers canon. It’s always nice to see titles like this pop up with classic characters from the past that throw things back to a simpler time in the gaming world.

With that said, there’s one problem that I’m personally having with the announcement of this new game: the Power Rangers team that it’s based around. This is another consecutive Power Rangers game that is, in large part, based around the Mighty Morphin Power Rangers team. While it’s not a massive surprise to see a Power Rangers game centered around the team that started it all, there’s a massive part of me that just wonders when we’ll get to see some Power Rangers games that aren’t centered around the teenagers with attitude.

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Now look, it’s not that I don’t understand why a game such as this is specifically based around the Mighty Morphin Power Rangers team; I mean, they are the original Power Rangers, and by far the most recognizable team for those who aren’t hardcore Power Rangers lovers. Nostalgia sells, of course, and with a franchise like this that has strong appeal to “90s kids,” who else would you choose to base a Power Rangers game around?

Having a team like this will do a good job of pulling in the casual observers who probably have not followed the series religiously since the original cast yelled “It’s morphin time!” back in the 1990s. It might also be worth mentioning that, with several classic Mighty Morphin Power Rangers actors like Thuy Trang and Jason David Frank (who played Trini and Tommy, respectively) having passed away, it’s a beautiful thing to see these characters continue to make appearances and be immortalized in video-game form.

Furthermore, looking at the kind of game this is, Mighty Morphin makes the most sense to follow. It’s an old-school beat ‘em up clearly designed to throw things back to the style of brawlers that was very common on a console like the SNES. Given that Mighty Morphin Power Rangers first premiered in 1993, this was the Power Rangers season that was running at the time when the SNES was in vogue. Putting it all together, it makes a lot of sense that the new game would focus on this classic team.

And hey, it’s not like the team it focuses on will take away from its overall quality. Judging by the gameplay, this looks like it will be a solid old-school throwback that will be fun to play with a few friends. Furthermore, it’s being handled by Digital Eclipse, who has shown a great ability to revive this style of games with their numerous classic re-releases, such as 2022’s Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: The Cowabunga Collection. A title like this seems like it’s right up Digital Eclipse’s alley, and it should be an enjoyable time no matter what Power Rangers team you’re playing as.

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Still, despite all of this, it’s just a slight disappointment to see another Power Rangers game come along centered around the Mighty Morphin team. Even back in the time this game throws back to, there were several games based on Mighty Morphin, where other teams never got that same love. Even in this current era of gaming, this won’t even be the first time we’ve gotten a throwback title centered around Mighty Morphin, as 2017’s Mighty Morphin Power Rangers: Mega Battle was a beat ‘em up meant to serve as something of a throwback. And while the last few games have blended several teams together, many of them – such as 2019’s Power Rangers: Battle for the Grid – focused a lot of their attention on the Mighty Morphin Power Rangers.

Let it be known: the Power Rangers franchise has been around for a very long time, as it just turned 30 last year. There are over 20 other Power Rangers teams to choose from, several of which have never gotten their own game, and some of which have barely even been featured in crossover titles. The sheer potential for so many of these franchises – some of which are centered around even more interesting concepts than Mighty Morphin’s dinosaurs, a concept that’s been repeated several times over – in the world of gaming is untapped, and deserves its own chance.

While this part also comes down more to personal preference, it should also be said that while Mighty Morphin is the most popular and recognizable Power Rangers team, I wouldn’t come close to calling it the best. There have been several more Power Rangers seasons that have come along since this one that have topped it in so many ways. Seasons like Power Rangers in Space and Power Rangers Time Force have been the peak of Power Rangers, and often feel as though they go a touch underrepresented. Hell, while it was far from a great season, Power Rangers Super Megaforce’s concept of allowing the Power Rangers to morph into past Power Ranger teams would make for a great video game if it was given more love and care than the low-rent Nintendo 3DS title that came out in 2014.

Power Rangers has grown and improved in so many ways since the 1990s, but it still feels like parts of it are stuck in the past. Even as more Power Rangers games come along and test out new gameplay concepts and styles, developers and publishers still feel like they’re using Mighty Morphin as a fallback to cash in on nostalgia. It feels a bit disrespectful to the much longer (and larger) legacy of Power Rangers to let them hog the spotlight simply because they were the first to do it. Let’s give some of those other teams love and give them a chance to carry a new Power Rangers game on their own.