As a 90’s kid, you’d think I’d be one of the many who grew up with the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles franchise. Yet, I don’t remember ever watching the show as a kid at all, outside of renting the second TMNT movie from Blockbusters one day just out of sheer curiosity. To be honest, I was more into shows like Beetleborgs (which I’m still waiting for a game of that series) and Van-Pires (if you remember that show, you are my friend for life), so something like TMNT probably didn’t interest me at the time, though I could be wrong. But that doesn’t mean I know nothing of them. On the contrary, I do have some knowledge of the Turtles, thanks to the advent of the internet and the 2003 show which I do recall watching some episodes of when it aired, but not enough to say I’m a huge fan. With that being said, you’d think a game like Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Shredder’s Revenge wouldn’t really interest me. Surprisingly, it’s actually one of those games I took a chance on and found myself really enjoying, even though it does have some shortcomings that prevent it from being anything really amazing.
The best way I think can describe Shredder’s Revenge is that it’s a basic side-scrolling beat-’em up in the vein of other classic games, like the TMNT arcade game from back in the day and that’s both a good thing and bad thing. Bad meaning it doesn’t do anything really new to reinvent itself or make itself stand out from the others on the market but good meaning it is easy for anyone to pick up and play and not have to worry about complex systems or crazy button combos just to do a basic attack. Consisting of 16 levels, each one with a pretty cheesy level name, the game sees the team, along with Splinter, April O’Neil, and Casey Jones teaming up to stop the Shredder and Kang up from, what else, taking over the world. From the outset, you have seven characters to choose from, those being the Turtles themselves to Splinter, April O’Neil, and Casey Jones, with each character having their own attacks and special screen clearing moves that can easily be activated with a simple button press once you have a full power bar, which can be filled by taking out enemies or by ingesting one of the four pizzas in the game. Each of the four pizzas will either fill up your health, grant you unlimited power for a small amount of time, give you a temporary powerful spinning move, or just give you points towards leveling up.
Throughout each of the 16 levels, you’ll be working your way through the hordes of enemies and, this actually surprised me, leveling up your character to a max of 10. However, this isn’t a RPG style leveling up but, instead, when you level you, one of a few things will occur: You’ll either get a boost to your power or health or unlock a new power move. Each stage also has small hidden collectables for side characters, called Special Requests, once you find said character in a level and, once you find all the collectables for said character, the only thing you’ll earn is points towards leveling up, so it’s mostly there for completeness sake. Lastly, all the stages have stage three challenges each and this is an area I’m a bit mixed on. While some are easy to complete and also fun like using props in a mall to take out enemies, there are some that are pure trial and error, like completing a level without getting hit once. Look, I may be decent at these types of games, but trying to avoid getting hit is still something I haven’t mastered yet and I can see these ones being a bit of a pain to complete.
Speaking of not getting hit, the enemies you’ll be fighting throughout the game include the Foot Clan, various drones, and, once you get to Dimension X, Stone Warriors, Triceratons, and Pizza Monsters aka the food themed Xenomorphs. All these enemies range in difficulty, with some being easy to fight, some needing some extra strategy, and others being a pain in the shell (I’m looking at you, flying ninjas), though not to the point of wanting to rage. I think the only real hard ones were the ones in a spider-like mech and the Triceratons as you can’t really do a high attack on those guys due to their horns.
Same goes with the bosses as some are fun to fight while others can be a bit of a pain. Bebop and Rocksteady are the easiest to battle while others Groundchuck, Dirtbag, Rat King, and Zorak were some of the trickier bosses. While I do like how the game includes many characters from the original series, as someone who never grew up with the show but seen various clips and reviews, a lot of these characters are completely unknown to me. Like Groundchuck & Dirtbag; I had no idea these guys were even a thing as, when I hear people talk about the show, it was always Bebop and Rocksteady (Heck, the last Michael Bay TMNT movie even had those two in). I will say that including Tokka and Rahzar from TMNT II: Secrets Of The Ooze was pretty cool, even I don’t remember the one having a gas attack. Still, it’s cool seeing a lot of these characters in the game and I’ve no doubt that fans will be giddy seeing them. But to people like me who either have never seen the show or only have some passing knowledge, a lot of these appearances won't really do much other than make you go ‘Huh, that’s cool’.
Now, graphically, I think this is one of the better looking retro throwbacks I’ve seen. The little attention to details throughout each stage is nice and I do like how the characters are animated to both emulate the show and the arcade game of the past. There are still some minor annoyances, like how it’s sometimes tricky to know if your attack is gonna land on someone due to the shifted perspective, which was a problem I noticed in many games of this style and I haven’t seen any game find a way to fix this issue. There’s also one level involving the hoverboard that has a fast-scrolling background that, due to how fast it scrolls, makes it hard to focus on what’s coming and I ended up either getting cheap hits or having to look away as I felt just a slight bit of motion sickness. Still, that aside, it is a good looking game and I do enjoy the retro art style.
Same goes for the sound as it’s another highpoint for this game. The voice acting is strong throughout, seeing as they bring back the original voice actors (sans the late James Avery) and they all still bring that same energy they brought when they originally voiced them back in the 90’s, though it was a bit hard to hear over the music at times. The music, on that note, is also top tier work, with one really giving me some mad Mighty Morphin’ Power Rangers vibes. There is one track, though, I will say is not the best and that’s the main title theme. Now, the original theme is a classic and the ‘Red Sky’ version is my favorite rendition of it when I heard it, but this version just doesn’t have that same feel to it. Performed by Mike Patton of Mr. Bungle (or Faith No More, depending on which you prefer), who by no means is a bad singer and is an amazing voice actor (For those not aware, he voiced the titular Darkness in both Darkness and Darkness 2), the song just lacks that excitement that the original had in the vocals department. The instrumentals are good, don’t get me wrong, it’s just the vocals that I have a slight problem with. It’s not enough to completely ruin the song, but it is enough to make me skip the intro whenever I boot up the game.
As someone who didn’t grow up with the series as a young one, I still found this to be a fun beat-em up, even with some of the issues I had with parts of the game. Yes, many of the included characters I had no idea who they were and it still suffers from some issues these types of games have, but I still had fun playing it and I do highly recommend this title. To use a pizza analogy, think of it like a Half-And-Half Pizza: One side has something people like while the other has something they may not like, but it’s not enough to ruin the entire pizza and that’s how I feel about this game. Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Shredder’s Revenge is one turtle-tastic shell of a good time.