Summary
Saban’s Mighty Morphin Power Rangers: Mega Battle Launch Pack wants to punch you right in the nostalgia. The 2017 downloadable brawler promises a “modern re-imagining” of the side-scrolling beat-’em-ups that once ate quarters in pizza parlors, now wrapped in 1080p comic-panel flair and six-player couch co-op. It’s a pitch that sounds perfect for Saturday-morning kids now grown into thirty-something gamers who still remember the original “Mighty Morphin” theme song by heart.
But once the Morphin Grid boots up, Mega Battle reveals itself as a shallow, repetitive experience that leans so hard on nostalgia it forgets to build an actual game underneath. Below, we break down exactly where the zords roll strong—and where they break apart.
STORY: A RETREAD, NOT A REINVENTION
The game retells season-one beats with comic-book cut-scenes: Rita Repulsa busts out of her dumpster, slaps a mind-control spell on Tommy, and starts dropping Putty Patrollers on Angel Grove. You’ll fight through ten stages that loosely mirror classic episodes—”Food Fight,” “Green With Evil,” and so on—until the inevitable Megazord throw-down. Dialogue is delivered via static character portraits with all the emotional range of a Happy Meal toy; the script never rises above Saturday-morning camp, and not in the self-aware way modern comics or TV shows pull off. If you’re hoping for the tongue-in-cheek charm of the 2017 movie or Boom Studios comics, brace yourself: this is pure, uncut 1993 cheese, minus the wink.
GAMEPLAY: BUTTONS, BUT NOT MUCH BATTLE
At its core, Mega Battle is a 2.5D side-scroller in the vein of Streets of Rage or Castle Crashers. You pick one of six core Rangers (Jason, Zack, Billy, Trini, Kimberly, plus unlockable Tommy), each with a light combo string, heavy launcher, aerial juggle, and four unlockable special moves tied to a shared energy meter. A dodge roll and block add a whiff of modernity, but hit detection is spotty: enemies clip through you, juggle timing feels arbitrary, and collision boxes sometimes vanish mid-punch.
Level flow is classic genre: move right, wallop waves of palette-swapped Putties, beat a mid-boss, repeat until stage end. The problem is enemy variety. You’ll fight the same three Putty types for 80 percent of the campaign, with occasional Finster or Squatt mini-bosses that barely change tactics. By the third stage you’ve seen everything the combat system has to offer, and the only difficulty spike comes from cheap swarm stun-locks rather than clever AI.
Character progression attempts to add depth. XP orbs drop from every enemy, feeding a modest skill tree that unlocks new specials (+damage, wider hit radius, armor break). Trouble is, most upgrades are simple numeric buffs rather than new gameplay verbs. You’ll still mash square into triangle into super, watching the same canned animation for the 400th time. The lack of meaningful loot or randomized levels means the grind feels pointless once you hit the soft cap around level 15—roughly halfway through the campaign.
CO-OP: SIX RANGERS ENTER, FOUR FRAMES DROP
The marquee feature is local co-op for up to six players. Conceptually, it’s a blast: everyone picks a Ranger, color-coded hit-sparks fly, and you rack up S-rank combo streaks while the soundtrack drops chiptune guitar riffs. In practice, the frame-rate buckles under the weight of its own particle effects. On base PS4 and Xbox One, six-player sessions routinely dip into the low-20s, turning precise dodge timing into a coin flip. Even with four players the game struggles to keep 30 fps during busy super moves. Only solo or two-player sessions maintain a mostly locked 60 fps, which defeats the purpose of advertising “more Rangers, more mayhem.”
Online play is conspicuously absent. Developer Bamtang cited budget constraints, but the omission guts longevity; once your couch crew goes home, you’re stuck with AI partners so inept they’ll watch you get wailed on rather than trigger a revive prompt.
GRAPHICS & AUDIO: COMIC-BOOK COOL, TECHNICAL CRUEL
Visually, Mega Battle adopts a cel-shaded, thick-ink aesthetic that screams Saturday-morning pop art. Character models are chunky and toy-like, perfectly matching the plastic aesthetic of Hasbro’s Lightning Collection figures. Backgrounds—Angel Grove High, the Moon Palace, the Dark Dimension—pop with neon graffiti and explosive onomatopoeia (“KRAK!” “ZAP!”). It’s easily the game’s strongest suit, at least when the engine keeps up.
The soundtrack remixes the classic “Go Go Power Rangers” theme with dubstep drops and chiptune arpeggios. It’s serviceable, but loops every 90 seconds; after the hundredth iteration you’ll mute the TV and stream the movie reboot’s score instead. Voice acting is limited to grunts and one-liners (“Time for a morphological beat-down!”) that repeat ad nauseam.
REPLAY VALUE: ONCE MORE, WITH FEELING… OR NOT
A single playthrough clocks in at 3–4 hours on Normal, 5 if you grind for the optional “Morphin Master” trophy (S-rank every stage). Higher difficulties recycle the same enemy waves with inflated HP pools, offering no new mechanics. A “Megazord Duel” QTE finale arrives abruptly, lasts three minutes, and ends on a cliff-hanger teasing a sequel that never materialized.
Unlockables include concept art, retro comic covers, and a pixel-art skin for each Ranger. There are no branching paths, no roguelite modifiers, no new-game-plus loot tables—just the same linear march ad infinitum. Once you’ve seen the true ending (a 20-second still of the Megazord striking a pose), there’s scant reason to re-morph.
PERFORMANCE & TECHNICAL HICCUPS
Outside of frame-rate woes, the game ships with a laundry list of bugs: enemies spawning behind locked gates, audio layers dropping out, and a particularly nasty save-corruption glitch on Xbox One that can wipe progress if you suspend the console mid-stage. A day-one patch fixed the worst offenders, but three months post-launch the suspend bug still rears its head. PC players fare slightly better: an uncapped frame-rate option and community mods can smooth the experience, though controller mapping is finicky and key-rebinding is absent.
PRICING & VALUE PROPOSITION
The Launch Pack debuted at $19.99 USD, bundling the base game and a handful of cosmetic skins. Today it hovers around $7.99 on PSN and frequently drops to $4.99 during sales. Even at that impulse-buy price, the shallow campaign and absent online play make it a tough sell. Comparatively, $20 buys you the stellar Streets of Rage 4 on sale, while $15 nets Castle Crashers Remastered—both vastly deeper, technically cleaner, and packed with online co-op.
VERDICT: A NOSTALGIA RENTAL, NOT A MEGAZORD MASTERPIECE
Saban’s Mighty Morphin Power Rangers: Mega Battle Launch Pack is the gaming equivalent of a disposable Happy Meal toy: bright, colorful, and exciting for about five minutes before it cracks under pressure. The art direction nails the comic-book vibe, and couch co-op can spark a fleeting sugar rush of childhood joy. Yet clunky combat, repetitive enemy waves, and a buffet of technical rough edges drag the experience back to Earth faster than a wrecked Zord.
If you’re a die-hard Power Rangers completist who needs every piece of media on your shelf, wait for a sub-$5 sale. Everyone else should morph into a different game. Castle Crashers, Streets of Rage 4, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Shredder’s Revenge, or even the free-to-play Power Rangers: Battle for the Grid all deliver tighter brawling with far more longevity. Mega Battle had the potential to be a vibrant love letter; instead, it’s a reminder that nostalgia alone can’t power up a game past mediocrity.
Review Score
5.5/10
