Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Shredder's Revenge Review

ign.com:

Growing up as a child of the 90s, whenever I stepped into an arcade, I’d always do a walk around to see what they had before putting my quarters into any machines. This usually didn’t last very long because as soon as I saw a Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles cabinet, I’d shout to my friends “They got Turtles!” and we’d rush on over.

It’s abundantly clear that the developers at Tribute Games share a similar love for the 90s TMNT beat-em-ups. Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Shredder’s Revenge is nothing but unwaveringly reverent to the classic 1989 Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles Arcade game, and more prominently, 1991’s Turtles in Time. Best of all, it transforms the arcadey quarter-munching design of combat into something much more skill forward while still maintaining the same button mashy appeal. Put simply, Shredder’s Revenge is a prime example of how to breathe new life into a classic arcade beat-em-up.

Shredder’s Revenge is full of all sorts of winks and nods to the arcade games that inspired it, but it smartly doesn’t chain itself to them. Arcade beat-em-ups were originally designed to suck as many quarters as they could from the pockets of players, and thus have inherited a tendency to limit your ability to get out of the way of attacks or ramp up the difficulty without also ramping up your own power. Shredder’s Revenge changes all of that, as the turtles and friends can now freely dodge roll left and right; they can hold the attack button down to charge up attacks, which also has the added bonus of letting them take damage without flinching; they each have a Shoryuken-like rising attack that makes hitting aerial enemies a breeze; and most importantly, they each have a meter that allows them to use a screen clearing super