TMNT: Shredder’s Revenge Preview

From the busy offices of Tribute Games, comes Shredder’s Revenge, an arcade-style beat ’em up with firm roots in the golden age of gaming.

Shredder’s Revenge – A Modernized Title that still Holds its Retro Appeal

Anyone that follows my articles will know I have a bit of a soft spot for all things nostalgia, and there’s few things out there that scream childhood in the eighties quite like our shelled heroes, the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles.

Shredder’s Revenge, thankfully, has stuck to its much-loved roots and will play very much like those iconic TMNT titles of yesteryear on the NES, SNES and, indeed arcade cabinets. Turtles in Time, to this day remains one of my all-time favorite titles and just watching the trailers had me ripe, ready and raring to go – COWABUNGA!!

While Shredder’s Revenge plays abundant homage to its time-served predecessors, it will still play like a modern title. Packed with fresh additions to the retro masterpiece, Shredder’s Revenge comes with a few welcome changes that tweak the classic fighting system.

Many fellow fans of Turtles in Time will remember having to sacrifice a little health in order to utilise ‘super attacks’. These same fans will be happy to know that this system has been improved by a charge meter that fills up as damage is dealt. Furthermore, each character will have their own special move coupled with team combo specials in the six-player multiplayer modes.

Shredder’s Revenge isn’t a Turtles in Time Remaster

It would be forgivable to mistake Shredder’s Revenge for a Turtles in Time remaster, but, – as good as this would be – it isn’t. The upcoming TMNT title will instead have its own separate story to sink your teeth into and won’t be canonical from the older games – even better.

Updated Visuals

There’s a fine line between modernizing a classic such as TiT (OK, not the best of acronyms) and alienating the entire retro gaming demographic and Tribute Games seem to have hit the nail on the head with a perfect blend of retro aesthetic bliss and modern visualistic splendor.

Shredder’s Revenge has managed the impossible by bringing our favorite fighting turtles into the modern world, while maintaining the retro stylings that gamers of a certain age loved so much, ‘back in the day’.

Shredder’s Revenge has Six Playable Characters

Alongside Raphael, Michelangelo, Leonardo and Donatello, Shredder’s Revenge will allow you to play as two extra characters, new to the video game side of the franchise.

Hockey stick wielding Casey Jones will be available to fight alongside the reptilian ninjas and going by the trailers he has some cool moves and a devastating special attack.

The sixth playable character is, bizarrely, April O’Neil. As far back as I cast my mind, I can’t remember April ever fighting with the turtles, but it will be cool to see what the feisty news reporter has to offer.

Splinter is the freshly announced seventh choice and being the heroes in a half shell’s mentor, we are sure this ninja rat will kick some Foot Clan ass.

Platforms, Release Date and some Exciting News

Shredder’s Revenge will be releasing on June 16, 2022 and will be available on PC, Xbox One, PlayStation 4 and Nintendo Switch. If you own a current generation console, don’t worry as the game will be available as backwards compatible titles on both PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X|S. Additionally, TMNT: Shredder’s Revenge will be available to all Game Pass subscribers on the day of release.

Summary

Having been waiting since 1991 for this game, we are understandably over-eager to play Shredder’s Revenge. The balance of retro and modernistic visuals are retro enough to give us a blast from the past, but at the same time keep in with the times of modern-day video games. The beat-’em-up genre was shaped by titles such as TiT and we have every faith that Shredder’s Revenge won’t let us down.

TURTLE POWER!