Genre: Action
Developer: Sonic Team
Publisher: Sega

With the game's credits consisting of a who's who of "Sonic Team" fame, with Oshima himself having designed all of the characters, Burning Rangers's stellar marriage of anime-styled cut-scenes shouldn't be surprising. And yet, it's impossible to not be floored by elements like second stage's translucent underwater sequences, or the fourth level's mind-bogglingly surrealistic texture work. The menus are all done using one of the Saturn's high resolution modes, and it's sharper than an Xbox for Yuji's sake!

One of the coolest elements of Burning Rangers is that the whole game is voice navigated: "Turn back!", or "Above you, door on the right!" Speaking of the game's voice acting, it strikes a perfect blend of the prolific and 90's corny. The proceedings open with a phenomenally-animated intro, complete with a Dennis St. James-sung theme song, and its obvious that it-- and most of the music-- was recorded in the same studio as the work from "Sonic Adventure", which released just a few months later.

Burning Rangers's unusual premise sees the player navigating maze-like interior areas, like space stations, while putting out fires and rescuing would-be victims. The formula is well balanced, with strong use of "risk reward" decisions-- "should I risk the time exploring that side room?" Where the game struggles is with its futzy camera, which tends to swing wildly during critical jumps, and the clearly unfinished third and fourth stages.

Burning Rangers has some real all-star talent behind it, and from a pure technological and aesthetic "cool" factor, it is positively off the charts! It's equally obvious though that it's almost quite literally a half-finished game, rushed to come out before the target platform itself was fully retired; the final two stages are incredibly unpolished and don't even really follow the game's formula, while some of the bosses too feel like the developers couldn't get them to even work properly. That said, the game is still a lot of fun to play, and its "NiGHTS"-style scoring system lends a ton of replay value.