Review: Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: The Cowabunga Collection

destructoid.com:

When I look at all the games in The Cowabunga Collection, memories fire off like pistons in my brain. I recall the extreme joy of playing Turtles in Time. And the extreme sadness of the frustrating and infamous Turtles NES platformer. Plus everything in-between, like showing people the SNES version of Tournament Fighters in a bid to woo them over while they were busy playing other fighting games.

Individually, not all of these titles stand out. But as a repackaging, Digital Eclipse has done some fine work.

Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: The Cowabunga Collection (PC, PS4, PS5 [reviewed], Nintendo Switch, Xbox One, Xbox Series X)Developer: Digital EclipsePublisher: KonamiReleased: August 30, 2022MSRP: $39.99

As we do with many reviews dealing with compilations, let’s take a look at what’s on offer upfront before we dig in:

As I said before, quite the selection! There’s so much to unpack there, and we’ll start with the obvious: the games themselves.

Turtles in Time is an absolute classic, and could very well be considered the crown jewel of the collection. In 2009, people were paying $10 for it on the Xbox Live Arcade and PSN, or still playing the SNES original. Its time-bending setting, ahead-of-its-time voicework, and varied level design helped catapult it to one-of-the-greatest-of-all-time genre status. I had a blast playing through it again in both SNES and Arcade form (which mostly have aesthetic differences, with the SNES version sporting a bit more content and alterations), and it was a great way to kick off a playthrough of the collection.

Odds are though you’ll have a few that you consider your personal favorites. Hyperstone Heist often comes up in a lot of Turtle game conversations, and it does hold up today.