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Also, it appears to have never been released by itself, and only released as the introductory tape with 2-XL in an all-new, red box for 1995. This box promotes the tapes from 1994, but unlike the previous years' boxes, it doesn't mention any upcoming tapes. It seems to be a sign that Tiger was winding down on 2-XL.
To make things even more interesting, the only place I found this tape was from someone selling it in the UK. But in the UK, 2-XL wasn't released by Tiger, but was instead released by Tomy! The box and 2-XL I received from the UK are without a doubt made for the US, with a small Tiger UK sticker slapped on the top of it.
So piecing all this together, I'm going to speculate that as 2-XL was brought to a close, Tiger opted to package their final program directly with 2-XL, in the hopes that since it was the Power Rangers (which was at the height of its popularity around 1995) it would help boost 2-XL's sales. I can't confirm if it was ever even released in the US. Obviously the decision was made to ship a bunch of them overseas... perhaps 2-XL wasn't as far on the decline there at the time?
As to the program itself... well, if this truly was the last 2-XL program, then 2-XL went out on a whimper. I'll admit right up front, I was never a fan of the Power Rangers. I was too much of a purist kaiju/sentai fan to be able to handle the show myself. (And I mean purist in the loosest sense of the word... after all, I still liked Dynaman.) But I can understand its appeal-- I loved Battle of the Planets when I was a kid, which pretty much got the exact same editing treatment done to it when compared to its original Japanese source material that Power Rangers got. So no offense to any Power Rangers fans stumbling across this page. My opinions here are comparing it to other 2-XL tapes.
In the first place, I always had a problem with the entire Tiger 2-XL Adventure Series, because it didn't feature enough of 2-XL. The stories almost always had outside narrators, with 2-XL only popping in when you had to make a choice in the story. Which I never understood... why not just have 2-XL narrate them? And for this story it's even worse, because 2-XL hands complete control over to the Power Rangers' robot Alpha 5. Which kind of makes sense, and is probably even cool for Power Rangers fans. But it also means you only hear 2-XL at the very beginning and the very end. Major points off, there. However, Alpha 5 does refer to you as his "Ranger at home," which is a great nod to 2-XL's always referring to you as his "partner at home" and helps keep the 2-XL feel alive.
The story itself takes place after the White Ranger has been added (I'm guessing 2nd season?), with the villains being Lord Zedd and Rita Repulsa. It's pretty much just one story, with you being given the option of following what any two characters are doing during the story. An interesting twist to it is that if you make a choice that breaks any of the 3 Power Rangers' rules, Alpha 5 will terminate his link to 2-XL, and 2-XL will step in and tell you the story has been prematurely ended and you have to rewind it and try again!
Unfortunately, I'm not familiar enough with the Power Rangers to know if it uses the original voices or not. Since most (if not all) of the previous adventure series tapes did use at least some of the actual TV voices, I'm betting this one does too.
PROGRAM ERROR ALERT: The second choice you have to make at 3:45 into the story gives you incorrect instructions! If you are on tracks Q(1) or A(2), you are told to push C(4) to hear Lord Zedd. This is wrong; you need to push A(2). Tracks B(3) and C(4) have it right.
Box size comparison. This new 1995 box, used only with this program, was smaller and more compact than the previous Tiger boxes. It also featured many images of 2-XL dressed in different outfits-- police officer, composer, astronaut, doctor, etc!
< - Return to Tiger 2-XL Programs
A NOTE ABOUT MUSIC: All music titles have been arbitrarily chosen by Frank and myself. These titles were picked based on many different things: the program we first heard the song on, or the project we first used it in, or whatever imagery it made us think of the most. 15 second wav samples (approximately 325k each) have been included for your convenience to be used as a reference. The running times listed in the description above are NOT the sample length. They are the length of the song as it is used on the 2-XL tape pictured.
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* A NOTE ABOUT PRINTING CARDS OR BOOKLETS: I'm attempting to make these files in the original sizes. Unfortunately computers are odd beasts, and something that looks the correct size doesn't always print at the correct size (or even show up as the same size on different computers). If it doesn't print at the correct size for you, your best bet is to save the file and open it through an image program such as Adobe Photoshop and resize it there.