WARNING: BURNING RANGERS SPOILERS. If you care about spoilers for an obscure 25 year old video game, turn away!
You've probably never played this game, and you may never. If not, please, imagine the following for a moment.
You've been playing this game for many hours. You're in the final level, the game is explicit in that. It's been a 3D platformer where you've been jumping around burning facilities putting out fires and rescuing civilians. But the last level has been different, because now you're alone. You're cut off from the rest of your squad, and as the final revelations of the plot come in to view,it lookslike you're not gonna make it. This burning space station will be your doom...
And then, your squad comes in and teleports you to their ship. They're here with you, and together, you're gonna STOP this! And so, you're suddenly flying down a collapsing corridor in an exploding space station, making your way deeper, into the core. And as you go, this music plays.
This kind of moment in video games, a sudden FUCK YES moment, I LIVE for that shit, when your blood is pumping, your skin begins to tingle, you feel like you're about to SCREAM, like you're actually there, careening through the tunnels through raging fire.
God, I love video games. Check out Burning Rangers sometime, if you can.
There are so many things in BR that are actually cooler and more well-developed than what ended up in PSO. I feel like the gameplay in general is more varied, the aesthetics are honestly -even cooler- in many places, there's all kinds of destructible stuff and things blowing up in satisfying ways, the movement feels way more fluid... and it's kind of disappointing that the networking constraints limited what they could do well on dialup while keeping all the players relatively synced. I kind of wish in some ways that Burning Rangers continued on instead of becoming PSO, despite PSO being probably my favorite game, in part because I think Burning Rangers Online would have become that for me instead.