Few media franchises have the enduring appeal of Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. Leonardo, Raphael, Donatello, and Michelangelo remain relevant pop culture icons in 2022, over thirty years after their original appearance. Konami's TMNT video games, released throughout the 80s and 90s, played a major role in fostering early turtlemania, and now Digital Eclipse and Konami are releasing a compilation of these influential beat 'em ups, fighters, and platformers with Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: The Cowabunga Collection. For fans who grew up on the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles show, comics, and games that defined an era, this collection could be a dream come true.
Game ZXC spoke with Charles Murakami, a senior producer at Konami Digital Entertainment, and Chris Kohler, the editorial director of Digital Eclipse, about the wealth of extra content and features in this collection. Regardless of whether players are old-school shellheads or newcomers who discovered the turtles thanks to the recent release of Shredders Revenge, they will want to keep an eye out for this radical collection when it releases on August 30.
The Definitive Turtles Compilation
The centerpiece of The Cowabunga Collection is Konami's catalog of TMNT games, including 13 US releases and all 11 Japanese releases. Kohler hopes new and returning players alike will be able to discover a new game, since few had the opportunity to play every Konami title when they were originally released.
"Unless you had two arcade cabinets and four different consoles in your house when you were a kid, you probably didn’t get to experience all of these. So I want people to be able to play a brand-new Turtles game, or return to a game they maybe bounced off of in the past. "
While the original TMNT arcade game, Turtles in Time for the Super Nintendo, and Hyperstone Heist for the Sega Genesis are some of the best known beat 'em ups of the era, not every title in The Cowabunga Collection is a beat 'em up. Murakami's new favorite TMNT title, Radical Rescue, is a metroidvania-style title for the Game Boy that is now exceedingly rare. Even games with the same titles, such as the three separate fighting games named "Tournament Fighters," are not ports; rather they're completely unique releases with different stories, character rosters, and move-sets.
A Tour of Konami's TMNT Archive
While games are unquestionably the compilation's main course, The Cowabunga Collection brings a lot more extra content to the table. In the turtles' lair, Kohler said players can encounter a "staggering" wealth of additional content.
"You can also go to the Turtle’s Lair and find hundreds of pages Konami’s design documents, screenshots of the TV show, comic book covers, listen to music soundtracks, and more, and more, and more. There are more incredible bonus features packed into the turtles’ lair than I think we’ve ever done in a Digital Eclipse collection."
Murakami and Kohler explained that hundreds of pages of official design documents - annotated and translated from their original Japanese text - were integrated into the game. It will take players hours to read through the entire turtles' lair offerings, which also includes exclusive concept art from the games and shows, as well as promotional images from trade shows that had never been released to the public from the Rochester Museum. Fortunately, those who want to dig deep will be assisted by a powerful search feature that allows users to filter searches by title, characters, and other criteria.
Ease of Experience Enhancements
Another facet of The Cowabunga Collection's extra content are the enhancement menus and strategy guide features. The collection boasts some titles that are notoriously challenging, like the original NES game. Enhancement menu options allow players to gain extra lives or health, jump to specific levels in certain titles, unlock boss characters automatically, and other unexpected perks.
Players have a save and load option, allowing them to quickly reattempt challenging sections or boss fights. The beat 'em up titles even have an option for players to watch an expert play through the title, and jump in at any point. The collection's robust strategy guide also shows players how to leverage the game's original secrets, including when and where to input the famous Konami Code for extra benefits.
Kohler and Murakami hope these assistive features will enable players to experience every moment of the compilation, for a TMNT experience with unparalleled depth. Of course, all of these enhancements are entirely optional, allowing players to relive the original titles exactly as they were when they were released in the 80s and 90s.
Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: The Cowabunga Collection releases on August 30, 2022, for PC, PS4, PS5, Switch, Xbox One, and Xbox Series X/S.
