Share on Facebook Share on Twitter Email
Answers.com

Burning Rangers

 
Games: Burning Rangers
Home > Library > Entertainment & Arts > Games Guide
  • Release Date: 1998
  • Genre: Shooter
  • Style: Third-Person 3D Shooter
  • Similar Games: Bulk Slash (Sega Saturn)

Game Description

When enormous fires threaten the safety of innocent space-goers, there's only one group of people who can save the day -- the Burning Rangers! As the last Saturn project from Sega's Sonic Team, Burning Rangers is a 3D platform shooter that combines exploration with rescue action. It contains four levels over three locations: a burning building, an underwater base, and a space station.

Choose between two futuristic firefighters, the powerful Shou Amabane or the graceful Tillis. Then jump into the heat armed with a fire-extinguishing cannon. As you make your way through the ruined complexes, you will find civilians who need rescuing. In order to send the civilians back to safety you will need to collect enough energy crystals.
~ Colin Williamson, All Game Guide

Roots & Influences

Burning Rangers is created by the same people who developed the Sonic the Hedgehog series. Few similarities exist but both of the games do include the collection of rings. Sonic Team also developed NiGHTS Into Dreams..., the engine in that game is used for Burning Rangers.
~ Colin Williamson, All Game Guide

Review: Overall

With the Sega Saturn phasing out in early 1998, the famous Sonic Team found themselves in a predicament. Producing a full-fledged Sonic the Hedgehog game on the system would probably be regarded as too little, too late. Also, with the Dreamcast console right around the corner at the time of this game's release, it'd be a wasted opportunity to work on the latest hardware. So, Yuji Naka and his band of coders designed a stop-gap called Burning Rangers -- a firefighting action-platformer that used a modified version of the engine from NiGHTS Into Dreams.

In Burning Rangers, you play one of two members of an elite spacefaring firefighting brigade who are sent into the hairiest situations to rescue innocents and quench the flames with a special energy gun. As you run through the levels from a third-person 3D perspective, flames will randomly explode all around you, giving you a split second to leap back and put 'em out. Extinguished fires yield special energy crystals (similar to the rings in Sonic the Hedgehog), which keep you alive and allow you to transport fire victims out of danger. You can keep tabs on your location by talking to Chris Parton, the enthusiastic mission controller who will give you directions the whole way through the game.

Burning Rangers is a mixed bag, in terms of gameplay. "Auto-jumping" whenever you approach a ledge is helpful (and was used later in Legend of Zelda: The Ocarina of Time) and your powersuit's triple jumps come in handy when trying to reach high ledges. However, fighting fires is a little dull and it doesn't really feel like you're blasting flames -- just shooting splotches of red pixels is more like it.

The graphics are a problem. Though the engine supports large environments and some very attractive lighting effects, there is a horrible amount of clipping errors and polygon sorting problems. Edges poke through each other, polygons distort, and fire is visible through walls. It's almost enough to distract from the actual gameplay.

The sound, on the other hand, is well-done. The acting in the English version is no Shakespeare, but at least Sega tried doing full voice instead of subtitling all the of the Japanese dialogue. While the music is saved for transition sequences and videos, it consists of awesome R&B. Both the American and Japanese versions have memorable versions of the mega-peppy Burning Rangers theme.

Burning Rangers is a paradox; the underlying gameplay is great, but the graphics suck a lot of life and believability out of the game. In any case, this is the Saturn's last hurrah and warrants a purchase by anyone who considers themselves a Sega fan.
~ Colin Williamson, All Game Guide

Review: Enjoyment

Great control, especially with the Sega analog pad.
~ Colin Williamson, All Game Guide

Review: Graphics

Great colored lighting and big environments but horrible clipping bugs.
~ Colin Williamson, All Game Guide

Review: Sound

Good-to-excellent voice acting and red-hot R&B vocal tracks!
~ Colin Williamson, All Game Guide

Review: Replay Value

Once you've beaten it, the game offers randomized levels and new characters to rescue.
~ Colin Williamson, All Game Guide

Review: Documentation

Explains how to play and gives the history of the Burning Ranger Team.
~ Colin Williamson, All Game Guide

Production Credits

Director: Yuji Naka; Theme song sung by: Takenobu Mitsuyoshi
~ Colin Williamson, All Game Guide
Search unanswered questions...

Enter a question here...
Search: All sources Community Q&A Reference topics

Wikipedia: Burning Rangers
Top
Home > Library > Miscellaneous > Wikipedia
Burning Rangers
Burning Rangers Japanese case art
Developer(s) Sonic Team
Publisher(s) Sega
Designer(s) Hayao Nakayama (Executive Producer)
Yuji Naka (Producer)
Naoto Ohshima (Director/Graphic Artist)
Artist(s) Naoto Ohshima (Character Designer)
Hideaki Moriya & Kosei Kitamura (Scene Artists)
Composer(s) Yukifumi Makino (Sound Producer)
Naofumi Hataya (also Sound Director)
Fumie Kumatani
Masaru Setsumaru (also Sound Effects)
Tomoko Sasaki
Platform(s) Sega Saturn
Release date(s) Japan February 26, 1998
North America May 1998
Europe June 1998
Genre(s) Third-person shooter
Mode(s) Single player
Rating(s) ESRB: Everyone (E)
ELSPA: 11+
Media CD-ROM
Input methods Control pad, 3D Control Pad

Burning Rangers is a video game developed by Sonic Team for the Sega Saturn. The player takes on the role of a new recruit to the futuristic firefighting organization of the title, and must explore locations where various emergencies have taken place, extinguishing fires and rescuing survivors.

The game is set in a futuristic society in which fire is one of the few major hazards remaining. The Burning Rangers are an elite group of firefighters who have been formed to help cope with such emergencies. The core members of the team are Chris Parton, Big Landman and Reed Phoenix; as well as two new recruits, Shou Amabane and a woman called Tillis. The latter two are the only characters playable initially, although the others may be unlocked through the use of a password feature. Other major characters within the game include Iria Klein and Neal Belmondo, and there are many cameo appearances from Sonic Team staff including Yuji Naka and Naoto Ōshima.

The game is notable for its random level generation system, which is unlocked after completing the game once. This makes the game ideal for replayability. To help the player find their way around these unfamiliar stages, a navigation system was included - at any time, the player may radio back to Chris, who will provide helpful information about nearby hazards and objectives. In a technical sense, Burning Rangers is also notable as one of the few Saturn games to have transparency effects (the fire effects). The Saturn did have hardware support for transparency, but it was limited to 2D objects and was overly CPU intensive. Given the complex multi-cpu architecture of the console, true transparency was rarely used in commercial games, Burning Rangers being one of the few that used it.[citation needed]

Released in early 1998 to mixed reviews and a dwindling number of Saturn owners, to date the title has not received a sequel. However, the game has been referenced numerous times in many other games made by Sonic Team including Phantasy Star Online and Phantasy Star Universe.

The game's characters were designed by Hiroyuki Ochi. Sonic Team have stated in interviews that they intended the silhouette of a Burning Ranger wearing their "Burneer Unit" jet-pack to resemble that of an angel.[1]

Trivia

 Lists of miscellaneous information should be avoided. Please relocate any relevant information into appropriate sections or articles. (December 2008)
  • The voice cast of the Japanese version is comprised entirely of big name seiyuu - pop stars who are usually adept at both singing and acting.
  • The game was possibly influenced by the popular Super Sentai genre.
  • One of the downloadable quests in Sonic Team's Phantasy Star Online is called "Central Dome Fire Swirl", a Burning Rangers-themed mission in which the Rangers' Chris Parton asks the player to extinguish fires and rescue victims. The background music to this mission is the Japanese language version of the Burning Rangers song "Angels With Burning Hearts". [2] The song also appears as one of 6 CD's a player could buy from collecting photon drops, as well as featured in another online quest "Gallon's Treachery".
  • Two of the three vocal songs from Burning Rangers are included and remixed in Sonic Pinball Party, listed as: "(Angels with) Burning Hearts" and "We Are Burning Rangers".
  • It was the first game to use the ADX audio compression, an impressive feat for the Saturn considering the necessary processing power to decode it.
  • The Phantasy Star Universe events "Operation Firebreak" and "Winter Event" make use of the song Angels with Burning Hearts. For Firebreak, the song was used for the two missions on the planet Parum that were added two weeks into the event on PS2 and PC (while the mission was available on the 360 version, the song was not, therefore using the standard Firebreak mission background music). The song made a return during the "Winter Event," which rolled the best parts of prior missions into one. The Firebreak map was available as a "rare map" during the second week of the event (this time, Xbox 360 players were not left out).
  • Guitarist "Vinnie Moore" performed on the soundtrack, playing rhythm tracks and solos on the song "Angels With Burning Hearts", as well as others.
  • The music for the game was written by Naofumi Hataya and Tomoko Sasaki, the pair responsible for the NiGHTS into Dreams soundtrack.
  • The game's manual refers to Phoenix as "Lead Phoenix", but ingame he is always referred to as "Reed"; this descrepancy is probably due to a translation error in the documentation, as the Japanese "L" is pronounced the same as "R".

References

  1. ^ "Angel Island Interviews - 08 May 1998" An interview with Sonic Team which first appeared in Sega Saturn Magazine

External links


This entry is from Wikipedia, the leading user-contributed encyclopedia. It may not have been reviewed by professional editors (see full disclaimer)

 
 

 

Copyrights:

Games. Copyright © 2008 All Media Guide, LLC. Content provided by All Game Guide ® , a trademark of All Media Guide, LLC. All rights reserved.  Read more
Wikipedia. This article is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License. It uses material from the Wikipedia article "Burning Rangers".  Read more