Shredder’s Revenge brings the TMNT beat-’em-up into the modern age

polygon.com:

Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Shredder’s Revenge is stuck in a tricky position: It must play like the Konami-developed arcade beat-’em-ups of old, as you fondly remember them, but it needs to feel modern at the same time. After spending some time with a two-level demo of the new Ninja Turtles game, it’s clear developer Tribute Games is riding that katana-sharp edge of faithful, but not faithful to a fault.

Shredder’s Revenge sends the ninja turtles — Donatello, Leonardo, Michelangelo, and Raphael — and pals Splinter and April O’Neil on a mission to stop Shredder, Krang, and the Foot Clan’s evil schemes in a classic, arcade-style, conveyer-belt brawler. The first two levels take place in a television studio taken hostage by Bebop the mutant warthog and on the streets of New York, where Rocksteady the rhinoceros-man is causing chaos. In addition to delivering deep beat-’em-up combat, Shredder’s Revenge is sprinkled with great visual humor, thanks to stage-specific Foot Clan ninja animations, and subtle environmental storytelling.

In one area of the game, Foot Clan ninjas typed away on keyboards at office desks, ostensibly but hopelessly trying to blend in. In another section, they did ab crunches on what appeared to be yoga mats, but turned out to be shields. Elsewhere, Foot Clan ninjas emerged from an industrial freezer, lobbing massive hams frozen in ice blocks. Level two starts, humorously, with the Foot stealing the tires from the turtles’ signature van, ensuring the rest of the game is an on-foot adventure.

What developer Tribute Games appears to have captured best about those classic TMNT games, beyond the humor and colorful 16-bit aesthetic, is the pacing of combat.

“We noticed from the classic [TMNT] games that