Priced at $34.99, the retro action game is based on the original Power Rangers series from the ’90s and sees the team fight against Rita Repulsa and her minions in a story that both respects and remixes the franchise lore. Gameplay is a spin on the popular brawler genre, but will also add a few neat surprises to mix things up a bit.
“Let’s make a 90’s arcade game!” This sounded like a pretty good idea to us at Digital Eclipse back in 2022, when the first seeds of Mighty Morphin Power Rangers: Rita’s Rewind took root.
Arcade gaming was firing on all cylinders when MMPR debuted in 1993. The 16-bit home era was well underway and the original PlayStation was still a year from its release in Japan, so coin-operated games still raked in tons of tokens. So if we wanted to give the Power Rangers the high-energy arcade game they always deserved but never got, let’s make the ultimate version of the game that never existed.
The result is Mighty Morphin Power Rangers: Rita’s Rewind, a love letter to the franchise which launches on December 10 on PS5 and PS4. We hinted that the game was more than merely a brawler when we announced the project this past summer, and with about 70% of the gameplay focused on beating up Rita Repulsa’s army of Putty Patrollers, anyone looking to clean house with melee attacks and combos should feel very comfortable. The remaining gameplay takes inspiration from Sega’s innovative super-scaler games, like Space Harrier and Out Run. Before polygons ruled the earth, these games simulated 3D movement with a series of fast-moving 2D sprites. These are designed to deliver fast, in-your-face scrolling action, and we thought they’d be a perfect way to let MMPR fans take down some of the Rangers’ most famous foes.
Case in point: Players can expect to travel through the canyons and rooftops of Angel Grove in the first segment of Rita’s Rewind, learning about the twisty time-travel plot and encountering enemies that simply shouldn’t appear this early in Rangers history. But after brawling and defeating Goldar, Rita Repulsa predictably throws her magic wand down from her lunar palace to give her champion a second chance – and turn him into a skyscraper-sized behemoth.
That’s where the super-scaler gameplay comes in. Each Ranger jumps into their appropriate Dinozord and charges into the Z-axis in hot pursuit, blasting all obstacles and enemies with powered-up weapons like missiles and dual lasers. This gameplay really draws on that Sega legacy, throwing back to games like Galaxy Force and After Burner – constant movement, waves of insistent enemies, and powerful attacks to take them out of your way.
Once Goldar is caught, the gameplay shifts again, this time to a first-person fighting game, where the Power Rangers form the mighty Megazord to slug it out directly with the boss. It’s his face versus your fists, once again utilizing that 2.5D visual approach found in vintage arcade games. Each player gets a chance to wear the boss down, contributing whatever they can to the cause and ultimately defeating the bosses with the Power Rangers’ ultimate weapon: teamwork.
Mixing all these different genres felt like the right thing to do to keep Rita’s Rewind perpetually fresh, but it was a heck of a lot of fun for us, too. We love brawlers, but they can get repetitive; we’re hoping that mixing in racing, blasting, and punching will make Rita’s Rewind a thrill for players who have always dreamed about what Jason, Trini, Zack, Billy, and Kimberly’s game would have been like had they walked into an arcade in the mid-1990s.
In fact, one of the concepts that drives a lot of what we do at Digital Eclipse is the desire to make games the way you remember them playing, even if your memories have made those experiences a little sweeter and cooler than they might have actually been back in the day. Our goal with Rita’s Rewind is to make a game that could have existed, and certainly should have existed, but probably wouldn’t have existed with all this variety in one place. Since we have the benefit of looking at arcade gaming in the rearview mirror for 30 years, we’ll take advantage of that to try to deliver something better than you would have remembered.
Rita’s Rewind will debut on PS5 and PS4 on December 10, and you can pre-order it now. When that day comes, we hope you enjoy heading back to the 1990s with us, both in terms of Power Rangers history and arcade gameplay – even if it’s your first visit.
Xenoblade Chronicles X: Definitive Edition is coming to Nintendo Switch on March 20, 2025.
Nintendo announced the re-release of the 2015 Wii U role-playing game from Monolith Software with a trailer, below, saying it comes with “enhanced visuals” and “brand new story elements.”
“Earth has been destroyed by an intergalactic war between two alien races, and humanity is on the brink of annihilation,” reads the official synopsis.
“A small number of survivors, aboard the USS White Whale, crash land on the vast and untamed planet Mira — and now it falls to you, as a member of Blade, to help bring humanity back from the edge of extinction with the aid of powerful giant robots called Skells.”
Wii U titles have slowly but surely made the jump to Nintendo Switch over the years. The console infamously underperformed for Nintendo so its best games perhaps didn’t get the attention they deserved.
The likes of Mario Kart 8, Super Smash Bros. Ultimate, Super Mario 3D World, New Super Mario Bros. U, Donkey Kong Country: Tropical Freeze and much more have all been ported to the more successful platform. Ports are also an easier way to fill up the release calendar as Nintendo gears up for its next console, colloquially known as the Switch 2.
In our 8/10 review of the original, IGN said: “Xenoblade Chronicles X is a massive RPG with enough surface area, sub quests, and customization to keep you busy.”
Ryan Dinsdale is an IGN freelance reporter. He’ll talk about The Witcher all day.
You do some pretty terrible things to dogs in MachineGames’ Wolfenstein games, so I was prepared for the worst in Indiana Jones and the Great Circle. But when I pointed Indy’s revolver at an enemy pupper and pulled the trigger, tears streaming down my face, they merely ran away. Crisis averted.
“[Indiana Jones] is a dog person,” MachineGames Creative Director Jens Andersson explains in an interview with IGN, evoking the famous line from Last Crusade in which Henry Jones gruffly notes that his son took his nickname from the family dog. He also mentions that “this is obviously a little bit different than Wolfenstein as well, where the dog will explode.”
Why the shift? “It’s a family-friendly IP in many ways,” Andersson says. “How do we do that well? Well, these are the kind of things that we do. We have dogs as enemies, but you don’t really hurt the dogs. You scare them away.”
Indian Jones isn’t exactly immune to ultra-violence, of course — one of the most famous gifs in Internet history depicts a Nazi’s face literally melting in Raiders of the Lost Ark. Andersson and Lucasfilm Games executive producer Craig Derrick mostly skirt around the question of whether The Great Circle will have any similar scenes.
“We don’t really have jump scares necessarily, but we have the creepy crawlies sometimes. And there’s a couple of moments when you’ll see Indy in a precarious situation and you’ll feel like it’s claustrophobic,” Derrick says. “You’ll feel like it’s a little bit scary and still in the safest possible way, but I think we bring much of that, as you say, authenticity of the films into this game throughout it. It’s an extraordinary experience to go through.
One way or another, it seems like you are safe from having to Google whether the dog dies in Indiana Jones and the Great Circle. The pups are just fine. As for the rest of game, our final preview of The Great Circle is now live, where we delve into all of the ways that it’s an “adventure-action game” rather than an “action-adventure game.” And of course, check out our full interview as well.
Indiana Jones and the Great Circle is under development for Xbox Series X|S and PC and will release on December 9. A PS5 version will follow in spring 2025.
Kat Bailey is IGN’s News Director as well as co-host of Nintendo Voice Chat. Have a tip? Send her a DM at @the_katbot.
Nintendo has announced that Xenoblade Chronicles X: Definitive Edition will be launching on the Nintendo Switch on 25th March 2025.
Boasting updated visuals and additional content, the release will mark the final port or rerelease for the Xenoblade franchise on Switch, meaning that the entire series is now playable on one console.
Indiana Jones and the Great Circle: The First Hands-on
One of Mussolini’s blackshirts is running at me with a club. I’m out of bullets, he’s coming at me too fast for me to use my whip, and I don’t back myself to take him down with my fists alone. I take a frenzied glance across the room, and see an indicator saying I can pick up something as an improvised weapon – I’m reacting too quickly to check exactly what. I smash my controller to grab it. It’s… a wooden spoon. Oh well. I dodge the first blow, and hammer at my foe with my less-than-impressive weaponry. He eventually goes down. Troy Baker’s pitch-perfect Harrison Ford performance fills my ears: “You went down like a leaf!”
MachineGames is looking to create the playable equivalent of an Indiana Jones movie. Well, I’ve just, quite accidentally, created a fight scene set piece that wouldn’t feel out of place in the series. Mission accomplished.
My two hours with the game – taking in its introduction at Marshall College, a short section at the Vatican, and a trip to the game’s first truly open area set around the Pyramids of Giza – is full of these moments. Cutscenes are charming and heartfelt, getting across the movies’ lighter moments – particularly when Indy begins to travel with hapless-but-talented journalist, Gina. Puzzles come with the sense of wonder and satisfaction you’d hope for from an Indy film. And, yes, the action is as much slapstick as it is brutal, with that sense of ‘50s B-Movie derring-do that Spielberg always aimed to recreate.
Controller in hand, this is a classic adventure game – MachineGames has brought its considerable experience with first-person action games, but pushed it so much further. In Marshall College, you’re given a truly sumptuous tutorial – Indy unsuccessfully attempts to foil a break-in (teaching you the rudiments of combat), works out which exhibit has been stolen from the museum (giving you the basics of puzzle solving), and asks you to follow clues to work out who broke in, and who they might work for (giving you some light traversal tips).
Following those clues to Vatican City, we’re then shown how the game will approach its more linear sequences – Indy needs to break into Vatican walls, getting past the fascist forces that have mysteriously moved in. It’s introduced as an exercise in stealth – levels are rammed with items you can pick up and throw to distract guards, from bottles to… violins. But you’re also taught that anything thrown can also be a weapon.
For someone who is shaky at stealth at the best of times, this is welcome news. One of the pure pleasures of Indiana Jones and the Great Circle is how seamlessly it shifts gears, and this section teaches that beautifully. One moment, I’m confusing guards with clattering objects, the next I’m up on the battlements of the castle, choosing my own path towards my objective (even these more straightforward sections offer multiple routes to success), and then I’m travelling down a zipline, alerting three guards, shooting two, realizing I’ve run out of bullets, and then realizing again that, when I’m out of bullets, I can use my revolver as a melee weapon (I wish I’d understood that during the wooden spoon incident, incidentally).
And after all of this, my demo whisked me to Giza, and I’m shown how much more of that spirit we’ll get. We already knew that the game would include more open areas along the journey, but I hadn’t quite realized how open we were talking. After a brief introduction where I meet Dame Nawal – an antiquities collector working to save the treasures of the Pyramids from the arrival of the Nazis – this section throws me into a huge swathe of playable space, packed with quests, side-quests, NPCs, and mysteries to be found along the way.
Indiana Jones and the Great Circle handles its open areas in some novel ways. Maps need to be found and collected, for a start – and once you find them, you’ll need to literally pull out the physical map to work out where you are, and where to go. It’s a means of reducing the onscreen UI, and to ground you in Indy’s analogue world. Fast travel is available around these areas, but only by finding road signs – again, making you engage with the world placed around you, rather than menus.
The result is that, in just a short time, I learned how the Giza area was put together much faster than I would in other games – I knew which roads led to where, and how to get from place to place without a map. It’s another means of making you Indy, rather than simply piloting the character around.
And it’s also a way of helping you find adventure on your own. While the game is clear about your main quest (you can open up your journal at any time, review clues you’ve found, and get pointers on where to head), it’s not insistent about making you do that quest. I initially took a walk to a market bazaar – but on the way found a wanted poster for a couple of graverobbers in the area. I followed their tracks to a hidden tomb I might otherwise never have seen, and discovered their grisly fate – and a skill book (the game’s means of ‘levelling up’ your abilities).
Once I headed back to the market, I bought a lighter from a dubious vendor, and left to take on a quest I’d been given at a dig site under the Great Sphinx. As I snuck into the area, I saw an unguarded door and, walking in, I spotted a space small enough to crawl into. I assumed this was an alternative route to my goal, but I quickly found a miniature puzzle I was never aiming for in the first place. I’d literally stumbled into an adventure.
This happened multiple times as I played – moments of discovery pile up to lead you to quests you didn’t know existed, offering up collectibles, skill books, and story. Wandering into a medical tent offered me the chance to help a local doctor, who needed me to steal medicine from the invading forces. Heading to a Nazi encampment, I was able to use a disguise I found to walk freely, pilfering supplies. And while I was in the camp, I heard two guards discussing an underground fight club that’s been set up in a local village – I never got the chance to find the uniform I needed to be able to sneak into said club, but I’ll absolutely be heading there when I play the full game.
This kind of organic, fortuitous discovery feels so right for an Indiana Jones game, and it’s a joy to see it coming together in such a short time with this small slice of the full adventure. And when I don’t get sidetracked by my wandering eye, the game’s main quests offer me more fully-fledged delights. When I reach my originally intended destination at the Great Sphinx, I meet Gina in a guarded dig site (kicking off a huge fight outside before I do so), then head off to steal a golden medallion from Nazi officers playing a game of cards, before returning to solve multiple puzzles in the bowels of the Earth.`
Another major quest sees me scouring multiple locations across Giza in search of precious, ancient steles – needing to fight off scorpions by waving flaming torches (you really should get that lighter), smash down bricked up walls into undiscovered tombs, and sneak into a Nazi transport depot, taking down a captain, learning a code from a letter nearby, and breaking into a lockbox to find the stolen goods.
I’ve played just two hours of Indiana Jones and the Great Circle, and I already have this many stories to tell. It bodes beautifully for the full experience – like I say, if this is an exercise in making you feel like Indy – mission accomplished.
Indiana Jones and the Great Circle comes to Xbox Series X|S and Windows PC (with Game Pass), or Steam on December 9. Premium and Collector’s Editions will offer 3 days of early access from December 6.
Indiana Jones and the Great Circle: Digital Premium Edition
Pre-order now or Play on Game Pass* to receive The Last Crusade Pack with the Traveling Suit Outfit and Lion Tamer Whip, as seen in The Last Crusade.
***
Live the adventure with the Premium Edition of Indiana Jones and the Great Circle!
INCLUDES:
• Base Game (digital code)
• Up to 3-Day Early Access**
• Indiana Jones and the Great Circle: The Order of Giants Story DLC†
• Digital Artbook
• Temple of Doom Outfit
***
Uncover one of history’s greatest mysteries in Indiana Jones and the Great Circle, a first-person, single-player adventure set between the events of Raiders of the Lost Ark and The Last Crusade. The year is 1937, sinister forces are scouring the globe for the secret to an ancient power connected to the Great Circle, and only one person can stop them – Indiana Jones. You’ll become the legendary archaeologist in this cinematic action-adventure game from MachineGames, the award-winning studio behind the recent Wolfenstein series, and executive produced by Hall of Fame game designer Todd Howard.
YOU ARE INDIANA JONES
Live the adventure as Indy in a thrilling story full of exploration, immersive action, and intriguing puzzles. As the brilliant archaeologist – famed for his keen intellect, cunning resourcefulness, and trademark humor – you will travel the world in a race against enemy forces to discover the secrets to one of the greatest mysteries of all time.
A WORLD OF MYSTERY AWAITS
Travel from the halls of Marshall College to the heart of the Vatican, the pyramids of Egypt, the sunken temples of Sukhothai, and beyond. When a break-in in the dead of night ends in a confrontation with a mysterious colossal man, you must set out to discover the world-shattering secret behind the theft of a seemingly unimportant artifact. Forging new alliances and facing familiar enemies, you’ll engage with intriguing characters, use guile and wits to solve ancient riddles, and survive intense set-pieces.
WHIP-CRACKING ACTION
Indiana’s trademark whip remains at the heart of his gear and can be used to distract, disarm, and attack enemies. But the whip isn’t just a weapon, it’s Indy’s most valuable tool for navigating the environment. Swing over unsuspecting patrols and scale walls as you make your way through a striking world. Combine stealth infiltration, melee combat, and gunplay to combat the enemy threat and unravel the mystery.
THE SPIRIT OF DISCOVERY
Venture through a dynamic mix of linear, narrative-driven gameplay and open-area maps. Indulge your inner explorer and unearth a world of fascinating secrets, deadly traps and fiendish puzzles, where anything could potentially hide the next piece of the mystery – or snakes. Why did it have to be snakes?
*Game Pass members get access to all pre-order content as long as Game Pass subscription is active.
**Actual play time depends on purchase date and applicable time zone differences, subject to possible outages.
†DLC availability to be provided at a later date.
Indiana Jones and the Great Circle Standard Edition
Pre-order now or Play on Game Pass* to receive The Last Crusade Pack with the Traveling Suit Outfit and Lion Tamer Whip, as seen in The Last Crusade.
***
Uncover one of history’s greatest mysteries in Indiana Jones and the Great Circle, a first-person, single-player adventure set between the events of Raiders of the Lost Ark and The Last Crusade. The year is 1937, sinister forces are scouring the globe for the secret to an ancient power connected to the Great Circle, and only one person can stop them – Indiana Jones. You’ll become the legendary archaeologist in this cinematic action-adventure game from MachineGames, the award-winning studio behind the recent Wolfenstein series, and executive produced by Hall of Fame game designer Todd Howard.
YOU ARE INDIANA JONES
Live the adventure as Indy in a thrilling story full of exploration, immersive action, and intriguing puzzles. As the brilliant archaeologist – famed for his keen intellect, cunning resourcefulness, and trademark humor – you will travel the world in a race against enemy forces to discover the secrets to one of the greatest mysteries of all time.
A WORLD OF MYSTERY AWAITS
Travel from the halls of Marshall College to the heart of the Vatican, the pyramids of Egypt, the sunken temples of Sukhothai, and beyond. When a break-in in the dead of night ends in a confrontation with a mysterious colossal man, you must set out to discover the world-shattering secret behind the theft of a seemingly unimportant artifact. Forging new alliances and facing familiar enemies, you’ll engage with intriguing characters, use guile and wits to solve ancient riddles, and survive intense set-pieces.
WHIP-CRACKING ACTION
Indiana’s trademark whip remains at the heart of his gear and can be used to distract, disarm, and attack enemies. But the whip isn’t just a weapon, it’s Indy’s most valuable tool for navigating the environment. Swing over unsuspecting patrols and scale walls as you make your way through a striking world. Combine stealth infiltration, melee combat, and gunplay to combat the enemy threat and unravel the mystery.
THE SPIRIT OF DISCOVERY
Venture through a dynamic mix of linear, narrative-driven gameplay and open-area maps. Indulge your inner explorer and unearth a world of fascinating secrets, deadly traps and fiendish puzzles, where anything could potentially hide the next piece of the mystery – or snakes. Why did it have to be snakes?
*Game Pass members get access to all pre-order content as long as Game Pass subscription is active.
Marathon, the upcoming PlayStation extraction shooter from Halo and Destiny developer Bungie, is “on track” at the studio but too early to show off yet.
Bungie released a lengthy development update video which shed light on some of Marathon’s mechanics but also just how early it is in development. Player character models are still “coming together,” for example, while enemy models are still in an “early state.”
It’s therefore “a little early to show you all of it as a one piece,” game director Joe Ziegler said, though insisted Marathon is progression as planned. “They’re not all together, but when they all do come together, we really, really are looking forward to showing you what that looks like, especially in play,” he said.
Questions have been raised surrounding its development, however, for myriad significant reasons. Bungie itself has encountered several controversies in the last year or so, perhaps headlined by the laying off of 220 staff members, meaning 17% of its workforce, in July: a move even industry peers criticized.
Bungie have been fairly quiet about Marathon, the upcoming extraction shooter they announced in 2023. Yesterday they released a devlog in which game director Joe Ziegler seemed to want to reassure fans of the studio that the game was still in development. He talked around a lot of the game features, without actually saying much about it. As yet, there’s still no footage of the game in action, making its previous release window of 2025 appear even more tenuous.
Shadow Man and Turok 2: Seeds of Evil have joined the Nintendo Switch Online library in the Nintendo 64 collection.
Both games will be available in the Mature 17+ app alongside the likes of the original Turok and Perfect Dark. Nintendo keeps these mature titles separate from its general N64 collection which includes more family friendly classics such as The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time, Super Mario 64, F-Zero X, and more.
Shadow Man arrived in 1999 as a 3D Metroidvania where players take on the role of Michael LeRoi as he joins a lineage of spiritual warriors who protect the land of the living from supernatural threats. IGN’s 1999 review awarded Shadow Man an 8/10, saying “fans of dark storytelling and action hounds alike will find a lot to praise here.”
Turok 2: Seeds of Evil was released a year earlier and earned a 9/10 in IGN’s review. “Turok 2 transcends framerate questions and delivers a great gameplay experience that will hook gamers if they put enough time into the game,” we said.
These games are available at no extra cost to users who have a Nintendo Switch Online membership and have purchased the Expansion Pass. Nintendo periodically adds a handful of classic titles to its myriad Switch Online libraries, which also includes games from the Nintendo Entertainment System, Super Nintendo Entertainment System, Game Boy, and more.
Ryan Dinsdale is an IGN freelance reporter. He’ll talk about The Witcher all day.
: Digital Premium Edition
