Rewind back to 1995. Cult Commodore 64 developer Manfred Trenz is moving to 16-bit and bringing with him the aesthetic and mechanics of his much-beloved Turrican series. Only there’s a problem. It’s late days for the Super Nintendo and the game’s hand-drawn style had to be reassessed, as there had been a sudden shift to silicone graphics. So, the German developer applied his craft, making a run and gun and ship-based shmup game for the Super Nintendo with the kind of fast action that was more common on Sega’s competing system. There’s practically nothing to compare Rendering Ranger to on Nintendo’s platform, but also, we never even got to play Rendering Ranger without emulation until now.
Rendering Ranger released exclusively for the Super Famicom in Japan, shipping fewer than 5K units, making it one of the most uncommon games for Nintendo’s 16-bit platform. Some publications have even dubbed it the rarest game of all for the platform. The game received middling reviews from the primary Japanese gaming magazine Famitsu (receiving a 22/40 from its panel of four reviewers) and the PAL/North American releases, retitled Targa, never came to fruition.
Distinctly, Rendering Ranger better fits the mold of the Euro Shmup (non-derogatory in this case), than it might have fit the Japanese-only market, as it skillfully blends the Western design nuance of Contra-like run and gun action with more mechanically astute bullet shooting and dodging spaceship shooters.
Luckily for us, Rendering Ranger R2 preserves the game for its first audience overseas. And it’s good! It’s good like Turrican is good, mostly. The game both stands as a unique value proposition, a product of technical prowess, and an outright and basically brainless shooting gallery. The new feature is that the game has a rewind function mapped to a button. Makes for easier work in fields of bullets. But also helps rectify the game’s biggest issue: this hardware is not meant to do much of what this game is doing, and on occasion, that shows, and gets in the way of its mechanical presentation.
Both the Japan-only release of Rendering Ranger and the unreleased PAL/North American versions are included, alongside menus of music and visual concepts for the game. While the game makes the most of the SNES’ limited sound card, it’s evident again that it could do more on Sega’s system, with some crunchy midi tunes that better match the baked-in aesthetic. Also, the game isn’t composed by Trenz’s Turrican collaborator Chris Huelsbeck, but by duo Jesper Olsen and Stefan Kramer, who do a serviceable job, but are still just working with what they have. A sound card which does not benefit games like this one.
Rendering Ranger is also mechanically very simple, there’s an upgrade path for your various manner of firepower, whether you’re spraying it down, spreading it out, sending it bolts, or otherwise. These upgrade paths apply both in the on-foot and in-ship segments and basically it’s fine but overall, the weapon differences are not as mechanically exciting so much as they are visually distinct, and generally you just need to use the right one for the right boss, and otherwise, you’re fine.
There’s not too much wrong with Rendering Ranger. It’s fun to watch the Super Famicom development pedal pushed down to the floor and to see an alternate future, where this game came out and was maybe taken notice of, and Manfred Trenz got to continue escalating his concepts onto new hardware. Unfortunately, this was sort of the end of an act in his career, the notable phase of development we talk about, and is an interesting one-off as a piece of Commodore design philosophy which made it to a Nintendo home. A rare, almost impossibly rare, treat, that we’re just lucky to finally experience in its intended form.
6/10
Reviewed on Steam Deck