TMNT’s Cowabunga Collection Is Nostalgia Done Right

Do you have that food from your childhood that you just love, even though you know it’s not, objectively, that great? There’s something about the memory of that taste that is amazing, even if you know the sophistication of your palette has evolved a lot in the intervening years. That’s a bit how I feel about the early Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles games. With crystal clear recall, I remember sitting around a TMNT arcade table with friends and pumping tokens in to beat Shredder before my birthday. I can also recall spending a weekend banging against the wall and trying to solve the absurd sewer problems in the original NES game. Cowabunga Collection is here to help you recollect these experiences with nostalgia. It does this with great ease. Do these games really merit our attention? That’s up for debate.

Digital Eclipse and Konami collaborated to create a collection of Turtles early video games. You can browse and play 13 titles that span the spectrum between arcade and NES games, SNES and Genesis releases, as well as Game Boy and Game Boy versions. At their core, these games are restored in a form very close to their original incarnations, and it’s a lot of fun to spend time in the ones you know to remember individual sequences and smile. If the phrase “tonight I dine on Turtle soup” rings some bells in your distant memory, it’s likely you may feel the same.

Even for TMNT enthusiasts, I’d be surprised if there weren’t a few surprises in the mix of included games. Familiar classics like the arcade version of Turtles in Time are certainly here, but there’s a good bet you might not have played everything else the collection has to offer. The list is below. I was happy to be surprised at Hyperstone Heist’s speed and levels. It was an original Genesis game that I didn’t play when it was released. The Metroid-inspired Radical Rescue on Game Boy was an especially highlight. It offered a much more solid adventure than I expected.

• Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (Arcade)
• Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Turtles in Time (Arcade)
• Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (NES)
• Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles II: The Arcade Game (NES)
• Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles III: The Manhattan Project (NES)
• Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Tournament Fighters (NES)
• Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles IV: Turtles in Time (SNES)
• Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Tournament Fighters (SNES)
• Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: The Hyperstone Heist (Genesis)
• Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Tournament Fighters (Genesis)
• Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Fall of The Foot Clan (Game Boy)
• Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles II: Back From The Sewers (Game Boy)
• Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles III: Radical Rescue (Game Boy)

Nonetheless, it must be said that many of these games (even the most fondly remembered ones) mostly fail to pass muster as truly stellar games in today’s marketplace. This was a licensed game that existed at the time and featured implausible levels, unstructured boss encounters or simplistic structure. Sometimes it can be difficult to distinguish nostalgia and the truth of what a video game is. However, having recently played the excellent Shredder’s Revenge, it’s easy to see the way that beat ‘em ups have progressed in the intervening decades. Likewise, it’s hard to imagine investing extensive time in a fighting game like TMNT: Tournament Fighters when we’re in the midst of such a renaissance in the fighting genre in recent years.

It is wrong to criticize these games from the 80s or 90s for what they were. These classic games are not being remade in a spectacular way, but instead it is a fantastic way to archive the things that make them so special. And in this regard, it’s hard to find fault. You can save your game and load it at any time, so you don’t have to wait until the end. There are many enhancements available that can be used to customize your experience. For example, you can set alternate levels for bosses so that they appear at the end of each level. You also have the ability remove slowdown effects from the code that occurred when you had too many enemies. There’s an awesome “watch” feature that lets you observe an expert playthrough of any of the games to completion, and then jump in any time you want in the course of the playthrough. There’s even the option to change your region and see and play the Japanese versions of the games.

You can also browse the Cowabunga Collection’s extensive and impressive collection of additional bonus material. By entering the “Turtle’s Lair” portion of the game, you can examine early Konami design documents, listen to music tracks, check out comic book covers, and even investigate never-before-seen concept art. As a digital archive to these popular games, it’s a truly impressive resource.

While there’s certainly a lot to discover for new Turtles fans, it feels like the Cowabunga Collection is squarely targeted at older enthusiasts who want to relive the glory days, or perhaps have a more approachable way to enjoy the game with kids or other newcomers. This is why the game is such a great win. Even if these aren’t games I might recommend to today’s game players, they’re certainly an important page in the history of licensed video games,  presented here with almost every option you might wish to find.