Английская Википедия:Burning Rangers

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Шаблон:Nihongo foot is a 1998 action game developed by Sonic Team and published by Sega for the Sega Saturn. Burning Rangers is set in a futuristic society in which fire is the remaining danger. Players control one of an elite group of firefighters, the Burning Rangers, who extinguish fires and rescue civilians in burning buildings. Most of the tasks the players complete are centred around collecting energy crystals to transport civilians to safety. In lieu of an in-game map, Burning Rangers features a voice navigation system which directs players through corridors.

Development began shortly after the release of Christmas Nights in November 1996. Producer Yuji Naka wanted to create a game which involved saving people rather than killing them. Sonic Team chose to connect the game with firefighting as they thought it was an effective way of having players identify with heroism. It was released in Japan in February 1998, and later that year in North America in May and in Europe in June. Burning Rangers received mostly positive reviews. Critics unanimously commended the game's soundtrack and audio, with the voice navigation system receiving particular praise. The response to the graphics was mixed, with some critics feeling they were among the best on the Saturn, although it was noted for its poor collision detection and occasional glitching. The game was among the final seven Saturn games released in America.

Gameplay

In this screenshot, the player-character is tackling a fire with his water nozzle. The interface on the screen displays the time, number of crystals collected, health meter, danger meter, and water nozzle.

In this screenshot, the player-character is extinguishing a fire. From left to right, the interface displays the time, number of crystals collected, health meter, danger meter, and water nozzle.

Burning Rangers is a third-person shooter game in which players complete missions involving extinguishing fires and rescuing civilians.Шаблон:Sfn The game is set in a futuristic society in which fire is the only danger, and stars an elite group of firefighters, the Burning Rangers.Шаблон:SfnШаблон:Sfn The player assumes control of one of two apprentice rangers, and completes tasks across the game's four levels.Шаблон:Sfn 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.Шаблон:Sfn 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.Шаблон:SfnШаблон:Sfn

The game's four stages take place in a power plant, underwater habitat, space station and spaceship in zero gravity, respectively.Шаблон:Sfn Every level is an interior space, and consists of multi-storied rooms and corridors divided by interlocking lifts and doors.Шаблон:Sfn The player is equipped with a jet pack to reach higher areas and perform acrobatic maneuvers such as backflips and rolls.Шаблон:SfnШаблон:Sfn They can also swim and dive underwater. RobotsШаблон:Sfn attack the player with shooting flames should they come into contact. Each stage ends with a boss battle, ranging from fire-breathing flowers to robotic fish.Шаблон:SfnШаблон:Sfn As in many Sonic Team games, upon completion of a stage players are graded on their performance.

Since there is no in-game map, the player character relies on a voice navigation system to find their way. The mission controller gives the player directions depending on their location, which can be repeated at any time.Шаблон:Sfn At the end of each stage, the player receives a rank based on their score and success at putting out fires, with "S" the highest and "D" the lowest.Шаблон:Sfn Once the game is completed, a random generator mode is unlocked which mixes up the order of corridors in the game's four stages,Шаблон:Sfn with a potential total of 3,125 unique routes.Шаблон:Sfn

Development

Concept and planning

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.Шаблон:Sfn 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.Шаблон:Sfn 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.Шаблон:Sfn The team wanted to make a game with a rescue theme as Naka thought there were few games based on that concept. According to Takeo Miyoshi, "Our first inspiration came from the explosion and building destruction scenes of Hollywood movies. We just wanted to describe the heroism of lifesaving in that loud, explosive type of setting."Шаблон:Sfn The developers wanted to design a future that was "clean and beautiful", with sustainable energy, but where disasters still could occur, and only heroes could protect people from them. The designers envisioned that a futuristic firefighter would be acrobatic and dexterous to reach places where people were trapped.Шаблон:Sfn

According to Miyoshi, Burning Rangers was conceived as an online game for four players, but became a single-player game when the team faced network problems; Sonic Team revisited the concept with the Dreamcast game Phantasy Star Online (2000). Although the target audience of Burning Rangers was people who enjoyed action games, the developers also wanted to attract fans of other Sonic Team games.Шаблон:Sfn Ohshima stressed that he was aiming at a wider audience and not the type of person who only played Sonic the Hedgehog, adding that "players should recognise the Sonic Team touch immediately" with Burning Rangers. The working title was Firefighter, but it was dropped as the team wanted a "cooler" sounding name. Naka felt that "burning" had a "go for it!" connotation in Japanese, and fit with the disaster-rescue theme. He was initially unsure about having "ranger" in the title as he felt that a ranger referred to park rangers in western culture. The team thought that the image of a "ranger" also brought to mind the Power Rangers franchise, and after consulting speakers of other languages, Burning Rangers was chosen as the game's name.Шаблон:Sfn

Design

During the early stages of development, some members of Sonic Team visited Hong Kong shortly before the transfer of British sovereignty, in hopes of finding inspiration for the game's stages.Шаблон:Sfn Some staff also travelled to Universal Studios in California to experience the Backdraft attraction to learn how to generate a similar sensation in the game.Шаблон:Sfn The team also visited a special firefighting event in Tokyo where they witnessed robots putting out fires, and were surprised to see how it compared to their image of the game's futuristic setting. Naka recalled that the robot had special infrared sensors and a camera which could see through fires, and was impressed by their techniques.Шаблон:Sfn According to Naka, the team did not ask for advice from professional firefighters during development, partly due to the concern that their game would not be well received, as Naka thought they would have said that real firefighting "wasn't that simple". At the Tokyo Games Show, a real firefighter, however, did comment that the character's costumes were too thin. Naka reflected that if they had made any of game elements highly realistic, the contrast between those elements and the clearly fictional elements would have been exaggerated.Шаблон:Sfn

A photograph of the game's producer, Yuki Naka, in 2015

Yuji Naka, the game's producer, pictured in 2015

The game uses the same engine as Nights into Dreams.Шаблон:SfnШаблон:Sfn When Sonic Team developed Nights into Dreams, they were new to programming for the Sega Saturn, and when the engine was re-used for Burning Rangers they were able to make it faster and more capable.Шаблон:Sfn To design the stages and environments, Miyoshi outlined the corridors first, then placed fires in them before adding light effects to simulate the appearance of fire. Miyoshi thought that the team had over-reached in designing the game's detailed stages, saying: "everyone in the team wanted to put so much into the game that we only completed about half of what we wanted to do."Шаблон:Sfn Naka said that although they designed only four stages, they ensured that the player's experience would increase progressively throughout the game because each stage was very large. The developers initially used motion capture technology to capture data for poses and animation, but Naka soon discovered that it was impossible to get the results the team wanted, as it was unfeasible for people to perform the special motions they needed.Шаблон:Sfn The developers resorted to creating the animation by hand, and only used the motion capture data for the player characters' walking animations.Шаблон:Sfn

There were many difficulties in developing the game's voice navigation system, as no verbal dialogue had featured in a Sonic Team game before. Naka asserted the team had rethought all ideas of what should be included in the game during development, and the idea of not including any on-screen maps but rather relying on a voice navigation system was "there from the start".Шаблон:Sfn The team tested different forms of navigation systems and picked the best. Although previous Saturn games which used voice navigation systems (e.g. Solar Eclipse) did so in conjunction with background music, they felt that background music would detract from the sensation of being present in the game.Шаблон:SfnШаблон:Sfn Miyoshi thought that the only audio accompaniment being the sound effects of fire and walls creaking would produce immersion.

The team originally wanted to record the game in six languages, but found the volume of work too difficult, reverting to English and Japanese instead. Before selecting voice actors, Miyoshi designed the characters and built up a mental image of what they would sound like.Шаблон:Sfn The Japanese voices were provided by Hikaru Midorikawa (Shou Amabane), Yūko Miyamura (Tillis), Hiroko Kasahara (Chris Parton), Tomokazu Seki (Lead Phoenix), Ryūzaburō Ōtomo (Big Landman), Toshihiko Nakajima, Takehiro Murozono, Yukiko Iwai (additional voices), and Aya Hisakawa (Ilia Klein). For the English version, Sonic Team hired several voice actors who had appeared in American television programmes, including Benny Grant (Shou Amabane), Janna Levenstein (Tillis), Yvette Lowenthal (Chris Parton), Michael McGaharn (Lead Phoenix), Roger Rose (Big Landman), Carolyn Lawrence (Ilia Klein), Michael Reisz (Commander and Victims), Jeannie Elias (Victims), and Kimberly Brooks (Victims).Шаблон:Sfn According to Miyoshi, all audio work was re-written several times throughout development; he considered it to have "evolved" alongside the team's production of the game itself.Шаблон:Sfn

Designing the game's fire effects proved to be difficult due to the Saturn's rendering limitations. Miyoshi explained that during testing stages, the team spent a lot of time checking how well they would be able to create fires, which was a pivotal aspect of the game.Шаблон:Sfn In the first test ROM they produced, Miyoshi discovered that they were able to achieve "some quite beautiful" fire effects by disguising blocky sprites with various degrees of transparency and lighting effects. At the time, few games used polygons in 3D spaces for acrobatic and exploration-orientated gameplay.Шаблон:Sfn

Burning RangersШаблон:' animated cutscenes were produced by TMS Entertainment and its subsidiary, Seoul Movie, who had also produced the Virtua Fighter anime and the Man of the Year short on Sonic Jam for Sega, as well as cinematic feature films such as Akira and Little Nemo: Adventures in Slumberland. The company has produced content for Sega since it was subsidised as TMS-Kyokuchi. The game's anime cutscenes were made with a digital process rather than traditional ink and paint, as this made them easier to compress onto a CD-ROM.Шаблон:SfnШаблон:Sfn According to Miyoshi, the entire development of the game spanned around a year and a half, although the programming took less than a year.Шаблон:Sfn

Sega of Japan planned for Burning Rangers to be the headliner of their 1997 Christmas season releases, but the game was not ready for release in Japan until early 1998.

The game was among the final seven Saturn games released in America.Шаблон:Sfn Each of the main developers reflected on what they were proudest of: Naka expressed relief that Sonic Team were able to "get a good overall balance" for the game, whereas Miyoshi thought that the voice navigation system was the strongest aspect. Main programmer Takuya Matsumoto was delighted to see it released before the Saturn's discontinuation, saying "the fact that we've been able to push the Saturn this far is enough for me to die happy".Шаблон:Sfn Burning Rangers was released exactly nine months before the Japanese release of Sega's next console, the Dreamcast.Шаблон:Sfn IGNШаблон:'s Levi Buchanan characterized the release as an example of the Saturn's "ignominious send-off", writing that "sunset Saturn games like Panzer Dragoon Saga and Burning Rangers demanded far better launches. The way these games were slipped into retail with zero fanfare and low circulation was insulting to both hard-working developers and Sega fans."

Reception

The game 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.Шаблон:SfnШаблон:SfnШаблон:SfnШаблон:Sfn Lee Nutter of the British Sega Saturn Magazine enjoyed the detailed characters and described the lighting effects as excellent, although he, along with IGNШаблон:'s Levi Buchanan, noticed that the visuals had minor problems.Шаблон:Sfn 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".Шаблон:SfnШаблон:Sfn

The game's poor collision detection was unanimously criticised by reviewers, and Colin Williamson of AllGame also felt that the game's prominent polygon errors were a problem, though he appreciated the attractive lighting effects. Some critics compared the game's visuals to those of Nights into Dreams.Шаблон:Sfn Ryan MacDonald of GameSpot commented that the Japanese import had a similar look and feel to that game's 3D environment, and that Burning RangersШаблон:' polygonal graphics were "some of the best [he had] ever seen". Mike Weigand of GamePro considered that the majority of the game featured "drab" stage designs,Шаблон:SfnШаблон:Efn and in a retrospective review GMRШаблон:'s Dave Smith thought that the game "looks like hell" and had not aged as well as Nights into Dreams, and that its engine could not handle a free-roaming environment without harming its visuals.Шаблон:Sfn Weigand felt the game's 3D environment was a mix of both Tomb Raider and Nights into Dreams.Шаблон:Sfn

The soundtrack and sound effects received praise, though reviewers recognised that the game lacked music to create tension.Шаблон:Sfn Buchanan appreciated that the game contained a few tracks of "excellent" Sega-style music, with his favourite being the theme song. Although Williamson, Weigand, and Nutter noted the lack of in-game music, they lauded the vocal tracks, voice samples, and sound clues.Шаблон:SfnШаблон:Sfn Most reviewers questioned the quality of the dialogue.Шаблон:SfnШаблон:SfnШаблон:Sfn Weigand felt it was "lame",Шаблон:Sfn and Smith said the game contained "some of the worst voice acting ever produced by human lungs".Шаблон:Sfn Herranz had difficulty understanding crucial dialogue since the audio was only recorded in English, although she admitted that the voice guidance system was an innovative element.Шаблон:Sfn Williamson praised Sega's decision to produce full voiced dialogue as opposed to subtitling original Japanese dialogue, and also praised its "good-to-excellent" English voice acting, though it was "no Shakespeare".

Reviewers had mixed opinions on the control scheme and use of the Saturn 3D controller.Шаблон:SfnШаблон:SfnШаблон:Sfn Nutter noted that the controls were a mix of those featured in Tomb Raider and Nights into Dreams, praising the use of the analogue stick to perform complex manoeuvres.Шаблон:Sfn A reviewer from the Japanese Sega Saturn Magazine felt the game was more comfortable with an analogue pad as opposed to the default Saturn controller,Шаблон:Sfn and Williamson similarly thought the control scheme was "great" when used with an analogue pad. In contrast, Weigand criticised the lack of a custom configuration and described the controls as "squirrelly", even with the analogue controller.Шаблон:Sfn A couple of reviewers criticised the game's short length and lack of difficulty.Шаблон:Sfn Nutter suggested that accomplished players would have it "clocked" in a couple of days and felt it did not take much effort to complete the four levels,Шаблон:Sfn whilst Buchanan said it was "too short for its own good", a problem made worse by its enjoyable gameplay.

References

• Шаблон:Cite magazine
• Шаблон:Cite magazine
• Шаблон:Cite magazine
• Шаблон:Cite magazine
• Шаблон:Cite magazine
• Шаблон:Cite magazine
• Шаблон:Cite magazine
• Шаблон:Cite book
• Шаблон:Cite magazine

External links

• Шаблон:Official website Шаблон:In lang
• Шаблон:IMDb title
• Шаблон:Moby game