Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Shredder’s Revenge review: classic yet modern delight

It’s worth reiterating this headline immediately: Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Shredder’s Revenge Absolutely rules.

Shredder’s Revenge is, through and through, a modern game — but it feels exactly how I remember the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles brawlers of my youth feeling. Our tiny bodies sat around the TV with our cousins and siblings. We took turns as duos in order to take down the Foot Clan. However, memory can be fickle. It’s not just about how many games you play. ActuallyI still remember how they felt when I was playing them. It was a rush to button-mash my way through fast environments while building up a set of moves that would be useful later.

As an adult, I still find a lot joy from playing these games. But the veneer has rusted over the years — now, they feel impossibly slow and a little repetitive. With Shredder’s RevengeTribute Games, a developer of nostalgic-based remakes has done exactly what the majority of other developers have failed before: It sounds exactly like the brawlers I remember from my childhood. And it’s delightful.

Image by Tribute Games/Dotemu

Dotemu published this article Shredder’s Revenge pulls from both the games and the TV series to put the turtles — Michelangelo, Donatello, Raphael, and Leonardo — and pals April O’Neil, Splinter, and Casey Jones up against Shredder, Krang, and the Foot Clan. Bebop, Rocksteady and other troublemakers are again terrorizing New York City. They also plan on committing a 16-level heist, which will lead to them stealing the Statue of Liberty.

The game winds around classic locations: the Channel 6 newsroom, where Foot Clan soldiers type maniacally on keyboards when they’re not trying to punch your lights out; underground subway systems where rats thrive in both robotic and mammal forms; the Natural History Museum, where Triceratons hide among exhibits; and at the zoo, where Foot Clan soldiers eat popsicles in the sun (before trying to kick the heck out of you).

You can choose from two ways to get through the game. The Arcade mode is the classic experience — limited lives, no saves. Story Mode allows for more lives, and you can progress the story in a pixelated top down map. There are side quests that give points. These reward points allow you to unlock new capabilities. You can save your story and ability between sessions. However, each time you enter the Arcade you will have to start again from zero. Both offer three difficulty levels, which essentially boil down to easy, medium, and hard — or chill, okay, and gnarly.

Image by Tribute Games/Dotemu

Mechanically, Shredder’s RevengeIt is easy, but it does not lack depth. You certainly can get by through button mashing — the main attack easily chains with itself for big damage, for instance. There are many combinations you could use to round out your character. You can hit attack midair, dive or throw enemies in the opposite direction with the D-pad. You can also chain them together. The combat mechanics encapsulate the “easy to learn, difficult to master” ethos that makes for compelling action in so many other games. It didn’t take very long before I started to notice new moves or combinations — like throws pulled straight from Turtles in TimeAlong with helpful counters and dodges.

Special, more-powerful moves can be charged using a hitmeter or taunting. These moves can be used by pressing one button. As you progress through levels, more options are available.

Do not obsess over single-on-one battles. Shredder’s Revenge is more focused on throwing in hordes of enemies all at once; it’s helpful to know moves and to time your attacks well, but you can also just hit a lot of stuff, repeatedly, using the main attack button. Crowd control can be more valuable than just hitting the target at the exact right moment. It’s satisfying to take out a huge wave of soldiers on your own or with a friend, regardless of how it’s accomplished.

Image by Tribute Games/Dotemu

All this is possible Shredder’s Revenge You can find more information at Get busy game, but it’s never overwhelming in a way that overshadows the game’s environmental details and visual gags — stuff like the turtles getting flattened by a Foot Clan soldier driving a car, or disguising themselves as busy cashiers. Elsewhere, there are collectibles, all of which fall into the Story Mode’s side quests. By finding bugs for the Punk Frogs or tapes for Vernon Fenwick, I can earn points — the same ones that upgrade the aforementioned moves and unlock extra lives.

Hidden items and challenges are a great reason to play through the levels again. These hidden items are a great incentive to replay levels. But I found myself wanting to complete levels again regardless, as the same characters and different ones — the nearly three hours of Story Mode feels different each time around, depending on your chosen character, and that was enough to hop back into the game immediately after finishing it.

This game is so mechanically satisfying, so endearingly fun, that I couldn’t wait to hop back into the familiar environments, which remind me so much of crouching around that TV as a kid all those years ago.

Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Shredder’s Revenge On June 16, the game will be available on Nintendo Switch, PlayStation 4 and Windows PC via Steam. Dotemu gave the pre-release code to Windows PC. The game was then reviewed. Vox Media is an affiliate partner. They do not affect editorial content. However, Vox Media might earn commissions for products bought via affiliate links. Find out more. additional information about Polygon’s ethics policy here.