Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles were synonymous with gaming in the after 80s and early 90s, largely thanks to their influence on arcade wrestlers. Games like 1989’s Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (aka ’89 Arcade) and 1991’s Turtles in Time are time-honored classics that have shaped the side-scrolling beat-em-up genre, and 2022’s Shredder’s Revenge has proven that the style is still viable in the Moderna landscape. Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles Arcade: Wrath of the Mutants is clearly inspired by these popular games, but it falls spectacularly behind these acclaimed titles.
Originally released for arcades in 2017, Wrath of the Mutants takes a gameplay approach similar to the original TMNT arcade games: you choose between Leonardo, Donatello, Michelangelo and Raphael, each with different moves as you overcome and action through villain-filled scenarios. Based on the 2012 Nickelodeon cartoon, Wrath of the Mutants contains many enemies that can defeat the turtles in different locations. This homeport adds three new stages and six new bosses. Unfortunately, no amount of Easter eggs and fan service can compensate for the uninteresting game.
Although the core concept is the same as that of the most popular entries in the series, I’ve never felt anything but apathy while making my way through the six extremely linear stages offered. Each turtle wields its signature weapon and a unique turtle power that clears the screen of enemies. These moves should feel empowering, but instead they stop the action while a tedious animation plays.; Leo turns into a tornado, which absorbs all the henchmen, while Raph plays drums on the ground, making the enemies fly.
But it all feels so routine when you’re action your way through waves of exactly the same enemies in tedious stages that don’t require a strategy – you just go right and spam the strike button. You can also collect power-ups that make your character spin on his grenade or call secondary characters to dispatch enemies, but since the base action is so uninteresting, I enjoyed using these frequent special moves because they provided a faster way to get through the long levels.
It wouldn’t be so bad to beat the seemingly endless screens of foot and krang’s minions that can be found in each stage, if the characteristic arcade injustice wasn’t always present. TMNT Arcade: Wrath of the Mutants is not a difficult game by any means, but there are times when you just can’t help but get hit. In almost every stage, enemies strike you off-screen, where you can’t see or reach them. Frustratingly, they won’t stop striking you or coming into view unless you pass to the other side of the screen. In addition, enemy projectiles are deadly accurate, and with the slow movement of turtles and the lack of a way to effectively dodge them, hits are almost guaranteed.
These enemies don’t do much damage, but they are often finished by a thousand scissor cuts, and since each hit stuns you briefly, your combos are constantly interrupted. The bosses, who often repeat the same strikes over and over again, are more tests of patience than challenging challenges. These boss experiences usually involve slight variations of the same movesets, causing everyone to run in a similar way. Even the last action against Shredder does little to help differentiate; he just stomps around the screen while you complain about him with little strategy other than jumping when the game tells you to jump, another convention repeated in almost every boss action.
The scenic elements that aim to break the monotony serve more for frustration than for the variety of experiences. Trains rush by, Krang’s android body shoots electricity at you, and explosive barrels litter the levels, but they add very little. In a matter where a huge eyeball is constantly shooting lasers at you while you’re action waves of enemies, your character is too slow not to be striked, unless you’re standing around waiting for it to send you to where it’s shooting. I should be excited to see these new challenges and twists, but I’ve faced most of them with a shrug and others with annoyance.
Although it is funny to see how the 2012 animated series attracts attention in 2024, the presentation also disappoints. The images are nothing special and I’m not a fan of some character designs from that era, but they go well with the look of the show. It’s the audio that irritates the most, as the turtles scream in disgust all the time and the enemies repeatedly utter the same lines, while generic action-oriented music plays in the background. After the first few levels, I was relieved to turn the volume down and listen to something else instead.
Getting through the whole game takes less than two hours, but somehow he manages to pull through. You can go back to the six stages of the game to try to get higher scores, but I had no interest in that. Yesterday’s arcade games sometimes lacked depth, but at least they had a hook that stuck with you and made you want to put more coins back in the closet. Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles Arcade: Wrath of the Mutants actions for the greatness of the influential arcade hits of the past, but does not meet expectations. Thanks to boring and uninteresting gameplay, repetitive experiences with enemies and bosses and a cheeky audio design, Wrath of the Mutants is little more than a shell of the glorious years of the series.
