When the Digital Eclipse team at Konami boasted that they’d put a lot of care into the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles Cowabunga Collection I wrote it off as the standard marketing line we see around any repackaging of beloved games. However, this may be the first instance where we really have gotten a truly excellent collection of these 13 games, many of which hold up well and are exceptionally difficult and expensive to get hold of in their physical forms. Not only does Cowabunga collect some fan favorites, but tucked away in the Turtles’ lair are 2,000+ items for fans to explore, including (previously) rare pieces of concept art, soundtracks with newly revealed track names added, nostalgic magazine advertisements we ‘90s kids were bombarded with, and a ton more. There are a few sour, but important caveats, though: The online component is barely functioning at launch, and when it does work there are jittering and audio issues. And while Digital Eclipse has done an okay job with latency when playing solo, there is still a lot of room for improvement when compared to other TMNT beat-’em-ups.
Most things in this collection have been a treat for a fan like myself. I’ve longed to own one of those hard-to-find arcade cabinets that can go for around $700, expensive NES cartridges like TMNT 3: The Manhattan Project, which still goes for around $50 at the low end, or the NES version of TMNT: Tournament Fighters that goes for $200 if you’re lucky to find one that “cheap.”
Getting to boot up any of these beloved games from my childhood without hassle is a joy. The Cowabunga Collection has some gems like the aforementioned NES version of Tournament Fighters or the arcade version of TMNT: Turtles in Time that, until now, could only be legally played if you tracked down an arcade board or cabinet from that era. Now, Digital Eclipse has collected everything, good and bad, all in one place. From the notoriously difficult TMNT on the NES to the esteemed Super Nintendo version of Turtles in Time, you have it all.
A lot of these games are similar but had slight but important enhancements that hardcore fans will likely remember. Using Turtles in Time Arcade as an example, there are some entirely new enemies not found in the home version. If that wasn’t enough, I love the sheer amount of options you have available for each game. You can turn on cheats, consult an interactive guide that will play short movies showing you how to execute an attack or reveal secrets you may have missed, rewind if you accidentally become turtle soup, create a save state to resume from anywhere or, if you’d rather just watch a near-perfect playthrough of your favorites, you can choose that and see exactly how the pros complete the entire game in record time. Sure, you can already do that on YouTube, but it’s great to have it all at your fingertips in one place.
Beyond that there’s control remapping, of course, so you can tweak things to your liking. You can toggle the screen size from the original 4:3 aspect ratio to full (which simply expands the square to fill the screen while maintaining the original 4:3 aspect ratio), or a stretched widescreen perspective if you’re a monster. Filters can be applied, including a CRT TV, Monitor, or LCD effect if you prefer. And the border can be turned on or off depending on your preference. I’m not one to use many of those filters so I usually leave them off, but it’s one of those “nice to have” things for anybody who wants that old-school experience.
And then there’s the mega multimedia collection known as the Turtles’ Lair. I found myself lingering here for far longer than expected, and getting to browse through comic covers and the bizarre magazine marketing of the ‘90s took me back to my childhood days of reading the latest Ninja Turtle comic and being slammed in the face by an ad for the next game I needed to buy. Box art for both US and Japan editions, manuals in both languages, the entire soundtrack for each included game, every TMNT comic book cover from several of the since-discontinued series, cells from the original animated series, strategy guides for every game, and even a behind-the-scenes section where you can look at sketches, cel animation, and more than I could list here. There are so many great things to see – a lot of which I’ve never seen elsewhere – there’s even a search feature that will allow you to browse for something specific instead of having to sift through the enormous pile manually. For me, getting to see all those covers in one place reminds me of a time when I owned the entire Archie + Mirage set so it was really neat to see them all in one place. (Yes, I am aware that’s a humblebrag.)
As for the 13 games, each has its own set of enhancements to choose from – though it’s somewhat uneven in which games get what new features. For instance, 11 of the 13 include the Japanese versions and let you toggle back and forth between them before starting, which is great because they had interesting quirks in some games. I’ve spotted different voices that make the Turtles seem more like teenagers, and outfits that are much different than their US counterparts, for starters. It’s really interesting to see those changes for the first time.
The original TMNT Arcade Game will let you choose the starting level, turn on god mode, remove penalty bombs that would be thrown by a Foot Soldier and instant kill you if you stay idle too long, and even offers a “Nightmare mode” should you feel in the mood for punishment. Tournament Fighters on the Sega Genesis, on the other hand, feels a bit neglected with only playable bosses as a bonus, and the Game Boy’s TMNT 3: Radical Rescue only allows you to turn on some helpful map icons. Selfishly, I do wish there was at least a god mode or unlimited continues for each game so I could power through at my leisure and not have to contend with the sometimes brutally unfair nature of ‘90s game design, especially when it comes to fighting game bosses. Then again, I suppose I could just try getting good at video games for a change.
Naturally, the value of each game will be reflective of how nostalgic you feel for that particular one. But even if you’ve never played them before, you’re getting a lot of excellent games in this collection – including some of the best beat ‘em-ups ever made. Specifically, the original arcade version of TMNT and the follow-up, Turtles in Time are spectacular games to this day, which is why the recent TMNT: Shredder’s Revenge stuck so closely to their design and look.
The Game Boy section of the Cowabunga Collection will bring you TMNT: Fall of the Foot Clan, TMNT: Back from the Sewers, and TMNT: Radical Rescue. Each of these are side-scrolling adventure/platforming games that will have you working your way through Metroid-like levels to find your friends. I had only played some of these while I was a kid, but I actually really liked hopping back into each. They’re simple, but I was surprised by how fun they still were.
The NES selection includes the notoriously difficult TMNT game from Konami that looks like a fever dream due to the fact that it features mostly unrecognizable enemies, aside from the bosses that are main characters from the TV series. I gave the rewind feature quite a workout on my trip down memory lane! The NES selection also includes some excellent entries like the TMNT 2 Arcade port that was pretty darn good for being squeezed onto an NES cartridge, and TMNT 3: The Manhattan Project, both of which are excellent beat-’em-ups in their own right.