The preservation of gaming’s history is always something I appreciate; in the last handful of years, we have been fortunate to get several classic games brought back to join modern consoles. Specifically with collections, Capcom has done a fantastic job not only bundling up the Mega Man games and having them run very well, they also treat them as respected time capsules that are filled with bonus archival content that can be looked at and appreciated by the gamers. Konami, on the other hand, has attempted to do something similar in the past, for example, the Castlevania Anniversary Collection, with results leaving a little less to be desired bare bones collection. I’m happy to report that Konami seemed to have learned their lesson and opted to not repeat a former mistake, because the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: The Cowabunga Collection is chock full of extra content, let alone a very lengthy collection of games.
Before going farther, allow me to list all the titles this collection contains (as well as their respected console of origin): “Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles” (Arcade), “Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Turtles in Time” (Arcade), “Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles” (NES), “Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles 2: The Arcade Game” (NES), “Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles 3: The Manhattan Project” (NES), “Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Tournament Fighters” (NES), “Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Tournament Fighters” (SNES), “Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Tournament Fighters” (SEGA Mega Drive), “Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles 4: Turtles in Time” (SNES), “Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: The Hyperstone Heist” (SEGA Mega Drive), “Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Fall of the Foot Clan” (Game Boy), “Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles 2: Back from the Sewers” (Game Boy), “Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles 3: Radical Rescue” (Game Boy). Phew! That’s a lot of games! Thirteen to be exact!
While the sheer number of games already justifies its forty-dollar price tag, it doesn’t mean that each one of these titles are actual bangers. Some are actually not that great, but perhaps that’s why we have so many, to still make that value feel strong. I won’t be going in-depth with every title listed, but I have gone in and tried them all out and they are exactly as I remember, for good and bad, but mostly really good. I didn’t really love the Gameboy games that were added, and the fighting games really did not age very well. I found it really cool that there were multiple versions of a lot of these titles, being able to see the difference between the arcade version compared to the console version, or seeing what the Japanese version was like, all of this was really appreciated.
Like most retro games, they are in heavy need of modern, quality of life improvements. The best one of all of course is being able to save games at any point in your play through. They also added something I didn’t know I needed but came in handy so many times, that is of the rewind functionality. At any point while playing, you can tap or hold the L1 button and the screen immediately starts to rewind until you let go. These games can be rather difficult, let’s be honest, and while it may be cheap, being able to rewind to redo a moment in time you messed up really helps remove the stress and allows me to just enjoy these little pieces of gaming history. This can be easily exploited to where you can keep rewinding one or two seconds every time you get hit, so you can seemingly have completed a stage without having taken any damage. But these are retro games, let us play how we want to play! Other features include button remapping on your controller as well as adding filters to your TV to make it look like a TV from the 80’s and 90’s by incorporating scanlines, does this make the picture quality look worse? Yes, it does. Will you want to use it? Probably not, but I guess it’s cool that it’s even there.
The biggest lesson that Konami learned from though, was to give the gamer that bonus archival content and boy, did we get it, and then some. With incredibly high-resolution scans of every single box art for all these titles (front and back), scans of every page of the game manuals, behind the scenes documents, cover art for what seems like every TMNT comic issue, a strategy guide, and even screenshots from every animated show for some reason, this seemed to be a step too far, but whatever. There are well over three thousand images in this “Turtles Lair” section to sift through. With the added feature of online play, which is so awesome, it will inject new life into these classic titles. All-in-all, if you’re a fan of the franchise and some of these games, this collection is a no brainer. There is a ton of nostalgic gameplay to be had, even if not all the titles have aged as well, there is still so much to love and appreciate.
9/10
For more information, visit: https://www.playstation.com/en-us/games/teenage-mutant-ninja-turtles-the-cowabunga-collection/
Related: Reviews by Nick Navarro
Gaming since I was given an original Nintendo as a kid. I love great storytelling and unique ingenuity. When both collide in a single game, I'm a happy gamer. Twitter/IG @NickNavarro87
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