DEVELOPER: Raw Thrills (Original)/Cradle Games (Console port)

PUBLISHER: GameMill Entertainment

REVIEWED ON: Nintendo Switch from a copy purchased by the author. Tested on PlayStation 5 from a copy purchased by the author.

The Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles have been featured in dozens of video games, but when you bring up the TMNT and the interactive medium, high chances are the conversation is going to veer towards the 1989 arcade game, its beloved sequel, Turtles in Time, and others that managed to capture that same magic at home or on the go.

Arcades in North American have been largely kept alive by Raw Thrills, a company formed by the legendary Eugene Jarvis, who evolved the easy to understand, pick-up-and-play quality of the medium for modern tastes and sensibilities. It came as a pleasant surprise to many when Raw Thrills announced that they were adding the Heroes in a Half Shell to their line-up for an eventual 2017 launch. After decades away from the locations that made them stars in the video game space, the Turtles were back, and players could once again venture to an arcade to rekindle the magic of the late 80s/early 90s.

It’s now seven years later and Raw Thrills’ game has made its way home in a budget package retitled Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles Arcade: Wrath of the Mutants from developer Cradle Games. With a low asking price of $29.99 in Canada, you’ll get your monies worth for 90 minute runtime it will take you to see it through to its conclusion but a lack of any extras will keep you coming back. As a case for preserving video games of all forms, it’s great that Wrath of the Mutants has found its way home, its just that in a post Shredder’s Revenge world, it has a hard time justifying its existence.

In the arcade attract screen, the setup for Wrath of the Mutants is that the Turtles have to rescue their friend, April O’Neil, from the clutches of the evil Shredder. The home conversion doesn’t have this, however, and you only realize that you were on a mission to liberate April after you defeat Shredder and a view a brief, unvoiced cut-scene.

The classic TMNT arcade games and their various spin-offs didn’t offer the deepest stories either, but they always managed to feature a through line to get you from one stage to another. If you pick up a physical copy of Wrath of the Mutants, there’s a blurb on the back of the package that says “Defeat the mutants to save New York” and that’s all you really get.

Based on the 2012 CG animated reboot, Wrath of the Mutants wears its love for Konami’s arcade game on its sleeve down to one level that’s clearly inspired by Sewer Surfin’ and another where a kaiju sized Krang appears in the background to shoot lasers from their eyes. Simplicity is the name of the game here, and in that regards, Wrath of the Mutants is easy to pick up for players of all skill levels. One button jumps, another attacks, and when you build up a meter through attacking and collecting power-ups laying on the ground, another triggers a screen clearing super move.

The goal of all 6 stages, five of which you can play in any order with the sixth unlocking upon their completion, is to move from left to right, beating up foot soldiers, Krang drones and mutants, stopping only to fight one boss at a level’s midpoint and another at its finale. You can go about your mission to rescue April alone, or with up to four partners locally but not online.

Whereas Konami’s games, and more recently Shredder’s Revenge, were strictly 2-D sprite based outings, Wrath of the Mutants is 3-D but the extra dimension doesn’t add anything. In fact, it makes it artificially tougher. Unlike a 2-D game where you can manage various plains, here baddies can attack you from all angles and it you’re playing on your own, it makes it very easy to get overwhelmed. About all you have to defend yourself is a crowd clearing attack that you can activate by hitting attack and jump together. As it doesn’t take up any energy to do this, unlike similar mechanics in something like Turtles in Time, it’s puzzling that this just wasn’t mapped to another button entirely.

Beat ’em ups are repetitive in their design, but the best in the genre alleviate this through the use of sound design, feel, and music. If you’re reading this and saw the words Turtles in Time, you’re probably singing any number of songs from that game’s soundtrack if you’ve played it. Upon completion of Wrath of the Mutants, you would probably have to boot it up again to find out if it had music at all because it’s so forgettable.

Your attacks feel soft, and without any vibration or feedback to speak of coming from your controller, even when you trigger your over-the-top super move, the action wears thin. The arcade cabinet made up for this with its big screen, speakers and light-up marquis. Without any of that, it makes Wrath of the Mutants short length feel even longer because there’s no real mechanics to engage with. This was built in a pre-Shredder’s Revenge world where it would be somewhat acceptable to go the barebones route, but following Shredder’s Revenge where you can perform actions like dodge rolling and juggling foes, the boredom sets in fast.

Arcade games, even newer ones, are built for you to keep pumping quarters or tokens into them, so there’s a level of cheapness that you have to adjust for. Wrath of the Mutants too comes this school of design at times to its determent. When a Krang soldier shoots a laser from one side of the screen for example, it’s hard to clear the distance or get out of the way, which causes you to lose precious health that in turn feeds the meter as it were.

Cheapness aside, on the normal difficulty you have 3 lives and 2 continues to complete each stage – you don’t earn spare lives by racking up points – and you’ll more than likely master them all on your first go. If you use all your continues getting through one stage, they reset when you enter another so there’s no fear of running out. If you finish on normal, you unlock hard mode which reduces your lives from 3 to 2. That’s the only real bonus to speak of other than a few new levels and bosses exclusive to this home version.

Your journey to rescue April takes you from Dimension X to the streets of New York and even the sewer home to the Turtles. There’s a lot of variety in the stages, and the aesthetic of the world and characters matches the 2012 series, but there’s not a lot going on within the places you visit that help them standout. They lack any real personality, and all you ever really interact with is a few items you can pick up and throw or exploding barrels you can smack to trap enemies. The cast from the show lend their voices, even the late Gilbert Gottfried, and while no one is phoning it in per se, they only have a few lines each that repeat themselves.

For the purposes of this review, Wrath of the Mutants was completed from start to finish on the Nintendo Switch. The load times were a little long, but far from obnoxious. Testing the PlayStation 5 version, you jump from level-to-level in mere seconds. Your purchase decision comes then comes down to how much you want to have the convenience to take something like Wrath of the Mutants on the go.

The current retail price for Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles Arcade: Wrath of the Mutants is far less than the tokens you’ll have to purchase to roll credits at an arcade. Going by that logic, it’s worth picking it up as you can run through it as may times as you want without having to refresh your wrist band. When it dropped in 2017, about all the Turtles were doing was making a guest appearance in Injustice 2. In 2024, players can easily boot up the likes of Shredder’s Revenge or The Cowabunga Collection and get a better fix of what Wrath of the Mutants is offering. This is by no means a bad game, it’s simply forgettable, and that’s true whether your coming at it having experience the arcade original or not.

Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles Arcade: Wrath of the Mutants is available now on Nintendo Switch, the PlayStation and Xbox family of consoles as well as PC.

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