90s live action TV show about college kids who become fighting robots in a virtual reality

Question

This TV show was somewhat a ripoff of Power Rangers, in that the kids go into giant robots that fight, and those robots can merge together into a giant super-robot. It seemed like a competitor. Like Power Rangers, it was an ordinary cable show, but I don't remember which network.

The kids lived in real life and (I think) went to college, but all their robot fights happened virtually. I don't remember how they make the transition, but I think they get "sucked in" to a laptop.

The villain is a guy with a laptop. Possibly the laptop that the heroes get sucked into, when they fight in virtual reality. I think that, while the heroes were in virtual reality, the villain used his laptop to communicate with them (generally to deliver stereotypical cartoon villain trash talk).

This show commercialized heavily by selling toys that are very similar to Transformers toys.

It ran in the 90s. I believe it was popular for a very brief period of time, after which it basically plummeted into obscurity.

Answer 1

I believe you might be thinking of Superhuman Samurai Syber-Squad, which aired from September 1994 to April 1995. This show was an adaptation of the tokusatsu show Denkou Choujin Gridman, and did have a somewhat Power Rangers-esque feel to it.

The main characters (the heroes and the main villain's assistant) were high school students in the real world. One of them, Sam Collins, used some kind of wrist-mounted device to transform into a digital superhero, known as Servo. This was usually done in front of a computer - Sam would play a specific chord on his guitar, which apparently activated the device, and then get sucked into his computer. His friends could also enter the computer world in a similar manner, where they would pilot a set of large combining/transforming mecha - these could serve as vehicles, combine with each other to create two larger mecha known as as Xenon and Drago, or combine with Servo to serve as battle armor. And yes, there were toys produced of these figures.

The main villain was a rogue AI known as Kilokahn, with a human assistant named Malcolm Frink - Malcolm designed the monsters-of-the-day, while Kilokahn brought them to a form of digital life to unleash on the area's electrical grid - affecting not just computers, but pretty much anything that could be plugged into the grid. Kilokahn would normally communicate with Malcolm (who he referred to as 'Meat-thing') through Malcolm's computer, although given the era, I believe it was a desktop system, not a laptop.

Youtube link to show intro sequence

Answer 2

VR Troopers (1994)?

It is described as very similar to Power Rangers (made by the same company, too) and features a few kids fighting with things that are in a “VR dimension” in computers. There are toys related to it on Amazon. It only ran for one season but was popular.