Power Rangers have been delighting kids and fans of campy action on television and movies ever since the 90’s! And the basis for the show has been around much longer, as it originated in Japan in the 70’s!  I can’t believe Power Rangers is still on TV, but apparently it is.  And now you can join the adventures with Power Rangers: Super Megaforce, a simple arcade action brawler for Nintendo 3DS.

First you choose your Ranger and a helper teammate and delve into short, yet perfect for handheld beat ‘em up stages. You can jump, punch, shoot, and use special skills particular to each Ranger.  Your helper Ranger isn’t quite as useful, but you can choose how they attack (close up, from a distance, etc.).  Each area has several stages where you must beat up grunts and maybe do a little light platform jumping to reach hidden coins.  Then you fight a boss.  On the last stage in an area, the boss will grow big and you must hop into your giant robot Megazord and do battle: Godzilla-style.  It’s all very formulaic, just like the TV show.

Collect coins in levels and earn them afterwards by performing well. You can spend the coins in the shop between levels to buy things like healing items to use during stages, or other goodies to help boost your stats and level up.  You can also earn in-game achievements, and when you do, you can get special gifts like items or even unlock new Rangers!  This is especially cool because you can unlock characters from nearly every one of the Power Rangers series aired in the US: even the originals!  Might be a good trip down memory lane for some of you older Power Rangers fans.  You can also scan codes on the back of certain toys to unlock items and characters, but I couldn’t get it to work.  But then, I just tried to cheat and scan pictures online, so maybe that’s the reason.  At any rate, while this game isn’t too terribly original, I think young Power Ranger fans would still enjoy it somewhat anyway.

Kid Factor:

Power Rangers: Super Megaforce is rated E-10 with an ESRB descriptor of Fantasy Violence. Rangers can punch, kick, wield weapons, and fire lasers at bad guys, but they just fall over and disappear when defeated.  If you’re OK with your kids watching the TV show, they’ll be OK with this game.  Reading skill is required for the text dialog and menus.  With multiple levels of selectable difficulty, players of all ages should be able to enjoy this without too much frustration, although it does get progressively more challenging.

Tags: Game Reviews, Movies with Children, Television