Ranger X

Ranger X is a side scrolling run and gun video game for the Sega Genesis. Developed by GAU Entertainment and published by Sega, the game was released in 1993.

Gameplay – Ranger X

The player assumes the role of Ranger X, piloting a powered exoskeleton who leads the fight back for his home planet against the invading Rahuna forces.^[4][5][6]

Ranger X is equipped with a jet pack and an assortment of weapons.

The jet pack allows for short periods of flight, the duration of which is limited by the jet pack’s temperature.

Upon overheating, the player must land and wait for cool down.

Alongside Ranger X’s standard pulse rifle, the player has access to various special weapons including a flamethrower and homing attacks.

Unlike the pulse rifle, the special weapons drain a power bar, which can only be recharged when Ranger X is in a bright light source.

This special arsenal can be increased by collecting power ups scattered across the levels.

On certain levels, the player may also control a supporting vehicle – an Ex-Up, such as Indra – a futuristic motorcycle, a premise described as “RoboCop on a Harley“.^[7]

Indra can move and fire independently of Ranger X, although Ranger X can enter it to take advantage of its separate shielding.^[4]

The game is split across several levels, each of which is introduced via a wire frame 3D cutscene detailing a specific target objective.

The player must battle through enemy forces and destroy all target objectives, followed by the stage boss, in order to progress.^[4]

Development and release – Ranger X

Ranger X was first project to be developed by GAU Entertainment (now Nex Entertainment), a Japanese video game developer founded by former Wolf Team staff, with both Toshio Toyota and Toshio Yamamoto serving as designers, with artist Ree Senfhu co-creating the pixel art, in addition of Yoshinobu Hiraiwa acting as composer and Noriyuki Iwadare creating the sound effects.^{[8][9][10][11][12]}

The team recounted the project’s development process and history through various Japanese publications.^{[8][9][10][11]}

Yamamoto claimed that the team created Ranger X with a lot of intuition without copying other titles, not wanting to be bounded with the need to imitate others, as their goal was to make a Sega Megadrive game of high-quality.^[9][11]

However, Yamamoto commented that the team did not thought about the graphics but due to the emphasis on creating a polished game, the visuals ultimately had “a lot of shine too”.^[9][11]

Yamamoto remarked that the team did not use game design documents, as the team added elements on the fly when memory space was available.^[9][11]

Both Toyota and Yamamoto wanted the animations to feel intricate, as robots have more possibilities and the team worked to make as much animations as possible for sprites.^[9][11]

Toyota had thought about creating a side-scrolling robot action game on Sega Genesis for a time, not using any example as he dislikes imitating others while also stating that the team started with a question regarding what makes a game fun, with Ranger X being the final result.^[9][11]

Toyota stated GAU created custom software tools that allowed the team with pushing the hardware capabilities of the Mega Drive to its limits.^[9][11]

Toyota also stated that working with the Sega Megadrive was easy to develop for despite various issues, claiming that increasing the number of colors on-display was easy through hardware tricks while remarking that the Megadrive’s problem with colors “isn’t so much a numerical/quantitative problem, as it is a question of subtlety on the designer’s part.”^[9][11]