In recent years, Power Rangers has become the fourth of my core franchises. It has been a strong showing for the TV side of things, with both Beast Morphers and Dino Fury certainly being in the top half of my favourites. The comics have provided a new viewpoint on the familiar formula. Battle for the Grid provided a fun fighting game, though I feel the games have been the weakest part of the franchise in these past few years.

I have loved experiencing everything that Rangers has been putting out, and things from its past. But I didn’t become a fan in the last few years. I have been so ever since Dino Thunder aired in the UK. Sonic X had got me watching Jetix in 2004 and I became a fan of the content it had. I’d started collecting the magazine when it first started, of which I still have quite a collection of the DVDs that came with it. And more importantly, Dino Thunder arrived on the channel.

I loved the action of it. That everyday teens could become heroes with cool dinosaur powers and control giant mechs. The character growth that each of the three main Rangers, plus half of the comedic duo, went through also inspired younger me that pursuing a career I had a passion for was worth it. At that age, I was never interested in the legacy the franchise held, but I enjoyed learning of it through the Legacy of Power episode.

The team-up episodes with Ninja Storm allowed me to learn a bit more about the team that preceded the Dino Rangers. And it was just a fantastic team-up in general. One that I have an even greater appreciation of upon seeing Ninja Storm. Even after seeing those held up by others as being among the greats, such as Forever Red, Thunder Storm will forever remain my favourite. Though Reinforcements From The Future, the other team-up from Wild Force, became a close second.

Sticking with the TV series, SPD arrived the next year. It was another that I loved, filled with the same action and character growth – no matter how small, that I’d loved from Dino Thunder. But SPD would be the last I watched on Jetix. Though I loved several of its shows, including Jackie Chan Adventures and Super Robot Monkey Team Hyper Force Go!, it was around 2007 I started paying less attention to TV in general.

But, nostalgia is a funny thing, sometimes triggered by big changes in a person’s life. The big change for me being university in 2013. I wanted to find some of those older shows I loved and check them out again. Which is how my first year of university was full of an entire watch of Pokémon from the original series up to Black and White: Adventures in Unova and Beyond. Then with that finished, my attention turned to Power Rangers.

I noticed that Love Film – as it was known before Amazon merged it with Prime – had the entire Power Rangers franchise available on it, so I took out a subscription and got to watching. Starting with Dino Thunder, I loved reliving the progression these characters made. Then onto SPD. With the two series reigniting my love of the franchise, it then sparked another memory from the past. I had owned a Megazord toy before I knew what Power Rangers was.

So I looked it up, discovering all the Megazords of the past. And then I landed on it. The Time Force Megazord. But did I know what Power Rangers was back then and had just forgot? I had to give it a test, so on with Time Force it was. And no. Though I loved the series of Time Force, there was no sparking of memories from watching it, the same as had happened with Dino Thunder and SPD. Since I’d watched Time Force, I thought to myself, why not just carry on?

So I did. After Time Force came Wild Force, where my love of the Reinforcements From The Future team-up began. Then to Ninja Storm, where I appreciated further the Thunder Storm team-up in Dino Thunder. Then I watched both Dino Thunder and SPD again. Then continued on all the way to RPM. Each series of Rangers brought something interesting to love, whether that be the characters, theming, or various oddities.

For more than a year, I watched other content from the past I remembered, such as the Super Mario Bros. Super Show and Sonic X. My contact with Power Rangers during that time was minimal. Then came the summer of 2016, and I thought “Haven’t I missed something from Power Rangers?” And it’s true. I hadn’t watched where the franchise started. Hadn’t given Mighty Morphin’ Power Rangers a look.

And so it started. Right from the start, all the way to the current end. Of course, by this time, the entire series had been taken away from Prime Video. Which led me to Netflix. And since I was doing a complete franchise watch, I wanted to note down my thoughts for people to see. They… ended up rather long. I covered two series at a time – except for Mighty Morphin’, and each would reach over 3000 words. I mostly just talked about them in episode order, covering the major arcs and other notable episodes.

It was an expression of my love for the franchise, hence sometimes not being concise with them. At present, they are yet to be ported over to this site. It’s going to be quite a task, with them being the longest articles I’ve ever written. But I want them here, even if just for archival purposes. At some point, I will likely revisit the full rewatch to give more concise thoughts, as I provided with Dino Fury.

Since that full rewatch, I kept my eye on the news for when the newest series would arrive on Netflix. When it was announced that the franchise would be moving away from Netflix and onto YouTube, I found myself keeping up to date with that, even if I wasn’t watching them all. Well, I did at the start, since I wasn’t going to pass up the chance to watch Dino Thunder, Jungle Fury, and Wild Force on the weekly. Which then turned into a bulk upload as they started going in series order on 2021’s Power Rangers Day.

Now, the only Power Rangers game I played before Legacy Wars arrived on mobile devices. Yup, it was Dino Thunder. Having enjoyed the series, I wanted more. The game would be the perfect way to get that, so onto the Christmas list it went. Rather than the Gamecube version, I instead got the Game Boy Advance version. I didn’t mind that, as it proved a fun action game where I could play as the Dino Rangers. And have a few Megazord fights along the way.

But for other games? I’d moved to the DS by the time SPD came around. Though the DS did have support for GBA games, I didn’t plan on asking for any. Except for those named Pokémon. Not every series of Rangers would get a tie-in, which left anniversary game Super Legends as the only game after SPD released until Saban bought the franchise back from Disney.

Both seasons of Samurai and Megaforce would see tie-in games released for them. The Super Megaforce game would be released around the time I was rediscovering the franchise, but the review from the Official Nintendo Magazine didn’t convince me it was worth it. There looked to have been no progression with the games on handheld consoles. Despite flashier graphics, there didn’t seem to be any passion put into these handheld games. They were the very definition of the tie-in game stereotype. Though I daresay I’d see them in a different light if I could experience them now.

2017 proved to be a great new step for the games with Legacy Wars. A mobile fighting game with rock-paper-scissors mechanics, it was a great celebration of Rangers history. Updates would always be coming, adding new Rangers and villains. Its start was recognising the new reboot movie that had released that year, with the full team and even villains represented, but it quickly grew beyond it. 2018 would see All-Stars release, but it didn’t see the same sort of success. Which is unfortunate, as I liked it more than Legacy Wars. It was a more team-focused game.

In 2019, Battle for the Grid released. A three-on-three tag team fighter, I bought it for the Switch even though my fighting skills are limited. It proved to be fun, with its arcade mode referencing events that related to a war. Just as Legacy Wars tied in with the reboot movie, so too was Battle for the Grid a cross-promotion. For Shattered Grid, a comic event of the previous year that saw Ranger teams from across history joining forces to battle against an evil that aimed to become one with the Morphin’ Grid and rewrite existence.

Power Rangers is an odd one in that I didn’t become a fan of it from a game. Pokémon was Red and Blue, Sonic the Hedgehog was Sonic Adventure 2: Battle, and Star Wars was Star Wars Battlefront II [2005]. But I did become a fan of the Power Rangers comic series through Battle for the Grid. With so much referencing to Shattered Grid and even an adaptation of its story added to the game a month after release, how could I not be curious?

So I began from the start. I enjoyed what I was seeing. The differences to the Mighty Morphin’ TV series, yet also similarities. The things that the series just couldn’t have done with how it was made. Then came the World of the Coinless, an alternate dimension where the Rangers have been stripped of their powers yet still continue to fight. And here was the start of Lord Drakkon’s history, the empire that he had built from his dimension’s Ranger team powers.

Upon finishing Shattered Grid, I was in love with the depth it had provided. That so much build-up could pay off so well. I debated whether to induct Power Rangers into my core franchises. A debate with myself was on and off for almost two years until I decided I loved all aspects of this multimedia franchise enough to make it one. And the franchise has proven to me it was the right call to make.

Though the future remains uncertain for the franchise at present, owing to Hasbro’s plans on their reboot still unknown to us, the legacy it has built up to this point is a strong one. 30 years of history. Of many teams saving the world – or at least the city they reside. Of characters who have come to mean so much to many. However Hasbro chooses to continue that legacy after Cosmic Fury, Power Rangers stands tall. But… please, Hasbro, can we get a high-quality console game that’s not a celebration of Ranger history in the next few years?

Images Taken From:
Power Rangers Dino Thunder | E1.32
Power Rangers Time Force | E1.04
Power Rangers: Dino Thunder User Screenshot #78 | GameFAQs
Power Rangers: Dino Thunder Box Shot | GameFAQs
Power Rangers Super Megaforce | Nintendo Life
Power Rangers: Battle For The Grid / ALL Cutscenes Story Mode | ButtonMasher Gaming