Go! Go! GOTY! 2022: Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Shredder's Revenge
by mento
Game : Tribute Games 's Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Shredder's Revenge . Release Month : June. Quick Look : Here (Jan, Grubb, Lucy, Tamoor, Jason, Rorie). Started : 25/01. Completed : 28/01. As an '80s kid, I absolutely adored the TMNT arcade game developed by Konami , to the extent that I fell for the same trap many kids my age did by asking for the home video game that turned out not to be...
- Game: Tribute Games's Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Shredder's Revenge.
- Release Month: June.
- Quick Look: Here (Jan, Grubb, Lucy, Tamoor, Jason, Rorie).
- Started: 25/01.
- Completed: 28/01.
As an '80s kid, I absolutely adored the TMNT arcade game developed by Konami, to the extent that I fell for the same trap many kids my age did by asking for the home video game that turned out not to be the arcade game but the bizarre and weirdly difficult side-scroller with that nightmare underwater bomb-defusing mission. Even after being burned (or electrocuted by seaweed) by that bait and switch I still hold a lot of affection for the arcade game and I'm clearly not the only one, if this lavish spiritual sequel from Tribute Games and its warm reception are any indication. The tough balancing act with any throwback, especially one aiming to recreate the experience of a specific game, is finding a way to insert enough conveniences and features to make a reboot palatable to a modern audience that may be new to the experience while still retaining the original feel and aesthetics: the two aspects that stick around longest in the memories of those fond of a particular game. Happy to say Shredder's Revenge nails how enjoyable it was to brawl one's way across Manhattan and the dimensions beyond while having no short amount of additional tweaks and fighting techniques to give a game modelled after something that was first released in 1989 a much needed boost of depth and variance.
Shredder's Revenge is styled after the original 1987 animated show but with slightly edited proportions to make it a little more cartoony and has a typically roundabout plot about turning the Statue of Liberty into a superweapon (a nod to Turtles in Time and its memorable Lady Liberty stage) that serves as an excuse to throw in a bunch of different characters from the show's past, from old favorites like Baxter Stockman the mutant fly scientist (as a kid that didn't watch a whole lot of horror movies, that one flew under the radar for me for a while) and the ever-present terrible twosome of Bebop and Rocksteady, to the slightly more obscure like the warlike alien Triceratons and Tempestra, an in-world video game villain (who ironically, as far as I know, only now makes her video game debut some thirty-five years later). Tribute's always had a knack for cute, compact pixel art and smooth cartoon-like animations, as evinced by earlier games of theirs like Wizorb and Flinthook, and it's put to equally adroit use here to bring the old TMNT character designs to life in such a colorful and animated way that it's easy to forget that the original cartoon show—as much as I loved it—didn't look anywhere near as sharp. Equally, the game brings back many of the original tracks from the show and complements them with some era-appropriate hip-hop lyrical pieces from various sources. Hearing a Ghostface Killah track over the Shredder boss fight seems all too fitting given the Wu-Tang Clan's predilections.
These stage interstitials look so dang good. That they always manage to squeeze in all six playable characters (the seventh's a secret unlock) is impressive too.But as well as modernizing the presentation of the game much has been done behind the scenes as well. The seven playable characters all fight differently due to variances in their range, speed, and power and there's a considerable number of moves you can pull off, albeit none that require anything more complicated than two button presses. Most attacks revolve around a single attack button, which can be hammered for a combo or held down for a power attack or used while jumping for a diving attack or used immediately after a dodge roll for a dash attack, along with the jump and dodge roll buttons themselves. There's a rising attack that knocks the enemy in the air and puts you in a position to air juggle them for a while and attacks you can only perform while running. There's the super attack which you can rely on for clearing the screen of enemies or doing considerable damage to a boss, and that also has a few variants you can unlock. There's even special team attacks when grouping up with another player. These moves are all quick and flow together like a charm, though most enemies on normal difficulty tend to be dead within a few hits. Playable newcomer April O'Neil is actually one of the better feeling characters because her speed is high while her power is low, letting you fling enemies around and really get stuck in with the game's combo potential; you could also just boost the difficulty, but dying too often might prove to be an undesirable by-product of that approach.
Other modernizations fare less well, but are presented as entirely optional and are thus easy enough to ignore. Collectibles abound in stages and offer very minor score rewards should you find all of a particular set, along with cameos from allies of the Turtles including a pack of Wonder Twin-esque "Neutrinos" who all talk like the Rat Pack whom I'd never seen before. (Clearly I must've stopped watching the cartoon at some point during its later, dumber seasons.) These cameos are fun but I sort of wish they went deeper into the video game side of things and pulled a few more of the TMNT: Tournament Fighters cast, but that's really just me nitpicking over what would probably be a licensing issue. I'm sure the cartoon's fans were just as happy to see the Floridian "Punk Frogs" again. There's also challenges that offer bonus score if you can fulfill them, but they're a little inconsistent in terms of how hard they are to pull off: defeating five enemies with a rising attack, say, is much easier to accomplish than trying to complete an entire stage including the boss and any hazards in the path without getting hit a single time. They began to feel like the often-unreasonable Full Synchronization bonuses in the Assassin's Creed games: theoretically easy to ignore but a bummer all the same when the game UI has to keep piping up to tell you that you failed something. I think the worst part is that they run completely counter to the easygoing, "just smack those buttons and have fun" vibe of its simple brawler gameplay, which is one trait of those older arcade belt scroller games Shredder's Revenge perfectly replicates.
The world map's a nice touch and offers a means to revisit stages for any collectibles or challenges you may have missed. Me, I'm just over here digging on these tiny chibi versions of the Channel 6 News team.On the whole, it's a minor miracle that a game styled on a 1989 brawler, even a beloved one, turned out as well as this. I suppose it has other recent efforts to revive this genre to thank, such as Streets of Rage 4 or the River City Girls series, for helping to chart a path for these brawler reboots (rebeats?) to follow. Either way, I don't mean to diminish what Tribute Games have accomplished here: having played Flinthook, a game I eventually abandoned only because its roguelite tendencies became too much to tolerate, they are very talented at the sort of fast-reflexes action fare that this game is built on. It's just nuts to think that this genre might actually be back for real now due to the efforts of all these Indies, and not just a few isolated examples of nostalgia clout-chasing throwbacks like that Stranger Things tie-in from a little while ago.