The Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles are having another moment in the sun. Last month's Shredder's Revenge was a gorgeous and nostalgic beat 'em up that fell "just shy of greatness due to a lack of fresh ideas and endurance". That likely translates as praise to some: it was an extremely orthodox take on the '90s scrolling beat 'em up, which makes sense given that's when TMNT experienced its golden age.
So the forthcoming Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: The Cowabunga Collection is probably more welcome now than it was upon announcement in March. It collects a generous 13 TMNT games, and it now has a confirmed release date of August 30, when it will hit Steam.
Yes, it has 13 games, but three of those are versions of the NES fighter TMNT: Tournament Fighters. Rich says they're all different enough to warrant inclusion. For those hungering for more cooperative play after Shredder's Revenge, four of these older titles will have local and online co-op: TMNT, TMNT: Turtles in Time, TMNT: The Hyperstone Heist, and the arcade version of the aforementioned Tournament Fighters.
The collection will also have the usual quality-of-life improvements, like save functionality, and the ability to rewind (especially useful for the NES TMNT platformer, which is notoriously tough). Buttons can be remapped, and there's a range of supplementary content like development art, and "historic TMNT media content".
I'm pretty keen to jump into some old TMNT. My son has been watching the 2003 TV series, and while it's nowhere near as good as the first (it lacks that theme song!), he was especially delighted when Shredder got decapitated and stumbled into a raging fire. Good times.
Here's the full list of included games:
- 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 Heist (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)
