Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: The Cowabunga Collection review – the ultimate retro compilation
The heroes in a half shell are back with what may be the best retro collection ever made, but do the games themselves deserve the attention?
Video game compilations aren’t all that common but when they do turn up it’s always frustrating how incomplete they tend to be. Not only are they usually missing all but the most mainstream entries in a particular franchise but there’s often no context given for them, in terms of behind the scenes info and other museum content. Sonic Origins and Capcom Arcade 2nd Stadium are typical recent examples and surprisingly it’s down to The Cowabunga Collection to show how things should be done.
The Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles have a long and storied history with video games, one that was recently renewed with the retro inspired beat ‘em-up Shredder’s Revenge. It was heavily inspired by Konami’s original 1989 arcade game, but it had nothing to do with Konami themselves – except that it was presumably the inspiration for this retro compilation of all their previous games.
And for once we really do mean all the games, as not only does The Cowabunga Collection include the arcade game and its contemporary sequel but every Turtles related game that Konami ever released on the NES, SNES, Mega Drive, and even Game Boy. Konami did get the licence back in the 2000s, for a few largely forgotten tie-ins to the then current TV show, but everything here is based solely on the original 80s cartoon.
Developer Digital Eclipse has been handling remasters of retro games for decades, but this is undoubtedly their masterwork. Not because of the games themselves, which we’ll get into later, but the raft of extra content. There’s a whole separate section of the game called the Turtle’s Lair that’s filled with scans
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