Finally getting around to reviewing the Cowabunga Collection, something I never thought I'd see due to the rights to the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles now being with Nickelodeon and Konami being, well, largely fucking useless in 2022. From next week, as we hit October - the spookiest of all the months - I'm going to run four newsletters covering a different horror game each week, each one a game that can be finished in under two hours, so if you want to give them a go and 'play along' this Halloween, they're not the biggest commitment. I don't like setting people homework! Anyway, see you next week for the start of HORROR MONTH.

Turtle Recall.

Anyone around my age is going to not only remember the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles but also more than likely has some specific memories of THAT arcade cabinet - a bloody great big four player thing - blasting out the cartoon's iconic title theme while the screen played an in-game approximation of the intro sequence, which, at the time, might as well have been a perfect recreation of it. Then, that first level - the bold colours of the large Turtles and Foot Clan sprites, the fire licking away at the bottom of the screen and that end of level confrontation with Rocksteady, drilling up from the floor in a transport unit and immediately throwing down with up to four player controlled Turtles - was absolutely mind-blowing at the time.

Thing is, after that first level, it's just a series of grey city streets and sewers acting as the backdrop to some particularly mind-numbing beat 'em up action. The really cynical, designed to get you off the cabinet difficulty adds a certain tension when you're trying to survive on the 20p you just begged your parents for but without that, the game is just staggeringly dull. It's not necessarily an issue that is unique to this game. That's the dirty secret about all those 2D scrolling beat 'em ups you played as a kid - they're all a bit piss when you've got infinite continues and can just brute force your way to the end and if you do try to limit your continues you realise that the difficulty is cranked towards the unfair side of things. This was one of the holy grail titles for me for the longest time, before I discovered emulation. I had the C64 version and, to be honest, it did the job - it's not a bad game, if clearly looking and playing little like the arcade original - but I wanted that authentic arcade experience. The game that looked like the cartoon I loved. When I finally played it (on a hacked original Xbox running MAME, like a gentleman) it quickly became clear that it wasn't much cop.

The first NES game has a similar fate. EVERYONE had this game, partially due to the popularity of the Turtles at the time of release but also down to the fact it was a pack in title here in the UK at a time when the NES was shifting its most units. Like the arcade game, it is something I have significant nostalgia for. It's gathered a bit of a reputation in recent years of being a ridiculously difficult game, with the water level gaining a fair amount of infamy due to the tight time limit and hugely damaging obstacles you need to get past. Turns out, that level is the least of your worries.

There's zero hit invincibility and barely any feedback or hit stun when you attack one of the constantly respawning enemies, all the while you're dealing with floaty, unresponsive controls. They don't get in the way for the majority of the game but there's a few tight platforming sections that have instant death pits beneath them and suddenly the controls become just as tough an enemy as anything the Shredder is going to throw at you. It just feels very unsatisfying to fight anything and progress often feels like luck rather than skill. Despite this, it looks and sounds fantastic and this is almost entirely why the game has stayed with me all these years. I was too young to realise it was crap and easily swayed by the visuals and audio. Arguably, the two 'biggest' titles on this new Cowabunga Collection are just a bit rubbish. Not a great start.

Obviously, there's some belters in the collection. The arcade version of Turtles In Time is a bit better than the original arcade game but still a bit uninspiring when compared to the home console ports. Those console ports, however, are absolute bangers of the highest order. The Super Nintendo version is one of those beat 'em ups that sits among the very best in the genre, rubbing shoulders with things like Streets of Rage, Aliens vs. Predator and Final Fight. A great moveset that is satisfying to use and expands on what was available in the arcade release, there's loads of big, bold, colourful sprites on screen at once, real variety in the levels (including the obligatory Mode 7 exclusive stage) and bosses and one of the best soundtracks on the system, the SNES version of Turtles In Time's only drawback is that it is, unsurprisingly given the hardware difference, only two players but I'd gladly sacrifice the four player mode for the improvements on offer here. The Megadrive version - The Hyperstone Heist - is still a great time but there's fewer levels, bosses and, perhaps surprisingly, has an inferior sounding version of the soundtrack. Normally the Megadrive's iconic YM2612 sound gives things the edge for me, but not here.

There's also the NES ports of the arcade game and a belt-scroller arcade beat 'em up game exclusive to the system, The Manhattan Project. Considering the 8-bit hardware the NES version of the arcade game is very, very pared back but hits all of the major sequences and, perhaps because of the slightly less bullshit difficulty, is much more enjoyable to play through. It feels like you're gaining success from skilful play, rather than just forcing virtual coins into the machine and banging your head against the game until the credits roll. The Manhattan Project is a bit better, designed from the ground up for the console its a bit more substantial, looks and plays better and, again, for my money is more enjoyable than any of the arcade releases.

The three Game Boy games are very simple action platformers that manage to avoid outstaying their welcome. The first two are very, very simplistic games where you walk from left to right and kill every enemy that jumps onto the screen with a single hit, until you get to a boss that has an easy attack pattern for you to figure out, avoid and then defeat. While the NES game is full of bullshit, unfair situations where you can't avoid damage, the Game Boy games are perhaps TOO fair - they're very, very easy to complete. The risk of them becoming boring due to the repetitive gameplay and lack of difficulty is mitigated a fair bit by the fact that they're nicely presented and can be finished in about half an hour - it's hard to get too mad at something that is little more than a fun, inoffensive licensed game that looks and sounds the part on handheld hardware. The second one has a bit more going on, with a few proper belt-scroller levels dotted throughout, but visually the first game edges it.

The third Game Boy game - Radical Rescue - is by far the most interesting of the three. A fairly ambitious title that has you start with only one Turtle in a single, big map, tasked with tracking the others down one by one and using their unique abilities to progress further, beat bosses and eventually uncover the entire map and find the end. Yes, that's right, it's got a bit of the Metroidvanias about it! Like the other two, it's very basic, very short and very, very easy but it's a cool idea that definitely stands out against the other games in the Cowabunga Collection. It's an idea revisited in WayForward's underrated Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Danger of the Ooze, released in 2014 - another game well worth seeking out.

The absolute picks of the bunch are the Turtles Tournament Fighter games. Interestingly, all three versions available here across three different platforms are quite different! The Megadrive version, again, is the weakest of the bunch but is the only one that allows you to play as the legend that is Casey Jones, so its existence is fully justified by that alone. Like most Megadrive fighting games, its quite limited by the standard Western controller only having three buttons but despite that clear issue, it's a decent little game in its own right. The NES game is a weird one - for the longest time I honestly thought this was a bootleg or a ROM hack! It's a really solid two-button 1v1 fighting game on a system that has very few others - in fact I think you can make a pretty strong case that this is the best fighting game on the NES. Again, it's very simple when compared to 16-bit fighting games and the A.I. is tuned up to near SNK boss levels of input reading but it manages to do quite a lot with what it has to work with.

Finally, the jewel in the crown is the Super Nintendo version of Tournament Fighters. A fighting game that can go blow-for-blow with the best on the console, holding its own against titles like Killer Instinct, Street Fighter II and Mortal Kombat 3 and due to how much fun the mechanics are (even the ones that are bugged/broken!) is a game that still has a small but dedicated competitive scene even to this day. I wrote about the game in greater detail back in this issue of the newsletter - it's a favourite of mine and having it here, playable online with rollback netcode is a fantastic thing but sadly the community has a few issues with it.

Not the game itself but the fact that the Cowabunga Collection does have a fair bit of input lag - not so much that any game is unplayable to the casual user looking for a hit of nostalgia but with something like a fighting game, the hardcore audience is going to be put off by that until a patch comes to address it. It is an unfortunately common thing with these retro collections, partly down to the emulation and modern TVs that there's going to be some sort of input lag but here it can feel especially egregious on some games, especially if you're really familiar with them. Tournament Fighters and the first NES game felt 'off' to me. Fingers crossed Digital Eclipse do something to reduce this in future.

As much as the input lag sucks, the collection does offer some ways to tweak the emulation for a more positive experience. This includes adding cheats to some games for an easier time but also stuff like removing the NES sprite flicker, enabling mirror matches in fighting games that couldn't previously take place and adding icons to the in-game map that genuinely look like they could've always been there to begin with. Of course, some people are always going to prefer the vanilla experience but if you're going to be emulating - you may as well get the most out of the emulation and offer the option to do this stuff.

Finally, there's an incredible archive of supplementary material that is packed with some fascinating content. Sure, there's some obvious stuff like box art and a music player of all of the soundtracks, as well as some stuff that is a little disappointing like a collection of comic covers (but no actually TNMT comics available to read) but there's an entire section dedicated to behind the scenes content, which includes full design documents for a lot of the games, concept art and even style guides for a lot of the merch churned out in the early 90s! It's not often you get to see this sort of thing! They've even created brand new 'strategy guides' for each game that perfectly recreate the style of the time period whilst offering useful advice for each of the games on the collection. I've seen some of this stuff dismissed as 'PDFs' but having it all in one, relevant place that is easily accessible and wonderfully presented is really nice.

The Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles games from the early to mid 90s were a mixed bag and its refreshing to see them all here, warts and all, albeit with some options to maybe remove a few of those warts. The input delay issue is going to be a complete dealbreaker for some and that's completely understandable. The collection deserves better in that regard, because everything else about it sets a real standard as to what you should expect from a retro collection moving forward.

THANKS FOR READING.

Please consider chucking a couple of dollars at my Patreon page if you like this or any of the other things I do.

patreon.com/andihero