There's an immense value in preserving classic titles in their original forms, mainly for the better. For the case of Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: The Cowabunga Collection, it is so easy to relive the glory days of arcade gaming be it in playing any of the thirteen titles it offers OR by perusing the sheer amount of extra content in the Turtle's Lair. And, having online play that works with little issues is the cherry on top. As a fan of TMNT, the Cowabunga Collection is a no-brainer: This is the collection best shared over pizza.
We here at Digital Chumps are big fans of classic game collections, be it Street Fighter, Disney’s library, Ninja Gaiden, Command & Conquer, to even Space Invaders. Each of us here at Digital Chumps exist because of these “classic games” that pulled us to a console or computer and booted it up to play our nights away. All this considered, we become quite selfishly excited when a publisher announces that they’re bringing together multiple classic titles and making them available for newer and veteran players (like Nathan, Alex, all of our Bens, Steven, Dillon, Scott, myself, and so many others). Imagine our excitement when Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: The Cowabunga Collection was announced and subsequently provided to us for a Chumps Review!
Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: The Cowabunga Collection (TMNT:TCC) is a classic combination of games of epic proportions, spanning THIRTEEN (13!!!) classic TMNT titles that were originally available in Arcades, on the Super Nintendo (SN), Nintendo (N), Sega Genesis (SG), and Game Boy (GB). The list of games are as follows:
Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (Arcade)
Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Turtles in Time (Arcade)
Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (N)
Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles II: The Arcade Game (N)
Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles III: The Manhattan Project (N)
Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Tournament Fighters (N)
Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles IV: Turtles in Time (SN)
Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Tournament Fighters (SN)
Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: The Hyperstone Heist (SG)
Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Tournament Fighters (SG)
Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Fall of The Foot Clan (GB)
Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles II: Back From The Sewers (GB)
Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles III: Radical Rescue (GB)
This list is gigantic. I’m sure that some of you may have noticed that a few of these titles look like duplicates, such as Tournament Fighters and Turtles in Time. As a player of these titles when they were originally released, let me be the first to assure you that there are differences across platforms, so don’t feel as though this collection is comprised of simply multiple iterations of the same game.
When I booted up TNMT:TCC on my PS5, I was incredibly happy to see so many games available. As a kid, I remember playing Tournament Fighters on my Sega Genesis and Turtles in Time on my Super Nintendo (and in the coin arcades!). It was overwhelming to see so many games available, so you should expect to feel like a kid in a candy store when you get to the game select screen. I took the time to play through each of the games that were available. Yes, dear reader, I took some time to play through the titles I was familiar and those I had never played. I’m ecstatic to report that they play quite well in their original aspect ratios. By default, each game has a border surrounding the screen ensuring that you’re playing these games in their original aspect ratios. No stretching, blurs, or visual glitches were present. Should you want to full screen, it’s quite easy to change the aspect ratio in-game by pressing R1. Should you want the full LCD/monitor/TV experience in its grainy glory, that can be fixed, too. I am thrilled that Digital Eclipse took the time to give players the option of adjusting their screens to their liking, as I personally wanted the nostalgia factor turned up to 11.
Unique to TMNT:CC (and my biggest personal favorite addition in just about any collection game so far) is the Enhancement system. When on the game select screen, tapping the track pad brings up a menu of options that literally enhance the game you choose to play. For instance, in TMNT (Arcade), the Enhancements include enabling God Mode, Nightmare Mode (a MUCH harder mode), removing penalty bombs, and setting the starting level to a level of your choosing. In Tournament Fighters (SG), you can enable the ability to play as the bosses (!!!).I cannot stress this enough: The Enhancements are literally awesome. As someone who grew up with these games, being able to mess around with the behind-the-curtain settings and change the game is a thing of dreams. Sure, at the time, Game Shark and other peripherals existed to give folks that access, but today? Being able to play as Shredder, Krang, Triceraton, and Karai/Aska is something young me would have jumped at the opportunity to play.
Like other classic game libraries, TMNT:TCC gives player the opportunity to rewind a few seconds in the event they make a misplay. However, this rewind function only allows player to go backward a few seconds. This is very small compared to the Nintendo Switch’s classic game emulation that lets you rewind nearly infinitely. However, when I enabled the Enhancements and gave myself an absurd amount of lives in Turtles in Time (SNES), I never felt the need to use Rewind at all.
Nostalgia conservationists, TMNT fans, and secret seekers, rejoice! TMNT:TCC features a hub for you to look through classic TMNT content called The Turtle’s Lair. When you enter, you can look through game guides/instruction manuals (that are also available in-game), listen to the music of all of the games in TMNT:TCC, and look through other media that advertised and showcased the extent of the TMNT universe. As a TMNT fan, I did find this media collection to be quite nice and unexpected. I sincerely hope that other collection games take note of this feature, as this is quite appealing to review. I won’t spoil the rest of the contents of the Lair for you, but wow. I have to hand it Nickelodeon and Digital Eclipse — they went all out on recreating the Turtle’s Lair to be as accurate as possible for longtime fans looking out for Easter Eggs.
The final cherry on top offered by TMNT:TCC is the ability to play online with friends. Yes, Digital Eclipse added online functionality to four games, making it easy to create/join a lobby and kick some shell. While not all of the titles have online functionality, the titles with online capabilities (TMNT [Arcade], TMNT: Turtles in Time [Arcade], Tournament Fighters [SNES], The Hyperstone Heist [SG]) span different consoles and genres, giving players a variable taste of what playing TMNT across consoles has to offer. During our review period, we were not able to play too many online sessions because the online servers were not yet available. When we _were_ able to find a lobby comprised of another individual with early access to TMNT:TCC, jumping into TMNT (Arcade) was a seamless affair. Lobby owners have the power to determine the amount of frame forgiveness to include to account for lag as well as close off parties to the public. While playing TMNT (Arcade) online, I did not ever encounter any lag or skipped frames. But, I am sure that playing TMNT: Tournament Fighters may be a slightly different affair.
The common question we usually ask when conducting reviews of collections is: How well do these games hold up today? To this end, I am torn. On one hand, Digital Eclipse took the “everything and the kitchen sink” approach of including classic TMNT titles, which I consider to be a massive plus. Paired with the enhancements available for each game, there are many reasons for veterans to become invested in playing and replaying their favorite turtle titles. New players don’t have to worry about running out of coins during the final battle of Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (Arcade) — just press the Start button to add more lives!
On the other hand, I cannot help but think that the implementation of controls could have been better updated or even made consistent across titles to play nice with a single control scheme. There are little control scheme consistencies across games, despite most of the games utilizing a simple two-button layout for moving, attacking, and jumping. They could have taken it one step further by modernizing some of these control layouts, too. After playing Shredder’s Revenge, I cannot help but note that Turtles in Timed feels incredibly dated and clunky despite growing up playing it.
There’s an immense value in preserving classic titles in their original forms, mainly for the better. For the case of Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: The Cowabunga Collection, it is so easy to relive the glory days of arcade gaming be it in playing any of the thirteen titles it offers OR by perusing the sheer amount of extra content in the Turtle’s Lair. And, having online play that works with little issues is the cherry on top. As a fan of TMNT, the Cowabunga Collection is a no-brainer: This is the collection best shared over pizza.
TMNT: The Cowabunga Collection releases tomorrow (August 30) on PS5, PS4, XB S|X|One, Switch, and PC. A review copy was provided to us for this review.
