As its name suggests, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles Arcade Wrath of The Mutants (whew, that’s a mouthful!) is an arcade game through and through. To be more specific, it’s a port of developer Raw Thrills arcade game from 2017, which was based on Nickelodeon’s 2012 CGI Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles series. Now Cradle Games, in collaboration with Raw Thrills, have brought this not-quite-blast-from-the-past to modern consoles while ditching coin slots in the process. So is this worth saving your hard earned quarters up for, or are you gonna place them on the cabinet next to it?
Our favourite heroes in a half-shell are back to fight the evil forces of the Foot Clan, along with other mutants and the villainous Krangs. From the mean streets of New York to the creepy shores of Dimension X, Leonardo, Donatello, Michelangelo and Raphael are going to put the smack down for. . . reasons mostly unknown. Story, sadly, isn’t Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles Arcade Wrath of The Mutants strong suite as, outside of an ending cut scene, there doesn’t seem to be one. I think there’s something about a Krang invasion and April been kidnapped but I really have no idea. Since your primary drive is to whup some shell, it doesn’t really matter.
And Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles Arcade Wrath of The Mutantshas plenty of shell needing to be kicked by our plucky heroes. Across six levels, three of which are new to this version along with six new boss fights, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles Arcade Wrath of The Mutants throws you into familiar beat-‘em-up territory. You’ve got a limited arsenal of moves at your disposal but they’re bolstered by each Turtles specific special, dropped power-ups and environmental objects to help even the odds.
Each turtle essentially has the same basic move set, despite using different weapons. Enemies can be thrown or knocked around while the double spin attack from previous entries makes a return and doesn’t cost health to use. Each attack builds up your special meter which you can use to trigger a screen clearing attack. Each Turtles special is different which adds some much needed spice to the proceedings. Mikey bombards enemies with pizza while Leo pulls enemies onscreen into a dual wielding whirlwind.
Power-ups also go a long way to evening the field, whether its shurikens to pierce your enemies from a distance, pizza to give you a dose of health back or an ally summon that brings in other TMNT characters such as Leatherhead to clear the screen out for you.
There’s an element of tactics at play. Do you keep that super for a boss or blow it during a tough spot? Do you leave that pizza for later or let a friend grab it? And tactically you will have to play as the game can be quite challenging.
You see Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles Arcade Wrath of The Mutants doesn’t benefit from the beat-‘em-up renaissance revival of recent years. While most of the new beat-‘em-ups have taken the old school design and evolved them with the addition of new moves and tighter design to add depth to their coin-op shallowness, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles Arcade Wrath of The Mutants remains resolutely old-school and designed to suck the quarters out of your pockets.
From the amount of enemies you have to deal with – if playing solo – to attacks that can’t be evaded, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles Arcade Wrath of The Mutants is intent on slowly getting you killed so that, in the arcade at least, you could pepper it with quarters to finally beat it. The console version adds three difficulty modes, three lives per player and two continues to help you finish the game. Those continues are restocked between levels but if you use them up, it’s game over man!
The arcade design isn’t as egregious as it sounds though. Sure it can be frustrating getting hit by attacks that can lock you into a loop or not been able to dodge projectiles a fair amount of the time, but Wrath of The Mutants also counters this by been rather short. Even if you’re not the best player around, the game can be finished in just a little over an hour, which includes those three new levels.
And if you choose to play with friends, you could probably blow through it even quicker. Wrath supports four player local co-op which is the best way to play beat-‘em-ups in general. If you’re lucky enough to be able to pull another friend or three around, then this is definitely the best way to experience the game.
Visually Wrath of The Mutants is pretty to look at. It’s not stressing the Switch’s hardware in anyway with its stylised take on the franchise and I never experienced any performance issues at all. How much you enjoy the art style, however, is dependent on your love for the cartoon it’s based on. An added dose of awesome for fans is that the shows voice cast voiced the games characters as well and the developers have managed to throw in some chuckle worthy background lines from henchmen, making the game feel perfectly suited to the younger audience.
There’s also an online leaderboard for those chasing high scores but the developers have oddly dropped the ball here. While each stage has its own leaderboard, you can’t put your own name into the score screen. Instead it’s your chosen character that’s listed with a high score. The appeal of a high score table is showing off how much of the ladder you’ve climbed and whose score you’ve beaten in the process. Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles Arcade Wrath of The Mutants makes this a bit redundant.
While Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles Arcade Wrath of The Mutants can’t stand next to Shredder’s Revenge as a quintessential Turtles game, it’s still a fun if overly short experience. Playing through the different difficulties, especially with friends, is fun but once you’ve completed the game on all three settings and with no collectibles, unlockables or behind the scenes media, there isn’t much reason to return.
Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles Arcade Wrath of The Mutants Trailer
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