Arcade games back in the day were either a complete hit or a miss, and you could find which games were the hit just by looking at the lines people would gather behind the machine. The late 90s saw the emergence of the beat ‘em up genre, where up to four people would play at the same time to beat enemies with combos and face a boss at the end of the level. These games usually included a story about kidnapping or badass cops defeating evil.

Most people saw Dragon Dragon to be the game that started its popularity, and they wouldn’t be wrong. Some other developers jumped onto the bandwagon with their own titles such as Cadillacs and Dinosaurs and the notorious Battletoads. There were, however, some developers who really wanted to collaborate with existing franchises. Through the middle of the 90s, Konami made a deal with Matt Groening and Fox Television to create a beat 'em-up game for the arcades with the The Simpsons branding.

The idea seemed very out of the place, a game where family values and American life were portrayed, now had a game where family members were fighting against the people of Springfield. Nonetheless, the idea was executed well enough to catch a big hit and it became one of the best-performing arcade beat ‘em ups of the 90s.

At the time, some other brands were also realizing the potential of the idea of diving into video games. Since the genre required a maximum of four players to be played, other shows and media could potentially be portrayed as a beat ‘em-up game. Before you ask, yes, I’d like to see a Seinfeld beat 'em up game, thank you for thinking the same with me.

Jokes aside, any franchise that included a four-man front would be an exceptional fit for the beat ‘em-up genre. No other than Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles got their fair share of fame during the 90s as well. Same as The Simpsons, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles found its way to video games thanks to Konami, and their first beat ‘em-up game called Turtles in Time was released for arcades in 1991 and for the Super Nintendo Entertainment System in 1992. 

Since then, the TMNT franchise has come up with a few more shows, movie adaptations, and video games, but unfortunately, they never caught the fame and hype around Turtles in Time again. Maybe it's due to poor decision-making by their owners, CBS, but it's clearly unknown why it doesn’t have the fame it used to have back in the day. I am saying this due to Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles Arcade: Wrath of the Mutants' existence.

Quite a mouthful that title, it takes a few seconds to say, and when you finish it, you feel like you haven’t made any impression on anyone. What Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles Arcade: Wrath of the Mutants is a port of an arcade machine to PC and home consoles. Now, this game was quite limited for its time as it barely got any interest from the public. The most recent arcade releases tend to be forgotten quickly due to their less relevancy nowadays, or some arcades really want to keep up the mobile games arcade booths instead of the original games.

Nevertheless, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles Arcade: Wrath of the Mutants is basically an arcade game being ported over to be played at your own home and at your leisure. It has all the characters from the show: Leonardo, Raphael, Michelangelo and Donatello. Although these four are known for their distinct characteristics, they play exactly the same in the gameplay so choosing one over another has no advantage.

The gameplay is unfortunately portrayed like a usual shovelware. Honestly, I am mostly sad that the word shovelware will show up in this review quite a lot because I couldn’t find any more precise explanation for the game. Besides outdated graphics and models looking like they belong to a PS3 game, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles Arcade: Wrath of the Mutants provides simple yet baffling gameplay.

There are only a few buttons you need to press in order to play. One being the regular attack and the other one being the special attack. Delivering combos usually happens via mashing the attack button only and since every turtle has no different playstyle, you end up just having to mash one button for the entire session. The other one is used when you have Turtle Power, which fills up as you defeat more enemies.

Speaking of dealing with enemies, there are certain items that can be found on the stages after lifting objects or as random drops. These range from throwables to special powers and boost items. Throwables, as they sound, can be picked up by our main four and used as a way to deal damage to enemies. Special powers come once or twice in a stage, in which our friends help out with clearing the wave of baddies we fight against.

Boost items on the other hand help our characters build back their health or Turtle Power. Turtle Power, as I mentioned earlier, can be filled up with constantly fighting and hitting enemies, but picking up a Turtle Power item can immensely help as it fills almost half of the bar. Even if you do not seem to play seriously, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles Arcade: Wrath of the Mutants tends to give you freebies regardless of your playstyle, which is somewhat contrary to its arcade counterpart.

Once the bar fills up, you can press the special attack button to kill every enemy on your screen. What is rather amateurish is that, if you happen to press the Turtle Power button when there are no enemies to beat up, the game automatically spawns enemies to make it look like you have made the right decision. So basically, the game is faking some of the aspects to give confidence to the player, which felt a bit underwhelming because as an arcade game, you want people to suffer through their playthroughs.

Talking about suffering, oh boy the game has no block button. That means you can be shot by three different enemies at once and get your health points down to an abysmally small percentage in a matter of seconds. The best way to avoid these shots is to run around like a freak and hope that the 3D environment doesn’t screw you over for moving in a certain direction.

I’d say this only works around half of the time because hitboxes in Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles Arcade: Wrath of the Mutants are all over the place. Sometimes you get hit while obviously moving away from the projectile, or the boss does constant damage to you whenever they get up after you knock them down. Since the game lacks evade, dash, or block buttons, your friend’s attacks would interfere with the attacks of regular enemies, making it easier to deal with them.

However, if you are alone on your own, most of your fights are going to be dreadful to deal with. Suddenly, a group of five to six enemies can jump on you and make you wish you had some backup to keep you secured. Although having a co-op experience in beat ‘em-up games is the way to go, you can only have a local co-op with Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles Arcade: Wrath of the Mutants, because it is a direct port from the arcade and it doesn’t support online functionality.

On top of that, the game requires you to have a gamepad. I need to emphasize the word “required” here because you cannot play this game with a keyboard. In order to enjoy this game to its fullest, you need three friends and they need to have their own controllers. Then this game would be worth playing, right?

Well, to be exactly honest, no. With its gameplay, story, characters, and visual and sound design, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles Arcade: Wrath of the Mutants screams a late 2000s shovelware game, made for Nintendo Wii or PlayStation 2.

The stages are set in a way of two bosses per stage. One appears in the middle of it and one at the end. Their appearance in a level does not change their importance or health though, it is just a curve ball thrown at the player to keep playing for at least more than 5 minutes per stage. What I only like is how developers haven’t forgotten about characters, despite some of them having barely any screen time in the show or the movie. The voice acting is, let’s just say it’s there. It is totally random whether one voice actor really cared about his role in a niche game or not.

I know both developers and voice actors tried to put their soul into this one small project for an arcade machine, but bringing it back almost 7 years after its debut in the arcade seems a bit off to me. Considering Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles Arcade: Wrath of the Mutants is meant to be played for no more than 10 minutes in an arcade booth, I’d say bringing this game to home consoles or PC is not very much worth it.

If you are desperate for some good beat ‘em-ups, just checking the Steam suggestion would be enough to see other examples such as Castle Crashers, River City Girls, Brawl Mayhem- hell, even an actual TMNT beat ‘em-up game like TMNT: Shredder’s Revenge would be enough to keep you entertained. As for Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles Arcade: Wrath of the Mutants, there is no need to get it unless you really like Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles or you are one of the very small batch of people who enjoyed this game on the arcade and wanted to play in your own home for some reason.

Atilla Turan (@burningarrow)
Editor, NoobFeed