Raising Shell.
Back when the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles made their cartoon debut back in 1987, I was 8 years old, the perfect age to latch onto this bizarre franchise and never once let go. I’ve been around for the good, the great, and the bad, breathing in and out almost every form of media that would adapt these heroes in the half shell from iteration to iteration.
While there have been several video games throughout the various eras of TMNT, few have ever come close to reaching the highs of the original arcade game, and its beloved sequel, Turtles in Time. TMNT: Shredder’s Revenge; however, stands alongside those greats and does an impressive job at bringing that classic gameplay to life, complete with six-player co-op, online play, and the voice cast of the original cartoon.
As someone who actually played the arcade game back in the day at an actual arcade, seeing the care and attention that developer Tribute Games have done here is shockingly impressive and floods each and every last pixel with pure blissful nostalgia. The tone, colors, music, and action are constantly stunning, and while it does come with the length of what arcade games offered at the time, the number of characters to tackle and co-op play gives this game a decent set of legs despite its short 2 ½-hour length.
Shredder’s Revenge unleashes the titular ninja brothers against Shredder, Krang, Bebop, Rocksteady, as well as several others that are either moderately known to some fans or the deepest of deep cuts. While just including Leonardo, Michelangelo, Raphael, and Donatello would have been the obvious play, Tribute pushes that little extra and also brings April O’Neil, Splinter, and Casey Jones to the party, with the latter being unlocked as you roll credits. And the fun doesn’t stop there as you can also play the entire game in six-player co-op, in almost any manner of online and couch co-op, giving way to one of the most chaotic beat 'em-up video games has ever seen.
From the jump, you have both Story and Arcade, each having your team pushing through 16 stages that show plenty of nods to not only the original arcade game, but its sequels in Turtles in Time, and the Manhattan Project. This means you’ll explore plenty of sewers, streets, highways, and rooftops, as well as newer stages to the series such as a pubic zoo and a shopping mall, which sees the foot clan working at various food court establishments before hopping the counter to get in your face.
Stages are full of pitfalls, lasers, environmental hazards, and a wide assortment of traps you can spring on the foot clan, mousers, triceratons, and more. Each level not only brings with it new enemies and bosses, but several environments also have you doing battle atop a hoverboard, either gliding down a busy road or high atop the sky.
As is the case with most Beat’em up games, stages are short affairs ranging around 6-10 minutes long and this length causes each level to not overstay its welcome and allows for 16 stages with a decent amount of variety, whereas previous games often ended with around 7 or 8 at the most. My favorite part of these stages is the storytelling that bleeds from level to level; from seeing the wreckage of Bebop and Rocksteady’s truck at the start of the fourth level or a downed boss trapped in the sand later on, it allows these stages to truly feel like one connected adventure.
Story mode will have you searching for items such as VHS Tapes, Newspapers, and Irma’s Diary Entries. Returning a set number of them to their respective NPCs will result in earning points that contribute to your current character’s fitness journal progression. The collection of these items and the ability to move around on a world map is exclusive to the Story mode as Arcade mode is what you’d expect to find in an Arcade with limited lives and no saved progression.
Also part of Story Mode are challenges as each level has at least three to accomplish. These challenges range from not taking damage throughout an entire stage, defeating a certain number of enemies in a specific way, to avoiding obstacles that often litter the hoverboard stages. These challenges are a combined effort of the entire party, so even if “you” don’t take any damage in that stage, but your teammate does, you’ll still fail the challenge. Some of these are rather simple, but some certainly do take some work to pull off. Thankfully, they are optional and are not tied to story progression.
Where Shredder’s Revenge favors over the original arcade game is the entire experience isn’t built off the need to milk quarters from your audience. This allows the game to be more about its mechanics and abilities as you are not trading health for your special attacks or having the game increase dramatically in difficulty to have you keep paying to play. There is also a lot of solid visual language of attacks or enemies that are coming in off-screen to give you ample time to react to them. Arcade mode is in some ways designed to accommodate the feel of the classic arcade experience but does still come with a few of these modern enhancements.
The ability to stay in the fight longer also comes with giving you more moves, abilities, and options that you normally don’t find in a standard beat’em up. Characters have a wide range of moves, grabs, and variations on your special attacks that can be performed standing, in the air, or as part of a dash. Each character can also dodge roll out of harm’s way, combining it with various button presses to perform a wide range of extra moves. As mentioned, characters can grab enemies, thrash them about, or throw them towards the screen, which is an attack pulled right from Turtles in Time.
Characters can also charge up attacks, which can break through some boss's shields, as well as various jump, combination, and team attacks, should you play in multiplayer. To pull off special attacks, you merely need to charge a meter that fills every time you do damage or even through your taunts, which are super easy to pull via the RB button. Since this meter is constantly filling, you’ll be performing these attacks frequently, and with air and dash variations, you are not seeing the same attacks being pulled off every minute.
As you complete levels, side quests, and simple combat progression, you’ll earn points that level up your characters. There are 10 levels, each with perks that come from leveling such as having additional lives, attacks, and more. This makes staying with a character a bonus as you’ll simply make them stronger and more powerful as time goes on. This progression system is tied to the Story mode and your progress can be viewed in the Turtle’s Lair.
What I love most about all the abilities is how great the animations are when you pull them off. Each and every character is stunningly animated and you are never locked into any core animation, which allows you to dodge roll and attack with incredible flexibility. Those who are fans of the genre, or fighting games themselves, will see several moves that are pulled from numerous franchises such as Street Fighter as an inspirational nod. These include April pulling off Chun Li’s upward high kick to Mikey torpedoing like E Honda. The sheer variety of ways you can pull off a wide assortment of attacks with a simple button layout is staggering and you can see the care and attention Tribute Games has put forward here in every single pixel art animation.
While the game is still an absolute riot even in single-player, the option for co-op certainly adds to the chaos that can ensue. It’s also great to see a TMNT game where the entire cast of brothers can actually fight alongside one another. While I played most of the game with a friend, jumping into a few random matches with a full 6 man team was utter chaos and yet felt perfect in so many ways as the game will scale up the number of enemies as well as how aggressive they are. While you can play six-player local co-op on Xbox, Switch, and PC, the PlayStation is the only platform where six-player co-op is limited to just being possible online as the system only supports up to four controllers. Still, the flexibility to pull this off with local and online makes Shredder’s Revenge an impressive party game that anyone can enjoy. While there is crossplay, only the Xbox and PC support this feature as the Switch and PS platforms don’t allow any sort of crossplay at this time.
The entire adventure is also backed by a very impressive soundtrack. While I didn’t find every track to win me over, the lyrical tracks were consistently impressive and while I’ve never been a massive fan of Rap, Raekwon and Ghostface Killa’s “We ain’t come to lose” is an incredibly enjoyable piece that really makes its moment in the game truly pop. The same can be said for Tee Lopes and Anton Corazza’s “Mutants over Broadway” as well which continues to complement the high-energy tone given to this entire arrangement.
If I had to make any sort of complaints with Shredder’s Revenge, it’s simply two things. First, the tutorial doesn’t give you the flexibility to really put these moves in motion to practice them apart from having to replay certain lessons. Had the tutorial been structured in a dojo with one of the turtles being trained by Splinter, allowing you to work on some of the more advanced moves over and over again, I feel that structure would have been better than what is present. Secondly, the backgrounds, while detailed and vastly enjoyable, can often appear as being a static image that the turtle sprites merely move on top of, as made most evident as legs and large portions of the characters can move over top of them instead of behind them. And to be honest, both of these are incredibly small nit-picks.
Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Shredder's Revenge expertly nails what it needed to do. It’s an incredibly faithful follow-up to what the TMNT beat’em ups delivered all those years ago, and its easily the best looking TMNT game so far. The sheer variety of moves, abilities, and characters, boosted with a leveling system to keep you busy for countless hours, gives this game a lot of replay value with an impressive six player co-op feature that keeps the action incredibly hectic. Beat’em up’s have had a pretty recent renaissance as of late and while there are a lot of options out there, few have the kinetic energy and charm of what Tribute Games has pulled off here. With the title being available on every major platform, and Game Pass, it’s never been a better time to be a TMNT fan.
Developer - Tribute Games. Publisher - Dotemu. Released - June 16th, 2022. Available On - Xbox One, PlayStation 4, Nintendo Switch, Microsoft Windows. Available on PS5 and Xbox Series X/S through backwards compatibility. Rated - (E 10+) Fantasy Violence. Platform Reviewed - Xbox One. Review Access - A review code was provided by the publisher for the purpose of this review.