VR Troopers - Production

Production

In the original VR Troopers promo, Kaitlin had the last name of "Hall" instead of "Star" and Professor Hart was played by a different actor with an entirely different voice and personality than the Professor that was later used.

Like Power Rangers, VR Troopers used a combination of American footage spliced with fight scenes from Japanese shows. The Japanese shows adapted in to VR Troopers are Space Sheriff Shaider, Dimensional Warrior Spielban, and Super Machine Metalder. All three come from Toei's Metal Hero Series. Super Machine Metalder provided footage of Ryan Steele's season one robotic suit, Grimlord, the Virtual Dungeon, Grimlord's four lieutenants, Dark Heart, and the military-type robots that are featured in several episodes. Dimensional Warrior Spielban provided footage of J.B.'s and Kaitlin's robotic suits, Ivar, Icebot, skugs, and the battle scenes involving the Skybase, shark cruisers, tanks, and fighter jets. Space Sheriff Shaider provided the new footage for season two, including Ryan Steele's season two robotic suit and the ultra-skugs.

Out of all of Saban's tokusatsu adaptations, VR Troopers uses the oldest source-footage of any series. Shaider was aired from 1984 to early 1985, making it 10 years old when first used for VR Troopers in 1995; Spielban was aired from 1986 to early 1987, making it eight years old when originally used in 1994; and Metalder was originally aired in 1987 to early 1988, making it seven years old when it was adapted in 1994.

Because more than one Japanese show was used in an episode at any given time, Ryan's alter-ego was never in the same action scene as JB or Kaitlin's (since they were taken from two different shows). Due to this, many episodes involved some sort of plot device that separated Ryan from the other two, forcing them to fight separately. Almost every episode ended with either Ryan or JB destroying the monster of the day (Kaitlin never got to destroy any on her own), at which point his missing comrade(s) would come running up to inquire how the fight went. The only time the group fought "together" or in battle grid mode was all original American footage, with the Battle Grid suits being low-quality spandex and the helmets simple recolors of the red ranger's from Mighty Morphin' Power Rangers. For the show's first season, there was almost never any original American footage outside of the Battle Grid. Similar to Power Rangers, more U.S. fights were featured in the show's second season.

VR Troopers as an adaptation is different in many ways from Power Rangers and Big Bad Beetleborgs. Because it was syndicated, the monsters were destroyed more violently; mutant/robot destructions included the monster being split in half, impaled, and decapitated. None of the VR Trooper forms were given names since none of them had one main color.

The show lasted two seasons (1994-'95 and '95-'96) with nearly 100 episodes before it was cancelled in favor of Big Bad Beetleborgs, which continued to use footage from the Metal Hero Series Juukou B-Fighter and B-Fighter Kabuto.

Despite the high ratings and almost successful as the Power Rangers franchise, the series was cancelled because all the fight footage was used up. All three of the Metal Hero shows used in the series had a lot of human vs. human battles. However, because the fights featured close-ups of Japanese actors, it was deemed unusable. Distance shots of Japanese actors from Shaider were usable in some of the fights, and battles with the monster footage were also kind of limited (splicing up to 2-3 episodes), but otherwise such footage was limited. In addition, because many episodes of fight footage from Metalder/Shaider and Spielban were being used in a single episode, the footage ran out faster.

In Season 1, the show would open with the traditional "Today on Saban's VR Troopers" teaser, showing scenes from the episode and narrated by Dave Mallow. After the "Quest For Power" mini-series in Season 2, however, Ryan, Kaitlin, or J.B. took over the part and narrated the teaser (and in the first-person to boot).

Various voice actors were listed under different pseudonyms in this series. For example, in the Season 1 end credits, Kerrigan Mahan was credited under his pseudonym, Ryan O'Flannigan (which was also the name credited for doing the voice of Goldar in the early seasons of Mighty Morphin Power Rangers); in Season 2, he would be credited under his real name and was properly identified as Jeb's voiceover. Likewise, Richard Epcar was occasionally listed in the end credits under a pseudonym of his own, Richard George (although he was credited under his real name for the first two episodes of the series), and Mike Reynolds was credited under the name Ray Michaels.