Retro look or not, niche genre or not: This declaration of love for cultivated couch co-op brawling is guaranteed to knock your socks off and is already one of the biggest surprise hits of 2022.
If you’re expecting an objective and sober review of Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Shredder’s Revenge from me, you can completely forget it! Because that wouldn’t do this game justice.
How much you take the beat ’em up to heart depends crucially on how and what you grew up with. If you only know turtles as cute pets and slot machines, especially from Stranger Things, then you’ll have your fun with Shredder’s Revenge!
But if your eyes start to light up at game titles like Double Dragon, Final Fight or even Turtles in Time and you can still remember how wonderful it felt to sit on the living room floor in front of the tube TV with your best friends and pass the gamepads around, then you will hardly take a game to your heart this year as much as Shredder’s Revenge. That’s a promise.
In the review, I explain why Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Shredder’s Revenge is such a successful declaration of love and why it kicks it up a league higher than the similar Streets of Rage 4.
A childhood dream come true
To understand why Shredder’s Revenge evokes such feelings in me, I have to tell you a little anecdote from my childhood. On holiday, my family used to take the ferry from Denmark to Sweden almost every summer holiday in the late 80s and early 90s.
But while my parents and siblings enjoyed the view and the sea air, I spent the four-hour crossing almost exclusively below deck and in the same place every year: the room with the slot machine! I didn’t even have the money to play myself – I was perfectly content to watch others do it. Watching Let’s Plays, 80s style.
Why? Well, just take a look at my favourite game at the time, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: The Arcade Game, on my C64 and compare it to the original machine:
This brings us to the first point why Shredder’s Revenge makes my eyes light up so much: It looks exactly the way I always dreamed of it as a child – including all the details that were left out for technical reasons at the time, but which my childish imagination added.
Because of course the animation wasn’t as smooth back then, the levels much less animated, the boss attacks far less spectacular than Shredder’s Revenge celebrates now. The loving homage is rounded off with countless gags and allusions that make Dimi and I laugh out loud again and again as we play through the campaign.
I’m not really a fan of the retro look, but even I have to admit that this detailed, pixelated and animated slot machine style works much better than the cartoon look of Streets of Rage 4.
This is how co-op goes, not any other way
Playing Shredder’s Revenge also reminded me of why I fell in love with beat ’em ups of all things back in the day, even though I was already mostly into the opposite strategy and role-playing genre: co-op fun paired with the easiest accessibility.
I can really put a gamepad in anyone’s hand (forget keyboard controls!) and they will have a great time together in Shredder’s Revenge. One button for attacking, one for dodging, one for special attacks – that’s all it takes to dish out some serious cheek fodder on the easiest of the three difficulty levels and feel like a mighty ninja in the process.
Clever co-op mechanics ensure that it’s fun even if your up to five toad colleagues have completely different experience levels. During breathing pauses, you high-five your partners, which gives them life points, and anyone who bites the dust can be revived within a short time window, including appropriate screams of joy and gratitude.
In addition, Shredder’s Revenge scales the number of opponents with the number of players, so there are always more than enough fight portions for everyone. My secret highlight, however, is the achievement after completing the level. Because it doesn’t automatically put the best score in the spotlight, but also the toad that took the most damage or jumped the most. Completely irrelevant from a game point of view, but nevertheless, or perhaps precisely for that reason, a guarantee of good humour.
The depth of the game is in the detail
Despite all the accessibility: Those who really want to get to grips with the game will find more than enough depth to polish their rusty beat-’em-up skills to a high gloss. The controls of the seven playable characters are basically the same, but the weapons used make a big difference in practice.
Donatello has the longest range with his Bo staff, but has to strike more often than Raphael with his Sai daggers. The jumping and special manoeuvres also differ depending on the character chosen.
Additional tactical spice comes into play through the levels, which are as varied as they are interactive. You dodge herds of animals, throw ninjas off skyscrapers or throw shopping trolleys at them.
So if you want to complete all the optional challenges or string together a 250 combo for the corresponding achievement, you’ll have a lot to bite into. And so Shredder’s Revenge achieves the feat that genre beginners and professionals alike have the same fun, even when they fight together. Or rather, especially then!
When little game time is just right
Whether on my C64 or in 80s Let’s Play, it took just 40 minutes to reach the end sequence in the historic Turtles games of the time. Shredder’s Revenge is much more extensive, but Dimi and I still only needed a little more than two hours for the 16 levels.
And it may sound strange in view of my declaration of love, but it shouldn’t have been longer. For one thing, the game concept wears out quite quickly due to the genre: run from left to right, beat up enemies, run on, boss fight, start all over again. Yes, in Shredder’s Revenge, true to the retro template, there are also a handful of driving or flying levels that you complete with the hoverboard. The game’s variance is nevertheless limited.
On the other hand, two to two and a half hours is exactly the right length for an enjoyable round of co-op with friends, without Shredder’s Revenge having to repeat itself or fill the playing time with annoying stuff. There is a lot of fun from start to finish, every level brings new ideas and gags and surprises with a unique and spectacular boss fight.
If you want to spend more time in Shredder’s Revenge, you can start the story mode, which expands the 16 levels with an overworld map, challenges and collecting tasks. The latter in particular, however, seem rather artificial, because the challenge is ultimately limited to smashing all the objects to smithereens.
More exciting is the possibility to play unlocked levels with other characters and level them up gradually, unlocking more health points or additional manoeuvres for them.
But even in story mode, Shredder’s Revenge is not a game you can spend an entire weekend binging on. It’s one that you’ll want to pick up every now and then for an hour or two when you’re in the mood for an extra dose of grimacing. Or when your friends come over with whom you used to sit on the living room floor in front of the tube TV.
Editor’s verdict
Yes, I played through Elden Ring with gusto, so for once I get to compare apples and oranges and say that Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Shredder’s Revenge is my personal game of the year so far, ahead of From Software’s masterpiece. Because the decisive measure of my personal fun meter is the width of the grin a game puts on my face.
And what can I say: Shredder’s Revenge not only chisels the maximum width from my left ear to my right ear, the grin also returns again and again when I think back to my co-op game with Dimi. How we laughed at the many affectionate gags! How we trembled at every resurrection attempt! And how we cheered at every defeated boss!
Yes, of course, the fun meter is somewhat skewed by my personal gaming history and an extra dose of nostalgia. But I’d still argue that Shredder’s Revenge really does appeal to anyone with a taste for action-packed co-op shorthand. Because the beat ’em up doesn’t just quote the feeling from back then, but modernises it so carefully that even those who, unlike me, didn’t grow up with these games can understand it.
The beginner-friendly, yet surprisingly deep and precise combat system ignites immediately, the smart co-op mechanics motivate to actually play with each other instead of just side by side. And the retro look may look old-fashioned on screenshots, but in motion it develops an irresistible charm even for me, even though I usually have little use for pixel graphics. No, Shredder’s Revenge is not a great game. But one that knows exactly what it wants and does it almost perfectly and with a lot of heart.
