Power Rangers Lightspeed Rescue

Like games like Transformers Beast Wars Transmetals and The World Is Not Enough, this is another game where the N64 and PS1 versions are completely different games made by different developers. Lightspeed Rescue on PS1 is a decent beat-em up, Lightspeed Rescue on Game Boy Color is a decent side scroller. Lightspeed Rescue on N64 is…whatever this is.

Lightspeed Rescue looks abysmal. The levels are very simple designs, yet have bad repetition and warping of textures. The camera is stuck in the same position where you can’t seem much (even with me having an advantage due to expanding the view into widescreen) and the movement animations are hilariously bad. The levels are sparsely populated and fairly empty and the people you rescue, who don’t move and are simply in the position specifically chosen by the developers, clip into the floor because the developers weren’t given the time or resources for such simple tasks as making an NPC stand on the floor.

Lightspeed Rescue is also abysmal to play. Power Rangers are known for their marital arts and varied moved, so of course you only have two attacks: shoot sparks forward or shoot sparks backwards. The movement is very simple in that, despite this being made specifically for the N64, you can play the whole game with the D-pad. You slowly run around these levels shooting respawning enemies (with even worse walking animations) that just run into you and disappear and following the compass until you run into the right thing to shoot or rescue (which is just walking into them).

There are very few maps that are re-used multiple times and, other than the brief seconds of laughing at the animation, absolutely no fun to be had at all. The game isn’t just this, there are some other types of gameplay.

In driving sections, you move slightly up and down as the level scrolls past at a set speed. Sometimes you have to shoot objects (the first one has you blowing up cars that are on fire to “rescue” people”), drive over objects or, in one case, just drive for four minutes. Each level uses the same repeating buildings, the same road and all take place at night.

There is a small amount of fun to be had here. If you drive into other vehicles, they spin around and float upwards until they’re out of view. This damages you, but the game is so easy that you can do this a decent amount on purpose.

Megazord fights are first person and involve shooting your opponent in a first person view that is terrible to control. Powerups randomly appear. You have standard missiles to shoot and a power attack that requires charging. If you get close, you’ll to a pathetic punch instead of shooting, so make sure you don’t get close if you won’t want to waste more time slowly depleting your opponents health.

Incidentally, both your and the enemy health bars recharge. Most of the enemies are incapable of shooting regularly enough to ever deplete your health bar. You do get a whopping two arenas, and this mode is the basis for the multiplayer.

The third mode actually looks fairly decent: flying around a 3D city. The controls are rather odd and it’s only used twice: once to pick up other Power Rangers (you’re never given their names) and once to pick up boxes (some of them are stuck inside buildings. It’s the same map both times as well.

Lightspeed Rescue is a game that was clearly allocated very few resources and was massively rushed. Even the people making the box knew the game was bad and used screenshots from earlier, very different, builds to try and make the game look better.

Worst

This ‘game’ comprises four different styles of play, eash as chronically substandard as the last. The ‘Ranger Rescue’ mode is the most notable, featuring a Power Ranger stumbling about like a string puppet, firing at constipated man-wasps and wandering from one blip to the next on the otherwisde barren radar. But, for your £40, you also get an uncontrollable hoverjet race, a left-to-right driving section that would have looked laughably primate 20 years ago, and jerky first-person battles against Lego-like robots with names like ‘Lectronic Trembler’.

Mark Green, N64 Magazine #52

Remake or remaster?

No.

Official Ways to get the game

There is no official way to get Power Rangers Lightspeed Rescue.

action N64 shooter