Unfortunately, lately Konami doesn’t seem to have been so keen on making video games as it is further exploiting the Bomberman saga in a variety of ways. That’s why I pretty much called it Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: The Cowabunga Collection, since I still have fresh memories of Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Shredder’s Revenge, even though it’s a collection developed by retro experts Digital Eclipse.
What we find is a huge number of classic Turtles games from yesteryear, all released for arcade machines and for NES, Mega Drive, Super Nintendo and Game Boy. It offers a total of 13 games, which I definitely wouldn’t call old classics, but a surprising number of them. It also spans several different genres, like the varied and notoriously super-difficult Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles on the NES, or Tournament Fighters, which attempted to compete with Street Fighter II in 1993. The latter is also included in three different versions: NES, MegaDrive and SuperNintendo. Something interesting for those who want to remember how games were compared in different formats.
As for this collection, I don’t intend to review each of their games individually, but it does include the following:
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- Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (Arcade)
- Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Turtles in Time (Arcade)
- Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (NES)
- Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles II: The Arcade Game (NES)
- Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles III: The Manhattan Project (NES)
- Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Tournament Fighters (NES)
- Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles IV: Turtles in Time (Super Nintendo)
- Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Tournament Fighters (Super Nintendo)
- Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: The Hyperstone Raid (Sega Genesis)
- Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Tournament Fighters (Sega Genesis)
- Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Fall of the Foot Clan (Game Boy)
- Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles II: Back from the Sewers (Game Boy)
- Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles III: Radical Rescue (Game Boy)
First, let me say that despite its obscene difficulty, I managed to beat Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles on the NES as a preteen. I’ve actually done it several times. Playing it now, I’m amazed that it’s stood the test of time pretty well. It’s true that hitboxing at water level is downright nasty, but I still think the difficulty is a bit overrated and even old (45 years!) Jonas Mäki can get pretty far without swearing too much. Also, it has a spectator mode where you can watch the machine play and join in at any time, which is helpful in the most terrifying parts.
For many, the 1992 Super Nintendo hit Teenage Mutan Ninja Turtles IV: Turtles in Time is probably the best take. An undeniably great game, and sending foot soldiers onto the screen is still magically fun. However, it’s clearly a few decades behind Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Shredder’s Revenge. The faster and smoother Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: The Hyperstone Heist (basically the same game but with better pacing and some cut parts) is a more enjoyable option for me today.
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Admittedly, the Game Boy games in this collection feel incredibly primitive when played on a giant flat screen, but they still hold up a lot better than I expected and are surprisingly fun. There’s also a lot of nostalgia in it.
The big surprise for me was the Super Nintendo version of Turtles Tournament Fighters. It’s holding up just as well as Street Fighter II and doesn’t seem to have aged much anywhere. From the controls to the graphics, this classic keeps its style impressively well and is certainly worth playing and hopefully competing against other players, as the well-designed support for online games ensures that you won’t have any trouble finding someone Find.
What really sets this collection apart is its successful museum selection. Digital Eclipse has excelled in offering us a real treasure of quality. You can sit down and browse through old game boxes (with their manuals included!) and other tidbits about game development. It also includes material from the comics and TV series to keep you busy for a long time. It really touched me, and I’m sure if you grew up around turtles and old consoles, you will too.
In summary, this is an absolutely first class collection that puts almost all others to shame. Collections often have fewer titles and more presentation, or lots of games and virtually no presentation. This is the complete opposite: tons of games and top-notch presentation. The only thing that weighs on the collection is that at the end of the day there are only four or five titles that are really worth spending time beyond a short nostalgia trip to. But if you want to relive the nostalgia of turtles and classic games, I can’t recommend it highly enough.
