TURTLE POWER

TMNT: SHREDDER'S REVENGE revisits the glory days of Ninja Turtles brawlers

- TED LICHFIELD

By the time I was a kid growing up in the late 1990s and early 2000s, arcades were already on their way out. Home gaming on consoles and PCs has long overtaken the hobby's original home, relegating it to a novelty for nostalgia-baiting barcades in gentrified neighborhoods.

Still, I found my way into arcades over the years: a friend's birthday party at a local pizza joint, or killing time while off on my own during a family vacation. One game that I always ran into without fail was Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Turtles in Time.

Turtles in Time and its predecessor, simply titled Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, remain the gold standard of TMNT games to this day, combining simple, yet fast-paced and explosive combat with drop-in, four-player co-op and the kind of visually striking pixel art backdrops which help 16-bit games remain a favorite of so many players.

Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Shredder's Revenge is an attempt to bring the magic of those old arcade classics to PC and consoles, while also sanding the edges and shaping the experience into a better fit for at-home play. Freed from the need to suck up quarters from unskilled players as a business model. and to be short enough to be finishable in a single sitting, Shredder's Revenge has the potential to be better than arcade-perfect.

HEROES IN A HALF SHELL

Publisher Dotemu and developer Tribute Games have made their business capturing the joy of this era of gaming. Montreal-based Tribute was founded by ex-Ubisoft veterans who previously worked on games like the TMNT movie tie-in for Gameboy Advance, and the much-beloved