How Shredder’s Revenge captures the essence of classic TMNT arcade games
Frederic Gemus still remembers the first time he played the original Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles arcade game. There was something about the experience, with its big expressive characters and approachable gameplay, that sucked him right in. “Playing that game was so mind blowing because it was just like playing the cartoon,” he tells me over Zoom (with a huge collection of retro games behind him). “It was so different from the Nintendo back in the days.” So, when Gemus, now a designer at Montreal-based studio Tribute Games, had a chance to work on a modern take on TMNT, it was pretty much a dream project. “That was pretty awesome to learn about,” he says of being put on the project.
Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Shredder’s Revenge is out now, and it comes from some proven experts in the field. It’s developed by Tribute, which features developers who worked on titles like Scott Pilgrim vs. The World: The Game and the cult hit TMNT game for the Game Boy Advance, and published by Dotemu, the team behind the incredible revival of Streets of Rage. The goal of Shredder’s Revenge was much the same: to take the best parts of the classic TMNT titles and make them work for a modern audience.
For Gemus, there were a few things that made those classic games stand out, which he wanted to emphasize in Shredder’s Revenge. The first was accessibility. While the arcade games were still designed to consume as many of your quarters as possible — and, thus, were quite challenging — they were still easier to pick up and play than many of their contemporaries. He also believes that the pacing and level design of the original TMNT games had much more in common with an action game than a standard side-scrolling beat ‘em up. “You have enemies
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