The Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (TMNT) are a franchise that is recognizable to most people. Whether a fan or not, the TMNT have permeated the social conscious of the United States, and many other countries. People know of them if not able to name each one. For many reading this, the heyday for Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles games is probably the arcade brawlers that saw release in the extremely late 1980s and early 1990s. TMNT Shredders Revenge is a call back to that genre by Dotemu.

Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles doing their thing

They have martial arts skill, martial arts weapons, and they are teenage mutants. That just screams being put into a brawling title. Unfortunately, many releases for the angst filled team were not exactly focused on combat. Dotemu with their upcoming Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles Shredders Revenge release are going back to the basics.

Brawlers, sometimes called belt fighters, or scrolling fighting, were a once powerful genre. Entries such as Final Fight, Streets of Rage, etc were big announcements and great sellers at retail. Something happened around the time of the 32-Bit consoles though, this genre fell to the sidelines and hard.

The idea is simple. There are no complicated combos to remember or time. Simply press the attack button and occasionally the jump button. When things get too hard, hit that special button, and unleash a super move. Simple.

Maybe that is what sidelined this genre? Not a lot of innovation here. From the looks of it, Dotemu is not straying from the tried and true formula either.

Maybe the release of Streets of Rage 4 proved to publishers that there is still life in this genre. Just give us a reason to care. Teenage Mutant Ninja is a very good reason.

TMNT Shredders Revenge Update

The latest update shows off April O’Neil as a playable character. In the first arcade game, she was kidnapped by Shredder and unavailable. Other new things here include:

Pixel graphics resembling those of the 80s
Old school gameplay
Up to 4 players at once
Classic TMNT characters and vehicles
New story mode

Projected release date is 2022 on Steam

Get your TMNT kicks on eBay or Amazon while we wait for this cool new entry to launch

Carl Williams

It is time gaming journalism takes its rightful place as proper sources and not fanboys giving free advertising. If you wish to support writers like Carl please use the links below. https://www.paypal.me/WCW https://www.patreon.com/CarlWilliams