With the release of Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Shredder’s Revenge, we’ve got a modern ’80s cartoon with all the trimmings. Nice 16-bit art style, some retro arcade fighting games, and modern sophistication that removes the unnecessary frustration of some really oldies. All in all, I like it a lot!
To accompany the review, I sat down with Eric Lafontaine, Director of Publishing and Marketing at Tribute Games, to discuss what the team wanted to achieve, recreate TMNT humor, and bring the intricacies of cartoons to a modern platform.
iGamesNews: When making a TMNT game, what are the main things you want to be sure of?
Lafontaine: All of the Tribute staff are retro fans – we grew up on ’80s cartoons. It’s Tribute’s mission to pay homage while also adding a modern touch to the games we develop. We knew we needed to treat IP with great respect, and it was important to us that we recreated the feeling of playing games from that era. It’s too easy to develop a completely retro game, so we had to take some of the frustration out and bring this old-fashioned experience to an audience of modern gamers.
I don’t like the term “fan service”, but we wanted to draw as many references and metaphors from the Turtles franchise as possible. We wanted to reference as many ’80s cartoons as possible, but also included Time Turtles, old-fashioned fighting games, old-school arcade games, and some never-before-produced collectible toys floating in the wild. Every turtle lover will find something just for them in our game.
We also wanted to make sure we made a game for everyone, not just die-hard fans of the genre. It can be a very difficult game if you choose to do so, but it can also be a super easy and fun party game if you want. These points were our main goals when creating Shredder’s Revenge.
iGamesNews: How did you describe the turtles, Foot Clan, and the game as a whole in a way that fits the source material?
Lafontaine: Many of the references and animations lean heavily towards each character’s personality. So like Raphiel is a bit groggy and darker than other turtles. So the slides, the running states, all of those things seem more aggressive, so when you actually play the game, you get the characterization. Taunt too – one of my favorite animations is Donatello’s taunt where he crouches down and pulls out a handheld console (it’s a Gameboy). It’s also a reference to the consoles of the 80’s and 90’s! Animations and small movements like this go a long way.
It’s funny when you see characters like Sprint — we didn’t see them actually fighting in the ’80s cartoons. So we had to take some liberties when developing the attack, which meant we had to look at the references in the cartoon, such as his quick hit on the wooden box in the intro. It’s a quick clip that we as game designers identified as something we could recreate – so we added it as his basic special attack. “
iGamesNews: Cartoons from the 80s are so important to the identity of this game – how often were these materials consulted during development?
Lafontaine: Our narrative designers listened to every episode – all of them. When we have a little break, we watch it all together and we show each other the moments of the episodes. We’ll joke that all the research we’ve done for this game was done 30 years ago – we just need official approval from the IP holders! We know what we want to share in theory, but we have a lot of interesting pitch ideas based on the show.
From the time one of our co-founders, Jean-Francois Major, approached Nickelodeon, who ended up throwing three or four pitches in total, he’s been pitching a cartoon based on An idea for a classic beat game. Apparently, he and the other co-founders worked on Ubisoft’s Scott Pilgrim vs The World: The Game and the previous TMNT Ubisoft beat ’em up game. So we have a good track record and we’re lucky and I think that protects the IP for us.
iGamesNews: Super serious question. Since this is a TMNT game, I need you to speak on behalf of the entire Tribute Games and tell me what the best pizza is.
Lafontaine: My goodness. I have to speak for the whole studio?
iGamesNews: Yes, you must. You are stuck.
Lafontaine: Since I’m a marketing manager, I need to have an answer to a business question. I would say cheese pizza. This is a very politically safe answer, so I’ll go with cheese. Personally though, I’d say anchovies or Hawaiian. Yes, I know pineapple and ham on pizza shouldn’t be there, but I love it (laughs). “
iGamesNews: What is the office split of pineapple on pizza?
Lafontaine: It’s 50/50. This is a very polarizing question.
iGamesNews: Talk to me about Ghostface Killa and Raekwon’s tracks! How does this happen and why does it fit?
Lafontaine: So obviously Mike Patton from Faith No More sang the original theme in the game – a surprising choice for fans, and it’s likely that a lot of people don’t know them or Faith No More. We could have made a more obvious choice, a more obnoxious one, but the idea was to go further and go with the ’90s juggernaut.
Obviously we want to work with the music artist again and make another original song in the game. We wanted something closer to the game, related to ninjutsu and ninja, and Wudang made sense! So on the Dotemu side, they contacted the management of Ghostface Killa and Raekwon and they came to an agreement.
It was a very interesting process – at first we didn’t even know it was possible. The rhythm of T. Lopez working for Sonic Mania was excellent and we sent it in for ideas of what direction we wanted to take with the duo. Ugh, everyone has to be an E! Nickelodeon is in the process of approving it, so it must have family-friendly lyrics, but they gave us some ideas for the poem, and after a few corrections and a second version, we got the final version!
When we announced this to our collaborators and partners, they couldn’t believe it – we couldn’t be happier with how it turned out. They’re clearly fans of TMNT and we’re glad they said yes.
iGamesNews: One thing that stood out to me was its humor. Watch Foot Ninjas cooking live or sleep on a bench in the TV studio they take over. Why is it important to bring up this humor here?
Lafontaine: It’s really a Tribute Games thing to have this humor as a backdrop, always joking. It’s a video game, and we don’t take things too seriously. It’s also TMNT – so it’s always at least a little funny. Obviously, we love all versions of the turtles, but the funny tropes you saw in the original cartoon really resonated with us and we wanted to explore it more.
We had a lot of fun and added TMNT humor throughout. For example, in the first stage of the TV studio, there are four foot clan ninjas typing at a desk, but one of them lacks a keyboard. This was an idea that an animator had just thrown out while we were making it, and by taking out the keyboard, it immediately became more interesting.
There’s always a foot clan doing something quirky – adding humor was important to us as it made the whole experience more fun. For younger gamers, thanks to this inclusivity, they’ll have more fun with it.
