Fresh from the sewer and re-emerging from any late-80's / early 90's kid's heart, comes the long-awaited TMNT game for modern game systems. Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Shredder's Revenge is a modern-day take on the classic TMNT video games we saw in the arcade and on home consoles back in the day.
Game publisher Dotemu announced the game all the way back in March of 2001. A trailer and some gameplay hit the internet in August and it showed how much effort was going into this game. Emulating a 16-bit style, Shredder's Revenge takes pieces from all the different Turtles games and combines them into something new. That, plus mixing in some modern controls and game mechanics, simply amps things up.
I picked up the game on Nintendo Switch on launch day. Normally I prefer to buy my games physically. I learned real quick that stores won't get this game on their shelves until the end of August. There was no way I was going to wait two and a half months to play this game. On the plus side, it was $10 cheaper on the eShop.
Mitchell Saltzman at IGN reviewed the game. It earned a quite-respectable 8 out of 10.
Shredder's Revenge is a LOT of fun to play. There are a lot of moves to memorize. Frankly, you don't need to do any of that. Just mash buttons, figure out one or two moves that you can repeat, and enjoy beating up Foot Soldiers. The game plays solid and the controls are tight. I love the music too. Everyone has outdone themselves with this game.
The best part, by far, is the online matchmaking. You can look for open games and jump right in, just like in the arcade. I can't even count how many times I'd join a game in progress as a kid or I'd be in the middle of a game and have others come and go as I played. The online experience is exactly the same. People come and go, harkening back to a long-gone era of multiplayer arcade cabinets.
There is a metric buttload of special editions coming out. Limited Run Games has many different variations of collector sets for the game. They look great and I may pick one up. Even better is one of them has a real coupon for a Pizza Hut pizza, just like the original TMNT II game for NES.