I’m not good at beat ’em ups or fighting games, but I do find them often fascinating and fun. Maybe it’s due to the fact that I was growing up when those genres were extremely popular. Or maybe because a lot of great beat ’em up titles just don’t care about being serious, realistic or anything other than stupid explosive fun. And I did love the home port versions of the fantastic Konami Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles titles, even that weird first NES one that is objectively not very good. Yet, something about it still feels awesome.
But it’s been a while, the beat ’em up genre fell out of favor, Konami turned to crap and even the TMNT franchise was changing and mutating with each new iteration, becoming much less popular than what it was during the 80s TV show and the first live action movie. But the fans are still out there (not of Konami, they suck). So with the revival of the beat ’em up genre in recent years and never fully fading popularity of the turtles, it’s only natural for Shredder’s Revenge to exist. And it’s pretty neat.
Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Shredder’s Revenge is a classic side-scrolling beat ’em up that is blatantly copying from the aforementioned Konami classics, but injecting them with some more modern sensibilities where required. In many ways, it’s a pastiche of all of the best and memorable moments and levels from said classics, with tons of references to the original 80s animated show thrown everywhere. And if you’ve played any of those older games, you’ll immediately know what to expect. So much so that you might even get tricked into thinking the older games worked the same. Even though in reality, there are lots of tweaks and changes to the basic mechanics, like the super moves having its own bar instead of using health, or the ability to dodge that let’s you go through the attacks or quickly recover from being knocked down.
And for people like me – who have a fond memory of the genre, but never liked how ridiculously tough and often unfair it could be (due to it’s arcade origins), all of the changes and updates to the basics are a blessing. Shredder’s Revenge is built to have fun first. It’s story mode has lives, but on the base difficulty it’s unlikely you will get to a Continue screen. It allows you to play in 6 player coop for maximum carnage. It has a very light upgrade path for each character, that seems to be there just to motivate people to try out different characters (as they still play differently), or motivate you to stick to your favorites for replays with friends and it’s extremely unlikely you won’t get enough points by the end of the story playthrough to upgrade one of the characters to the max (it’s an automatic thing). It’s just simple dumb fun that looks great, feels good and sounds wonderful.
In a way, it is a bit of a shame, though, that it depends so heavily on the nostalgic factor. I mean – I’m sure you can enjoy it a lot if you’re new to the TMNT and the genre, the game is quite welcoming. But, everything is a constant “member this?” and it’s impossible for me to judge how it works for those who do not, in fact, “member” or even know what the reference is. Especially since some of the more annoying stage types and enemies are kept from the classics too. There are a couple of boss fights that are slow and tedious solo, because they spend a lot of time invulnerable or in a spot where you cannot combo them. And the final boss is, while not as devastating as the infamous The Manhattan Project final boss fight, but it’s still outright frustrating and “unfair”. The skateboarding levels are also still considerably weaker than the normal ones. And some enemy types are just too grab-heavy, which gets annoying.
But I liked it. Completing one playthrough of the story is around 3 hours, but the game is built for replaying, with friends or alone, with 7 different playable characters, with the challenging Arcade mode, that works closer to how the classic beat ’em up titles worked in terms of lives and continues. I’m good with one playthrough for now, though. It was stupid dumb good fun that I thoroughly enjoyed.