Burning Rangers

Burning Rangers is a third-person shooter game in which players complete missions involving extinguishing fires and rescuing civilians. The player completes tasks across four levels. The primary objective is to transport stranded civilians from burning buildings, by collecting energy crystals dropped from extinguished fires. A minimum of five crystals are needed to transport a civilian to safety; the player receives an energy shield if they use ten.

The crystals function similarly to rings in Sonic the Hedgehog games: possessing at least one crystal allows a player to survive damage from an enemy or fire. Being hit once scatters the player's crystals and renders them vulnerable to death.

Burning Rangers is set in a futuristic society where the only threat to human life is fire. A team of firefighters called Burning Rangers are dispatched to emergency incidents to fight fires and rescue people in danger. The player is given the choice of two playable characters, Shou Amabane and Tillis. The selected character is introduced to the other members of the team, Chris Parton, Reed Phoenix, Big Landman and the non-selected playable character, before being taken on missions.

The missions take place in a power plant, underwater habitat, space station and spaceship in zero gravity, respectively. During the final mission, the Rangers are introduced to Iria Klein, a girl placed in suspended animation and sent into space after contracting an incurable disease. Iria informs the Rangers her ship is set to crash into Earth, causing complete devastation, so the Rangers devise a plan to stop the ship and rescue Iria. Shou and Tillis become fully fledged Rangers, and Iria is cured of her disease and settles into her new life on Earth as a member of the Burning Rangers.

Development of Burning Rangers started around November 1996, after the release of Sonic Team's previous game Christmas Nights (a Christmas-themed demo for Nights into Dreams). The development team of 31 (out of Sonic Team's staff of about 50) was directed by Naoto Ohshima and lead designer Takao Miyoshi. The rest of the team consisted of three game planners, six programmers, eighteen designers, and two sound producers, most of whom had worked on Nights into Dreams. In addition to the Sonic Team staff, Sega allotted a full consumer software team to the project.

The concept originated with the idea of rescuing people as opposed to killing them, which was an element that producer Yuji Naka felt was too common in contemporary video games. The team chose firefighters as they felt that fire was the most appropriate way to create fear and tension. In a retrospective interview, Ohshima said that many of the things done by firefighters—along with rescuing people—were "the very essence of a Sonic Team game", and that they recognised that a firefighter was a hero with whom people could identify. The team wanted to make a game with a rescue theme as Naka thought there were few games based on that concept.

Burning Rangers received favourable reviews. In Japan, Famitsu gave it a score of 32 out of 40.

Reviewers praised Burning Rangers' colourful lighting effects, but criticised its collision detection and occasional graphical glitching. Lee Nutter of the British Sega Saturn Magazine enjoyed the detailed characters and described the lighting effects as excellent, although he, along with IGN's Levi Buchanan, noticed that the visuals had minor problems. Sonia Herranz of HobbyConsolas and Ed Lomas of Computer and Video Games commended the character's designs, colourful lighting and detailed visuals, though Lomas declared that the graphics "[did] often look a mess".