What I’m Playing Right Now #13 – Mighty Taito Tetris Rangers Starring Kid Dracula

It seems like November/December is going to be one of those times when tons of stuff I plan on covering releases all at once. The next update to Atari 50 is going to hit. Tetris Forever is going to launch in two weeks and I’m doing it. Taito Milestones 3 has been dated for early December, as has the new Power Rangers game from Digital Eclipse. Good lord, I’m going to be swamped.

Of course, I’ve reviewed all the classic games that bore the name “Mighty Morphin Power Rangers” plus the two Super Sentai games that came before them. I just missed that review beating the announcement for Rita’s Rewind, and the truth is, that review had an audience of one: Digital Eclipse. I’m friends with most of their producers, and I have much love for them. They’re me. They’re gamers, and it’s so easy to get along with someone that you can connect with on that level. But, when the time comes to do game reviews, that friendship sh*t is out the window. But, I have faith. The benchmark for being THE BEST Power Rangers game is very, very small, but Digital Eclipse doesn’t aim for “good enough.” They clearly understand that this is a maligned franchise full of lazy, half-assed cash grabs, and they have a fanbase starving for the first unambiguously good Rangers game (don’t tell me the fighting game is. I played it. I was bored.)

I really don’t know if I’ll ever get around to doing the rest of the Power Rangers games. They’re not better. They really are all middle-of-the-road at best, and there’s SO MANY games I want to cover.

How many media properties have had dozens of games and not a single stand out in the pile? Has any media property EVER had so many games that were mediocre or worse without at least one game that everyone can point at and say “at least we got that one”? Or, to put it another way, if my analytics are any indication, the main lure of Power Rangers: The Definitive Review was the Sega CD review. The one EVERYONE knows is a trash fire. Y’all are weird, but I love you for it. So, it’s not like Digital Eclipse has a tall mountain to climb, but I have confidence they’ll knock it out of the park. This will be one of the first non-compilations I’ve reviewed of theirs. I think the only other one I’ve reviewed is Alice in Wonderland, which turns 25 next year. I really hope that Digital Eclipse, Nintendo, and Disney can work things out so that game can get a re-release.

Taito Milestones 3 hits at the same time. Jeez. The time hasn’t even arrived yet and I’m feeling the crunch of all these games I planned on reviewing hitting at the same time. Now, last time around, my review copy of Taito Milestones 2 came pretty early, but I was still late because I was completely unfamiliar with the included games. That won’t be the case with Volume 3. My readers seem more interested in this collection than they do Tetris Forever, which really speaks to how beloved Bubble Bobble, Rainbow Islands, and the Rastan games are. Actually, going off feedback, it sure seems like people are a lot more interested in how my Rastan reviews will go than the Bubble Bobble franchise. I’m especially proud of my Taito Milestone reviews. Here’s Volume 1 (with Elevator Action and Qix) and Volume 2 (with NewZealand Story and Liquid Kids). My review copy could arrive any time now.

I’m really hoping Tetris Forever won’t require 60+ hours of gameplay to review. I haven’t used emulators to “cheat” on any compilation I know is coming. Not Atari. Not Taito, and Not Tetris Forever. Man, it was tempting with Tetris, but I want to be icy cold going into it, and I only checked the lineup so that I could decide which games to use in BONUS REVIEWS that will be a staple of the Gold Master Definitive Reviews from here on out. In addition to the Tetris games included, I’m adding a small handful of extra reviews that go after the main feature. I did this with Making of Karateka, where I also included reviews of the NES and Game Boy versions of Karateka that I’m guessing they wouldn’t have included even if they could have. In the case of Tetris, there’s a lot of games they couldn’t use because of, let’s face it, Nintendo. There’s so many options for me to go with, so I decided to limit myself to five. Or six, since one of those will include two versions.

This slideshow requires JavaScript.

• Tetris (Tengen – NES)
• Tetris (Game Boy)
• Tetris DX (Game Boy Color)
• Tetrisphere (Nintendo 64)
• Magical Tetris Challenge (Nintendo 64 & Game Boy Color)

MY EYES! THE GOGGLES DO NOTHING!

The one that came the closest to making the cut? The Virtual Boy version. And it wasn’t because it was frying my eyeballs. It was just not that interesting. With all five versions above, it’s not just the gameplay that interests me. Tetris should be, in my opinion, fascinating to discuss. Few games have a mystique to them like Tetris does, and any game that loses that isn’t worthy of the discussion. This won’t be the first Tetris review I’ve done. I reviewed Tetris 99 back in the day. I basically had to since it owned my life for a few weeks in 2019. I pulled off a few miracle comebacks, like this one below. I also had a rare “no badges” win. Meaning I made the final two without ever knocking a single person out, so the person I was up against had all the attack power of all 97 other players, and I still won anyway. So, I think I was pretty good at it. I was also so addicted to it that I had to delete it from my Switch.

I also reviewed an indie version of Tetris called From Below that I’m completely heartbroken isn’t in Tetris Forever. It’s Tetris set during a giant squid attack. One tiny change yields HUGE gameplay results.

So, what AM I playing?

475 lines, 698,026 points on Tetris DX.

I did that today. And I think that’s pretty impressive for THE MOST RIGGED TETRIS GAME EVER dagnabbit. Yep, I stand by that, and I’ll talk about it in the Tetris Forever review. It’s weird they couldn’t get the Game Boy games since it’s basically the most famous version of Tetris. Yea, yea, I have to get back to Castlevania, but I realized I’m running out of time to do the bonus reviews for Tetris Forever as well.

The Kid Dracula Famicom review will hit in a couple hours, followed by more Castlevania goodness. I’ll be looking at the other two Game Boy releases, Dracula X for the SNES, and the MSX game before Halloween.