On the second day of Christmas my true love gave to me, two turtle doves.

Ninja turtles and Christmas go together like peanut butter and jelly, Link and Zelda, and Trump and Twitter. I remember many a Christmas morning tearing into a festively wrapped ninja turtle action playset box and happily facing off against the Foot Clan with Donatello because yes, the size of your weapon does matter. Sorry Raph.

There is no shortage of ninja turtle games. Some of them are great, like TMNT: The Arcade Game and TMNT: Fall of The Foot Clan. And some of them are not so great like the original TMNT for the NES and TMNT for the GBA. A few shell-shocking titles aside, the series is solid and if I have to pick one that would make for a good a holiday gift it would be TMNT: Mutant Melee.

Mutant Melee departs from the standard TMNT beat-em up into a melee fighting game in which you can take control of any one of the 10 characters from the series and proceed to beat the hell out of each other. There is a single player mode but this title is meant to be a party game that allows up to 4 players to participate in arena type battle royals. The fighting is intense and as with any good TMNT game, snarky smart-ass comments are thrown about freely during the matches. The game was panned by most critics and that is a shame because the best part of any ninja turtle TV show episode or movie is the fight scenes and that is what this game is all about. Booyakasha!

Brandon Weicks

Brandon is a writer, tech guy, game collector, and sucks at video games. He still holds hope that Sega will release a new console and believes Nintendo peaked with the Super Gameboy. In his spare time, Brandon enjoys playing in his ManCade, listening to funk, and going game hunting on his Bonnie.

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