TMNT: Shredder’s Revenge
First published in GRIND II, pages 18–21.
Close your eyes. Imagine it's 1998 and you have a Terminator console. While you're playing Double Dragon 2 with Cornel from next door, your parents walk in and hand you a new yellow floppy disk containing the game Mighty Final Fight. Then a gigantic blender appears in the middle of the room, swallows Double Dragon 2 and squeezes the juice out of it. Next, Mighty Final Fight goes into the mix. And while you're wondering how you'll explain the whole scene to your folks, the blender swallows a music CD, the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles album from the Turbo chewing gum, and the cord from the landline phone in the living room.
This time you're really in trouble, you'll definitely be grounded for a whole month! Now open your eyes. The year is 2022, a few grey hairs have sprouted on your head, and your least favourite device is the scales. Cornel no longer lives next door and doesn't have time to come round any more. As for punishments, taxes and levies do their job more efficiently than parents ever did. Out of nowhere, the gigantic blender reappears and tosses a disc into your arms with “Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Shredder’s Revenge” written on it.
All that's left to do is insert the game into your new-generation console and marvel at the technical innovations of the last two and a half decades.
Before you, an adventure a little longer than an hour will unfold, successfully meeting every demand you would have had in 1998 – it even adds contemporary elements without ruining the experience! Because Shredder’s Revenge ticks every box on the checklist of a kid who goes to the fair to beat up the Foot Soldier clan, comes home after running out of tokens, then spends the rest of the evening deluding himself with Double Dragon 2 on the “TV game”… only to then browse the internet a bit after midnight, using PCNET cards for dial-up.
Shredder’s Revenge offers arcade graphics and unlimited continues at the same time. It's available on PC as well as on current-gen consoles. The music is a compilation of power metal and hip hop you would have heard on MTV somewhere at the turn of the decades – any year between 1988 and 1991. And character control is so fluid it puts Streets of Rage, Final Fight, Double Dragon and even TMNT: Turtles in Time to shame. The pinnacle of the beat 'em up genre was reached somewhere around 1994… only to be taken to new heights 28 years later.
If I had to find flaws in the work of the lads at Tribute Games, I'd probably complain about the short length of the main story and the lack of extra content (even arcade mode makes you play the exact same maps, in the same order). But I've finished Shredder’s Revenge 4 times and I discovered something new every time.
The first time, I tackled the 16 levels on my own. I chose Raphael to face every soldier and every end-of-chapter boss, proudly executed all the judo moves, and downed Shredder while still humming “Panic in the Sky” (my favourite song in the game). I didn't quite follow the story, so I thought I'd replay the game the next day.
The second time, I decided to go through all the levels in multiplayer mode. And since I had nobody around to get their hands on a second controller, I had to settle for strangers online. To my surprise, I was pulled into a team of 3 almost instantly. The wait was only a few seconds, and I landed right in the middle of the action. My teammates were using turtles of a higher level who had all the special attacks, so I often felt useless. But from the whole experience I did get to see what other advantages the other characters bring: April O’Neil is very agile, but her attacks are less devastating; and Casey Jones moves slower, but swings his baseball bat and hockey stick as if his intentions were more criminal than vigilante.
I finished the co-op game with 3 players and enjoyed the chance to learn from strangers online who were more experienced than me, but I felt I hadn't earned the laurels.
So the next day I decided to finish Shredder’s Revenge one more time, but with a team made up of players who were at most my equals. Only then did I discover how the difficulty adjusts dynamically as the number of human combatants rises or falls.
And for the first time, I noticed a visible slowdown when too many things happen on screen at once. But it was fun to put a bit more bone (or shell) into the work, and I finally understood how the story beats fit together to set up the grand finale. Maybe I wasn't paying enough attention the first two times, but there really are small details you miss if you focus too hard on the action and the simple RPG elements.
To beat Shredder a fourth time, I had to wait another couple of weeks – during which I'd open the game for 10 minutes a day, just to unwind on my work breaks. My attempts, though, were aimed more at hitting certain objectives in each level (for example, you're asked to reach the end of the stage without getting hit, or without using special abilities). But when my brother Luca came to visit, I truly discovered the beauty of a beat 'em up: over the course of our adventure we could coordinate out loud (in remote multiplayer you can't tell the stranger online to stay on the left side of the screen, or to watch out for a particular obstacle), and we even high-fived for real a few times to mark narrow victories against end-of-level bosses. That run is also when I realised that high-fiving between characters in the game is a strategic way of swapping health points. And after we beat Shredder, we shared moments of exuberance the like of which I hadn't had since the mid-2000s, when I was probably playing The Incredibles or Lego: Star Wars. Luca told me Shredder’s Revenge reminded him of TMNT: Tournament Fighters, which we played on the Terminator around 1999. And as the older brother, all I could do was be glad. The golden age of gaming was the one where every console came with 2 controllers, and PC titles let you split the keyboard in two halves: WASD for the more experienced player and the arrow keys for the novice.
More recently, I brought the Nintendo Switch to a family event attended by two of my nieces, aged 11 and 9. I challenged them to play Shredder’s Revenge and had a blast watching them: they picked up the controls almost immediately, loved discovering they could hurl enemies across the screen and clean off it, finished an entire level working together, but at the end of those wonderful 5 minutes they asked me whether I had Fortnite (which they then went and installed while I was chatting to other relatives in the next room). Different tastes aside, it was a pleasure to find in Shredder’s Revenge the qualities of a game anyone can enjoy. It's a timeless adventure, welcoming even to those who know nothing about the “ninja turtles”, and it offers a good time to everyone.
Before I wrap up, I want to praise the game's graphics. Not because they manage to display incredible detail on an RTX 4090 with ray tracing switched on, but because they present a living, active world. Before taking up a fighting stance, Foot Clan soldiers can be seen frantically thumbing at their mobile phones, cooking, working at a desk, or trying to relax. You almost feel bad about having to disturb them and destroy them (as you'll discover, they're robots that explode… because turtles don't kill). What's more, the fictional depiction of New York City is full of life, packed with references and nods to everything the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles universe entails. And the cinematic sequences between levels make you feel like the star of an episode of the 1987 TMNT animated series.
If you've played Turtles in Time before, you'll find short sections that really will send you back in time. But Shredder’s Revenge is by no means a game that simply pays homage to the days that ended when 3D graphics took over. Even if it looks like a sequel to the 1991 arcade title, it is largely an original work that stands on its own merits.
What we have here is a modern classic that successfully combines old-school beat 'em up action with the connectivity and collaboration tech of the internet era. It's what I wish I'd had in 1998, when I was playing Double Dragon 2 on the Terminator.
And on that note, thanks to Rodarkone for the download code he sent my way.
And now I need to add the game to my collection in a physical format too.
Cowabunga!
Vlad Costea
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