Year released: 1998 (SEGA Saturn)

Number of Players: 1

Fight fire in a futuristic setting where mankind becomes prey to technological nightmares.

Graphics: If you know Saturn, you know the graphics. Tile clipping and slightly pixelated character models. Fire doesn't look like fire the first time you play the game, but somehow the game manages to convince you over time that it is indeed fire (it's not toooo far off that you don't know what to put out, it just looks cheezy). Almost all of the graphics display futuristic indoor settings, which are quite plain and clean. There's also a lot of light sourcing in the game, which helps the atmosphere.
Anime cutscenes are present in the game as well. Not as grainy as other Saturn cutscenes independent of the game engine.

Play control: At first it's a bit hard to control, and a training stage really helps. It just takes a stage or two to get used to every nuance of the jetpack you wear. Press A or C to jump, then in midair to jump again (tapping the joystick along with A or C causes the jetpack to quickly move in a certain direction). B to use a gun to shoot water, and hold B to charge it up and release a powerful shot. This powerful shot must be used to defeat enemies, and the fact that you have to charge up provides one of those many small bits of strategy that Burning Rangers has.
The X and Z button call upon Chris Parton, your navigator. She will tell you if you're going in the right direction. Often enough (and not too much), she will do it on her own.

Sound: No music most of the time. You hear footsteps, voice acting (which convey navigation and plot development), and sound effects (shooting, fire being doused, and such). Music comes in during boss fights and is tense.

Challenge: Find your way through the burning building while saving as many people as possible, and defeat the boss at the end that is causing the fire. As you shoot at fire to put it out, crystals emerge. These crystals are like rings in Sonic--if you have at least one, you can get hit (by an enemy or by the fire). Get hit, and you lose all your crystals. Some fires (made clear by which color they are) can only be put out by a charged up shot. Trouble is, using a charged up shot destroys these crystals.
Stages are designed to be maze like with many extraneous passages. Luckily, if you take the time to go off the beaten path, you will (most of the time) find a survivor. More on survivors below. Getting through these mazes will at first require help from your navigator, but as you get more used to the game (after stage one or two), you learn to pick things up. After that, you have to figure out how to manage your time and your exploration so that you get a decent amount of survivors and have a decent limit. The game provides these as real challenges your first time through, but as you play through the challenges grow as you try to squeeze in a better score.
The limit percentage works like this: as time passes, fires eat away at the building. When you put out fires, the limit goes down. However, at every 20% increment on the limit, fiery explosions chase you, getting worse as it gets higher. At 100%, the explosions become constant. Not to mention that once you pass a 20% mark, you can't go down below that mark again, no matter how many fires you put out.
Another aspect is the survivor count. If you have 5 or more crystals and find a survivor, you can transport that survivor to headquarters, and the crystals you used to transport them get taken away. Up to ten crystals can be used to transport someone, and those crystals are added to your overall crystal count (man I use the word "crystals" a lot in this review) for the stage. If you use 10, you get a free continue. Granted, continues in this game work like lives--each one represents another chance to go through the same stage. You start with two, by the way.
Limit, survivor count (how many survivors you have rescued in a stage), and crystal count are all figured into your score in the end, along with how long it takes you to defeat the boss.
There are occasional enemies. Most of the time they take several charged shots to get rid of, and also most of the time it is required that you defeat these enemies.
Finally, bosses. These guys are shallow but fun. The final boss in the game has two parts, but shouldn't pose too much difficulty. In its second stage, the final boss is a real symphony, especially with the manueverability of your jetpack.

Gameplay: First of all, you have the jetpack. It makes your Burning Ranger much more manueverable than the standard hero, giving it the ability to live up to the task of getting higher scores. This provides some challenges at the beginning of the experience, seeming to jerk around. You soon learn the hard way (though not necessarily through frustration--the crystal shield engine eliminates frustration). how to use the jetpack's quickness to your advantage.
Whistling walls accompanied by a glow clue you in to where a fire is about to erupt. Fires also erupt from gas tanks, and in space, walls will give way and you will feel a strong force sucking you into outer space. These thrills of a few seconds keep you awake as you explore if the ever increasing limit doesn't. Also, since you're fairly close to your character (far enough away to see their feet and get an accurate feel of the gameplay, but there is no option to back the camera up at all), being aware of the environment is comparable to covering your butt in a first person shooter, though in a first person shooter one obviously has a harder time telling what's in the environment.
Enemies, on the other hand, slow the game down. You have to take them out before they get close enough to take you out. However, as you do battle with them, precious time is lost to the ages.
Wandering through these mazes after beating the game's face value challenges (that is, just passing the game's four stages) and finding new rooms is crucial to really appreciate the game. And, since some extraneous passages are only available at random, replay of the stages is also crucial.

Bottom line: Let's see... I also didn't mention the fact that the game employs in-stage plot developments over the voice navigation system just like in Starfox 64.
Trouble is, there are only four stages, three of which get graded. There are 36 survivors per stage, meaning you'll be going back to find what you missed (and all of the survivors you have found are catalogued and viewable). Luckily, as you play, you get rewarded with the occasional password to play as some other character or something else through e-mails you get from survivors. Oh, yeah, and a real gem is how a rare few e-mails further the plot presented in the stage.
REAL bottom line: a solid platformer that offers the deeply and intricately designed stages that can pull off replay to the extent of finding 36 survivors per stage. Burning Rangers makes you speed yourself up through the thrills while at the same time making you pause to look around. It's a great mix--each side serves the other, adding score-based tension (not frustration) at all moments--accompanied by a great and free jetpack engine.
(Luckily, each aspect of scoring is saved on its own, allowing high scores in individual areas to be counted and saved as opposed to having to manage everything at once.)

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