Konami was recently released Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: The Cowabunga Collection. This was a collection of 13 classics TMNT games spanning arcades, the NES, the Game Boy and more. It has made some improvements like online play for certain games, a save feature so you don’t have to play the entire game at once, behind the scenes goodies, Japanese versions for 11 games, and more. You can play now on Nintendo Switch, PC (Steam), PS4 / PS5 and Xbox (affiliate link) through their digital storefronts or physical editions are available at your favorite retailers, including GameStop (affiliate link). The game has an MSRP of $ 39.99. Konami provided me with a digital copy of the game on Xbox for this review.
To get started, let’s give the list of games for everyone to know:
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Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (Arcade)
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Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Turtles in Time (Arcade)
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Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (NES)
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Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles II: The Arcade Game (NES)
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Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles III: The Manhattan Project (NES)
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Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Tournament Fighters (NES)
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Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles IV: Turtles in Time (Super Nintendo)
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Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Tournament Fighters (Super Nintendo)
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Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: The Hyperstone Heist (Sega Genesis)
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Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Tournament Fighters (Sega Genesis)
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Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Fall of The Foot Clan (Game Boy)
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Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles II: Return from the Sewers (Game Boy)
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Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles III: Radical Rescue (Game Boy)
One thing you will notice is that there are some duplicates as some titles have been released on multiple platforms. This is a strength and weakness in my opinion. On the one hand, people always have preferences and this helps to preserve more parts of the story of the games. On the other hand, it can cause newcomers to go down the rabbit hole of “which version is better” on the Internet and take up space that may have potentially been used for more unique games. That said, the roster is fun because it has introduced a lot of them TMNT games to me that I did not know. I was familiar with arcade titles and the classic NES title known for being ridiculously difficult, but I honestly didn’t know about any of the fighting games available.
Overall, I would rate the Cowabunga collection it’s a great conservation effort. Some of the additions like the save option and screen filters and zooms are welcome in my opinion. I personally liked the TV screen the most and didn’t like the other filters at all. It’s also nice to be able to turn off background images. Each game has some great background images, but they often felt distracting and so turning them off really helped. In another conservation area, the Cowabunga collection has the Turtles’ Lair section which is a virtual museum with box art of each game, game music, original storyboard sketches, concept art and more.
As you can see, the Cowabunga collection is a great value for Heroes in a Half Shell fans. It successfully accomplishes what it sets out to do and not much more. If you like or have ever wanted to play classic games, this is a great entry point with wide availability. If you combine it with the latest game, Shredder’s Revengea tubular weekend awaits you.
by Tommy Williams
Source: Geek Tyrant
