Games of the Abstract: Burning Rangers (1998)

Developer: Sonic Team

Publisher: Sega

One Player

Originally released for: Sega Saturn

 

One of the issues with games being preserved is significant gaps, if allowed to exist, mean entire pieces will be forgotten in the mainstream consciousness because they are not officially available to play. One perfect example of this is with Burning Rangers, now an extremely expensive game to try to own a physical Sega Saturn copy of, because it was one of the last releases for the Saturn in the West, with no way to officially play it on other consoles or PCs. This is in spite of the fact this was a big project from Sonic Team, the team behind Sonic the Hedgehog, and Yuji Naka, co-creator of Sonic the Hedgehog, in the production head role.

Named after the blue hedgehog, I am going to make the argument that Sonic Team clearly wanted to distance themselves from him in the Sega Saturn era. As much as Sonic is Sega mascot's and biggest bread winner barring the Yakuza series and a few others, he can be an albatross in terms of trying to create new games for him, which Sonic Team have and had a haphazard history with, and in that for a Sega fan like myself, sadly the company has drowned out interest in taking in so many other of their intellectual properties further in terms of franchises when only a few like Sonic get so much devotion. It is in mind that Sonic the Hedgehog was always an attempt to get a foothold over Nintendo and Mario in the Mega Drive/Genesis era, one which not only succeeded in getting their foothold in the West fully, but eventually became a huge figure loved beyond being an IP. For me, Sonic Team had other desires in the 32-bit era, and whilst they did help on some games, and should have probably helped a lot more on the 3D official Sonic game we never got for that system, I am glad for the games we got from Sonic Team on the Saturn. Even if I half suspect now having played Burning Rangers that they wanted to entirely separate themselves for the blue rodent who a smash hit designed for the West who became big, it was worth it.

It is weird we never got an official Sonic Saturn game, even if it had been terrible, but we did get two very unique games from Sonic Team. One of them has been preserved in Nights into Dreams (1996), a very unique title which clearly was a work of love they created a Nintendo Wii sequel for, and rereleased in a high definition upgrade. Burning Rangers sadly was not given this same treatment, which is tragic as it really is a little gem. It is a fire fighting game, which like Nights… and its unique combination of dream worlds and flying mechanics, means that Sonic Team were at least trying to move away from the mascot platforming of Sonic into two very unique games. Fire fighting has had a couple of games based on the theme – probably the other prominent one is Human Entertainment's The Firemen (1994) for the SNES, from the developer famous for working on the Fire Pro Wrestling franchise alongside very idiosyncratic titles and a Playstation One sequel to The Firemen. Burning Rangers does however have a futuristic slant on the proceedings, feeling like the cool nineties anime series we never got in existence, where fire fighters now do not need the cumbersome fire fighting uniforms, but sleek body suits with the ability to briefly fly and leap large spaces for their job. Instead of water too, or other extinguisher compounds like power for electronic equipment, they effectively use ray guns now. This is especially useful as fire itself has advanced in the future, per colour coding for severity, upgraded to even green flames which seemingly chase fire fighters.  

Structurally, this is a three dimensional game with one foot in what was becoming more dominant in the console era – the longer length games with saving functions, cut scenes and longer levels – but still an arcade game at heart, in that you have a clear route to take, with the virtue of a voice in your character’s ear to tell you where to go, encouraging you to get better when you replay the game. To finish levels quicker, find all the civilians you can rescue, not just those inherently saved in in-game graphic cut scenes, and make sure to get a higher grade. Your main attack, unless you charge it for a room clearing blast which sacrifices them, to literally avoid feeling a little too hot under the collar, are gems produced by the extinguished flames. Collecting these keep you a shield to protect yourself, in the same way having rings prevented Sonic from losing a life in one hit, and are also needed to spend to use the teleport to save civilians. A higher grade is given per level for as many civilians as you can find, as many gems as you can get and retain, and also for getting the levels of fire down to nearly zero percent, as per a meter, if not entirely at zero, alongside your efficiency at dealing with each stage’s boss.

Doors may only be opened with switches, some need key cards occasionally, and beyond the dangers of fire, as it always had since Prometheus scorned the gods to bring it to mortal man, the second stage onwards brings in robots, usually the security for the places hit by the disasters, which does emphasis the dangers of artificial intelligence when they confuse rescue services as hostile threats. Fittingly, there is no true antagonist(s) to the game, no evil cabal behind acts of pyromania, even by the end stages all feeling like the episodic stories in an anime series before a main narrative comes in. The story we get here is where, in a futuristic setting, the threats even if involving a giant monster fish to slay still are accidents and incidents as in real life, where there is less concern for a pyromaniac behind them but to just rescue people caught in the burning environments and try to prevent the fires spreading. The bosses add a three dimensional run-and-gun gameplay, using jumps and air dashes to avoid their attacks, but most of the game is trying to avoid being burnt in the fires, preventing them from getting too high in intensity, and completing the goals to get to the end of each stage.

The thing that needs to be addressed is the graphics. Burning Rangers is one of the last Western releases for a console which was always plagued with the issue of whether it could push polygonal graphics. It was a machine originally designed for sprites, and is acclaimed for its sprite games, but even in spite of the fact Burning Rangers was made on the cusp of the Sega Dreamcast’s Japanese launch on November 1998 in Japan, a console where this was not a problem, this game which came out in the same year still shows the virtues of when the Saturn could be used at its best. There are clear moments when Burning Rangers struggles to put its effects together, but I commend Sonic Team for a game which still looks good enough to show how the Sega Saturn could do polygonal games. The irony is that the game’s one problem is one which befalls games even on the Sony Playstation, which never had concerns about its graphical capabilities, that the camera is not perfect. This is still superior to games from the Saturn, the Playstation and Nintendo 64 which can be awful for their cameras in three dimensional games, in that even if you have moments of precarious platforming and the camera cannot be instantly placed behind the player where they are, they used the shoulder buttons on the Saturn controller to move the camera instantly to your left or right flank, allowing you to position it with ability to check what is ahead. There is also a button to allow you to control said camera more to focus on targets if need be. Having a voice in the ear to tell you if you are going the wrong way, a senior female member of the Burning Rangers named Chris Parton as your eyes, or a later voice who takes over due to plot events, really helps with this even if there were moments, usually the underwater scenes, which can lead to you getting lost. Alongside the fact the latter does not have oxygen depletion as a game function, thank lord, even when there is the issue that you can accidentally be blasted by fire without spotting it, I will forgive it when it is part of the game’s really interesting game mechanic for this.

That being how, even without the threat of a variety of different fire colours, their colours dictating how more blasts are needed to clear them, fires can explode from anywhere. Sound is important, to the point the game tells you to make sure you can clearly hear your sound system, because not only is Chris'  voice your guide, but you get a sound cue warning when fire is about to explode from under you or the wall. The button, down on the control pad, to do a back flip to avoid it may not always work than just use the air dash to escape, especially on the level in a space station when an outer wall breaks and threatens to suck you into the vastness blackness of the space outside, but the emphasis on keeping your ears and eyes alert for fire is actually a distinct mechanic I commend. There is even, if not exploited as much due to the game's short length, the real concept of the back draft, which is when you open a door in a burning building, and the suddenly combination of air into a room with combustible gases causes an explosion of fire which can harm the person who open the door. This desire to make a fire fighting game, even if exaggerated, which does show the peril of the job is admirable, when it comes to having to briefly carry a child on your back and avoid fire jets, and the basic game mechanics emphsing how the team behind this wished to make a game which was not the same as many where you killed anyone you met rather than rescued them. Yuji Naka is a controversial figure now he was arrested and jailed in 2023 for inside trading, and neither did it help that his game with his own studio Balan Wonderworld (2021), clearly a project of love about dreams like Nights..., of helping people and one which even has actual musical numbers, got tarred and feathered by the public beforehand, but he as a producer and creator is still important. A game like Burning Rangers has to be commended for trying something different, making it clearer they were not interested in just repeating the success of Sonic the Hedgehog again. The game's director Naoto Ohshima, who designed Sonic the Hedgehog and Dr. Eggman from the Sonic franchise, would after 1998 move from Sonic Team and work under a variety of different companies, even if it did mean also working on Balan Wonderworld among other titles.

Even the production design is carefully put together as, for all my jokes about this being an anime, this has cut scenes, when not in-game graphics being used, outsourced to TMS Entertainment, a legendary animation studio behind the likes of Akira (1988) who were collaborating with Sega a lot at this time, including on animated work based on their properties like a 1995 animated series based on Virtua Fighter. Even the voice cast, for the original Japanese version, though the English one we had was not a slouch either, has prominent names, the most notable being Yūko Miyamura as the female lead Tillis, who already by this game had her iconic character of Asuka from Neon Genesis Evangelion (1995) under her belt among other roles. It adds a lot to a game which, whilst a short arcade game at heart, was aiming to be a bigger title from a major arm of Sega. Story wise, you an either choose Tillis herself, or the male lead in Shou Amabane; Shou is your typical lead, whilst Tillis is the youngest member who we learn can communicate with dolphins in a sequence undoubtedly from Sega in its charming goofiness. Sadly we never got a sequel which let us play the other team members, unless you find the secret codes to do so, but at least they are prominent, even having the gruff veteran, in his mid-thirties, who is named Big Landman, which is hilarious he goes under Mr. Landman when greeted. Nonetheless, like the cut scenes, it adds to the game as much as the score by Naofumi Hataya, Fumie Kumatani and Masaru Setsumaru. It adds a lot as between some bombastic rock opera theatrics, they also indulge in dark ambient appropriate for the threat of the main game alongside jazz, which is unconventional if somehow right for the tone.

Stage one, of only five, sets this up at a science lab where after the introductory training piece you quickly learn the ropes. This is a game where, at your best, you will be able to dash through levels quickly, find all the civilians to rescue when you learn the stages, and take in that beating the game once includes an option for randomization in the stages, which adds a nice addition for replay value. Finding survivors, including more available when stages are replayed, leads to the sweet touch of having emails you can access in the main menu thanking you for rescuing them, alongside being the source for secret codes for extras when rescued. For the opening stage, it is pretty conventional and teaches you all the gameplay mechanics minus any robot enemies, with real emphasis throughout that this is the daily life of a fire fighter team even if from an awesome nineties anime series we never got. Based on the episodic stories before the major plot how this game is effectively structured as, the first stage scenario is merely caused by the ill-advised decision to cultivate a giant sentient plant which caused the disaster in the first place and is the boss to dispose of.

Stage Two, probably a favorite even though swimming in maze-like tunnels in the game can get confusion, is the SeaWorld equivalent, if an underwater tourist site which forgot to tell anyone that they had a tour with children there unknown about, and had a giant monster fish which became the issue. The very cheesy and charming details very much of Sega come through here, including befriending a dolphin, if you play Tillis, who guides you along in a funny and sweet moment. Stage Three is definitely where this shows itself as a short game unfortunately releasing itself at a time when, with the Sony Playstation dominating the market, long campaigns in video games were becoming more prominent, as this is already escalating itself with an incident in outer space on a space station which marks close to the end of the story, something you would have to wait for in another game after a few more stages before. Thankfully, whilst a longer game could have been much more ambitious, we got here at least a hybrid of an arcade game which is designed with love and works, not pointlessly long either in this case as we are already dealing with zero gravity movement or the issue of how outer walls of the station collapse and leads to damage if you get nearly sucked through into the void. With huge spoilers ahead, another voice as mentioned is presented after this stage, that of a young woman preserved in stasis on a nearby satellite for a then-incurable disease. Unfortunately her father, when he built the satellite's artificial intelligence, did not code it to not try to collide directly into the Earth, causing unforeseen and apocalyptic damage, when it got the eventual memo a cure was found decades later.

How this leads on includes the one abrupt gameplay change, fun but feeling not as thought-out as the rest, of having to negotiate a space cruiser carefully past hazards to reach Stage Five and the final act, but after that everything is dandy. It leads to a surreal neatherrealm in the satellite with cautious platforming on thin platforms over void, leading you to fight a monster for a final boss before the happy ending. And after that, all that there is to say is the disappointment that this game never was followed upon or ever got a re-release. Nights into Dreams, as mentioned earlier, was clearly a game which was loved to the point it had a Japanese only Playstation 2 release in 2008, a sequel in Nights: Journey of Dreams (2007), and a 2012 high definition re-release. The character themselves also has made appearances in the likes of Sega crossover tennis and kart racing titles, so they have a legacy. Burning Rangers only real legacy is one or two references, such as a race track in Sonic & All-Stars Racing Transformed (2012) based on the game, but that is it. It is not great, and again ties into the issues of preserving the past, especially as the game in its original form on aging CDs costs more than rent for some houses nowadays, and is tragically also really good, a highlight of the console lost officially to the past as said past is not kept in the spot light.