Burning Rangers Co-Op Mode Reignited

On June 3, 2024, Saturn game hacker extraordinaire, Bo Bayles, announced the latest in his series of game patches that seek to restore hidden/unused assets & functionality to Saturn games. This time, Burning Rangers is in the hot seat, with a resurrected 2-player co-op mode! Bo describes it as a sort of “Tails in Sonic Adventure” & “Tails in Sonic 2” type experience, and here’s a demonstration of the mode in action!

New 2-Player Co-op Mode in Action…

Co-Op Mode Game Patch: Download

Once again, these are existing assets made playable through reverse engineering of the game’s code, similar to the Burning Rangers VS mode. However, the restoration of this co-op mode is perhaps even more impressive, considering Sonic Team had changed their multiplayer concept from this early co-op mode to a vs mode shown in preview builds, but ultimately hidden in the game’s final release. It’s a bit remarkable that, according to Bo, there were enough traces of this mode left intact in the final release of the game that he was able to restore it.

OSSM describe the vs mode that ultimately remained hidden

In this video from the Sega Saturn Retailer’s Meeting, we can see an early build of the game that demonstrates this early co-op mode before the switch to the vs mode.

Early build shown in Sega Saturn Retailer’s Meeting video

I can see why they scrapped it, though… It’s finicky and fragile.
Both players can stay on screen if they’re working together with that goal in mind, but not otherwise.
-Bo Bayles

The second player character for each mission is decided based on the textures that are simultaneously available in each mission.
Mission 1: Lead Phoenix
Mission 2: Shou or Tillis (opposite of player 1)
Mission 3: Big Landman
Mission 4: Shou or Tillis (opposite of player 1)

Player 2 can put out fires and attack enemies, but can’t rescue people or collect crystals. If lost, player 2 can teleport to player 1 with the A button. Bo needed to enhance this feature in order to ensure that player 2 wouldn’t get permanently stuck.

There were also areas of the game’s code that had to be modified in order to prevent crashes resulting from two players on screen, such as when you encounter other Rangers during cut scenes. It was necessary to skip the the game’s training level, as it simply does not work at all with two players.