It’s hard not to get excited when you boot up Mighty Morphin Power Rangers: Rita’s Rewind and hear the nostalgic guitar riffs of the theme song. The game starts with sending the gang back to the ’90s before jumping straight into the action: flipping and fighting their way through waves of putty patrollers deployed by iconic villain Rita Repulsa. The rangers — or ranger, if you’re playing alone — fight their way through a sandy valley and across some rooftops before getting on a speeder and blasting away bad guys in a chase through the canyon in the first few levels. It’s all leading into the first big fight, where the rangers transform their vehicles into the Megazord. What’s supposed to be a marquee battle is actually just a watered-down, timing-heavy version of Punch-Out!! — a big letdown that continues throughout the rest of the game.
It’s not that Rita’s Rewind is bad, but the good parts are limited to the repetitive side-scrolling levels that shine largely due to nostalgia for the genre and franchise. The locations and art are stunning re-creations of iconic locations from the series, but there ends up not being enough variety in what you do in those locations: Enemies and movesets are both limited, and, frustratingly, there’s very little evolution of the speeder chase and Megazord fights. While 2022 release Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Shredder’s Revenge, from developer Tribute Games and publisher Dotemu, felt alive and buzzing, Rita’s Rewind feels slow and stale — it doesn’t have the iteration or depth expected of a reimagining of the 1994 classic. Shredder’s Revenge, too, was a modern version of the classic TMNT brawler, with mechanically interesting combat and variety in enemies; Rita’s Rewind, by comparison, feels clunky. It’s that comparison that may be detrimental to Rita’s Rewind: I came into the experience expecting an evolution of the classics, like with Shredder’s Revenge, but what Digital Eclipse created is more akin to what it was like playing a 16-bit brawler back in the day. It doesn’t feel like a game that was made in 2024.
If you’re looking for a simple experience that is a true throwback, you’ll likely have more fun with Rita’s Rewind. In that case, you’re in for a nostalgia treat: The colorful world is full of references and grotesque enemies you’ll remember, like Chunky Chicken and Turkey Jerk. The best parts of Rita’s Rewind are the aesthetic of the environment and its characters, and seeing where the game takes you next. The big “change” from other brawler games is the Time Disruptor, which putties occasionally carry into the battleground. It’s set to a timer, and if it’s not destroyed before it self-destructs, the timeline rewinds briefly — meaning you’ll have to fight whatever bad guys you’ve already defeated again. It doesn’t add much difficulty or meaning, however — it just fills time.
And, perhaps, the team at Digital Eclipse needed that: Rita’s Rewind took just over two hours to beat. It’s not much shorter than Shredder’s Revenge, but repetition made everything blur together. Rita’s Rewind ends up relying far too heavily on nostalgia, creating something that’s maybe too close to the SNES game it’s drawing from instead of pushing the genre for more depth.
Correction: This story has been updated to correctly attribute Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Shredder’s Revenge to developer Tribute Games and publisher Dotemu.
Mighty Morphin Power Rangers: Rita’s Rewind was released on Dec. 10 on Nintendo Switch, PlayStation 4, Windows PC, and Xbox One. The game was reviewed on Windows PC via Steam Deck using a pre-release download code provided by Digital Eclipse. Vox Media has affiliate partnerships. These do not influence editorial content, though Vox Media may earn commissions for products purchased via affiliate links. You can find additional information about Polygon’s ethics policy here.
