Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: The Cowabunga Collection Review

Our Score	8.5 / 10 – Very, Very Good
The Good	A love letter to TMNT fans of all generations
The Bad	No online play for Turtles In Time SNES
Release Date	August 30th, 2022
Developed By	Digital Eclipse
Available On	PS5, PS4, Xbox Series X|S, Xbox One, Nintendo Switch, PC
Reviewed On	PS5

Disclaimer: A code was provided by the publisher for the purpose of this review.

As a kid born in the late ’80s, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles played a major role in shaping my childhood, whether it was getting up every Saturday morning to watch the cartoon series or playing with my Turtle Van and action figures. The series naturally crossed over into the video game medium rather quickly, with Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles IV: Turtles In Time even being one of the first video games I ever owned.

Players were ecstatic with the recent release of the stellar Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Shredder’s Revenge, leaving them chomping at the bit for even more Turtle goodness. Thankfully, there was plenty more where that came from with the nostalgia-filled Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: The Cowabunga Collection.

Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: The Cowabunga Collection is Digital Eclipse’s latest classic games compilation, this time featuring games from arcades, Nintendo, Super Nintendo, Sega Genesis, and even Game Boy. In total, there are 13 games included in this collection, with a few of them being different variations of the same game on more than one platform. On top of that, all but the two arcade games also have the Japanese version included as well.

The presentation in Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: The Cowabunga Collection is top-notch, with the game selection menu featuring the box art for each game surrounded by numerous comic panels. The usage of the black and white comic panels meshes well with the colorful game logo, art, and gameplay being previewed for each game. You can even choose to watch a full playthrough of each game as well, which is a perfect thing to put on as background noise while doing other tasks.

Game collections often have a wide range of quality amongst the included entries, but this one is pretty impressive across most of the board. Standout classics like Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles and Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Turtles in Time for arcade are still as fun as ever, though you now don’t have to spend your entire allowance to make it through the games. The level design and entertaining bosses keep you coming back for more again and again. These include full four-player gameplay for both local and online play, so you can get the gang back together from the past to relive your childhood all over again.

The NES games included in the collection don’t hold up quite as well as they once did due to less refined gameplay, but I still had a lot of fun playing through them anyways. Upon first playing Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles III: The Manhattan Project, I was feeling a little burned out by the slowdown and flickering on screen. That was until I discovered that the game has built-in enhancements for each game that you can select from the main menu. These vary from game to game, but the NES ones specifically allow you to remove slowdown and sprite flicker. This added a lot more enjoyability to the less polished games of the collection, while also letting players have the option to experience them as they were originally meant to be.

Showing the staying power of the 16-bit generation, both Turtles In Time and The Hyperstone Heist for SNES and Sega Genesis respectively don’t even need fixes to still be fantastic games. The Hyperstone Heist is the less well-known of the two, but it is essentially a mix of the original arcade game and Turtles in Time that I was very excited to play again. The tight controls are still some of the best around in these games and really don’t feel like they are 30 years old at all.

A very nice surprise in this collection was the enjoyability of the Game Boy games. While the first two are pretty standard side-scrolling beat ’em ups for handhelds, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles III: Radical Rescue is a full-on Metroidvania-style game. This is very impressive for a Game Boy game and plays really unlike any of the rest of the games in the entire collection. In fact, this is the one I’m most intrigued to play even more in the future.

Get the gang back together from the past to relive your childhood all over again.

Beyond the beat ’em ups that make up most of Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: The Cowabunga Collection, the three Tournament Fighters games were included as well. All three versions of the game are quite different and each of them brings a very high level of difficulty. I had played the 16-bit versions in the past and they still fail to click with me like other fighters of that era. The SNES and Genesis versions are at least worth playing, but the NES one is best worth skipping due to being inferior graphically and featuring a more simplistic combat system.

In what has become a staple in pretty much every modern compilation of classic games, the game almost had to include rewind functionality. Some people may view the rewind feature as an easy way to play through the games, but it just allows players to enjoy themselves without worrying about losing all of their continues. This feature came in especially handy for the aforementioned NES titles. I really enjoy using the rewind feature myself to learn boss patterns to better prepare for future playthroughs as well.

As previously mentioned, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: The Cowabunga Collection includes online play for some games including the two arcade games, The Hyperstone Heist, and the SNES version of Tournament Fighters. However, the fan-favorite, and my personal favorite ,Turtles In Time for SNES does not have it at all. This is a major disappointment, as the SNES version has additional levels that make it the definitive version to some people. Hopefully, this is something that will be corrected after release with an update, because it is really the only major blemish with this collection.

Not only does Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: The Cowabunga Collection have all of the games included, but it also comes with a museum for all things classic TMNT games-related known as the Turtle’s Lair. This features high-resolution recreations of all of the original box art and even instruction manuals for each and every one of the games, including the US and Japanese releases.

Digital Eclipse took things even further with recreations of magazine advertisements, catalogs, and media kits, as well as behind-the-scenes content like concept art and storyboards for the various games. This was exceptional to see in the game, as the majority of this is something that none of us have ever seen. My personal favorite though is the soundtrack collection that they included, where you can pick any of the games in the collection and jam out to the rockin’ tunes that fill these games. They even made the icons for each game as little cassettes, adding to the nostalgic feelings oozed by this game. I have to admit that I probably spent way too much time listening to the Turtles in Time soundtrack this way since I’ve had the game.

The Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles franchise rarely had a miss with games back in the ’80s and ’90s and this compilation exemplifies that. Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: The Cowabunga Collection is a love letter to fans of that era that can be equally appreciated by old and new generations of Turtles fans alike.