The Game Pass Gambols is my chronicle of attempting to at least sample every game released on Game Pass in 2022.

Game: Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Shredder's Revenge

Game Type: Throwback beat 'em up in the style of the old Konami TMNT games.

Time Played: About 3 hours

Completion level: Finished story mode with a friend.

Approachability: High. This was based on old arcade games appropriate for all skill levels and is an easy game that even a child could finish.

Should You Try It?: You already know if you want to play this. If you think you might like it then you almost certainly will. They made a good version of the game they tried to make.

I grew up with the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. It is impossible to overstate how popular they were in the late 1980s and early 90s. Kids could not get enough of these four radical reptiles from the New York sewers. They were everywhere There was the cartoon show, the comic book, live action movies, action figures, incredible amounts of merchandise (I had TMNT bed sheets) and of course the video games. I had the infamously hard original NES game personally, and couldn’t get very far in it, but I also played the arcade game, the NES conversion of the arcade game, and the classic Turtles in Time at various points, and I absolutely loved them. I can still remember the awesomeness of throwing enemies into the screen, in a brazen breaking of the 4^th wall that videogames just did not do at that time, but that was perfectly in sync with what the turtles were all about. The Turtles games frequently managed to transcend the “licensed trash” category that was so common at the time and be legitimately great video games all on their merit, made even better by the popular license.

Flash forward to 2022 when my childhood is being resold to me carved up into pieces and 80s and 90s retro is all the rage across media (Biggest movie? Top Gun. Biggest song? Running Up That Hill.) There’s a new TMNT game in the style of the old arcade game and the pitch couldn’t be simpler. Get the people behind the awesome Streets of Rage 4 to make another one of those but this time with the Turtles. It would seem like a no brainer slam dunk…and it was. The game has gotten lots of attention, great review scores, a tie in with Pizza Hut for the physical version, and, of course, a deal to make it a day 1 release on Game Pass.

I knew I was going to play this game as soon as it was announced because how could I not and I ended up playing through the story on release day with my roommate. He played Donatello (always the best of the Turtles in video games because of his long reach) and I chose Leonardo because despite (or perhaps because of) the fact that he’s the objectively dorkiest turtle he was always my favorite. The game has up to 6 player multiplayer at one time, online or off, and has 7 selectable characters, including the turtles, April O’Neill, Splinter, and a final character you unlock by finishing story mode (you can guess who it is if it hasn’t already been spoiled.) There are three selectable difficulties and we played on medium and never even came close to losing a level. This is not a challenging game and it’s designed to give you some beat ‘em up fun and nostalgic graphics and music more than to be a deep and meaningful experience. It’s a simple button masher even compared to Streets of Rage 4, which is not exactly the deepest or more difficult game.

In terms of gameplay this is a standard brawler. You have a light attack if you tap the attack button or a heavier one if you hold it down. You can throw enemies by walking into them and yes you can fling them into the screen should you so choose. You can jump (and of course do a jump kick), use a special move that relies on a meter you charge up by hitting enemies without being hit, and even have a rolling dodge that I believe gives you invincibility frames and really helps against bosses. There’s also the ability to taunt to build up super meter and you can give some of your health to other players or even revive them if they lose all their health (otherwise they will just respawn until they run out of lives, though neither my friend or I ever did.) There are several types of pizza you can pick up, including pizza that fully restores your health, pizza that fully restores everybody’s health, pizza that gives you unlimited super meter for 10 seconds, and pizza that makes you spin around like a top, damaging everyone you come into contact with. Sometimes the pizza is hidden in breakable objects in the level, which also sometimes have collectables. There’s no friendly fire, at least on the default settings.

It's all very standard, but it feels good to control. There are callbacks to prior games in the form of a couple forced scrolling levels where you ride hoveboards and fight enemies and dodge hazards just like in Turtles in Time. In general there are a ton of stage hazards in the game, from pits to fall into to lasers and electro beams, to retractable spikes in the floor. These can generally hurt both you and your foes, and in addition to the hazards there are stage interactions you can use to kill enemies by, for example, hitting a hydrant to send its nozzle cap flying across the screen, damaging any enemies in the game. These stage interactions help keep the game feeling at least somewhat fresh despite it featuring the typical monotony issues that plague beat ‘em ups, and the rather pedestrian enemy design. There’s some decent variety in the enemies including many types of foot clan soldiers with different kinds of weapons and lots of robots and mutants to fight, but they generally don’t require any kind of advanced tactics to handle and they kind of blend together after a while. Every level ends with a boss and these guys are mostly fun, with pretty much every enemy from the cartoon and prior video games making at least one appearance, though a few of them are kind of annoying and the difficulty varies wildly, with some later bosses being much easier than prior bosses. Baxter Stockman is particularly annoying because he hovers and it’s quite difficult to line up your strikes to actually hit him.

With 16 levels that clock in at a little under 10 minutes each the game has plenty of content for a beat ‘em up but not so much that it’s a chore to get through. I thought it wrapped up right as I was starting to get a little bored but before I totally lost interest, so I give it respect for its pacing. There are short unvoiced cut scenes between levels and the game tries to add replayability and depth with a challenge system that gives you 3 tasks per stage, along the lines of “don’t get hit” or “defeat 6 of one type of enemy with your super attack.” You also rescue friends of the Turtles along the way and they ask you to collect things in the levels. If you finish a collection you get bonus XP points, which you also get from killing enemies. When you level up you get some bonus like an additional super move (such as a super move jump kick), an additional bar for your super meter, some health, or, most valuable, an extra life added to your stock, which is replenished between levels. Each character has their own ending, though these are incredibly short single splash screens with some text and not exactly a huge reward.

As you can see the developers spent a lot of time trying to have their cake and eat it too with a simple accessible beat ‘em up with enough bells and whistles to give it some replay value and depth. They kind of succeeded but honestly this is a game that a lot of people will play once and move on. It has very bright and colorful graphics with good animation, mostly very good music with some very cheesy 90s tunes that perfectly fit the subject matter. It’s fun to play in a shallow, button mashy, way but it’s simpler and lighter than something like Streets of Rage 4, with its more deliberate pacing and heavier feeling hits. It’s a good time to breeze through with a buddy, but I don’t think there’s a lot that’s going to bring me back now that I’ve seen the levels and bosses and all the fun callbacks and nostalgia. Maybe I’ll boot it up to try some of the other characters and arcade mode, I’m not sure.

As a purchase the game’s relatively short length and light content might give me pause, but on Game Pass this is an easy pick up. It’s like a really good lost old arcade game but balanced to be fun and empowering rather than frustrating and quarter extracting. I can’t imagine anyone who this game would even slightly appeal to who wouldn’t get some fun out of it, and if you’re a fan of the Turtles, their games, or beat ‘em ups in general you’re going to want to play this at some point. It’s a solid multiplayer experience too and appropriate for players of all skill levels. They made the game they wanted to make and they did it well.

Still I can’t help but feel a little disappointed with Shredder’s Revenge for reasons I can’t really articulate. Maybe it’s the shallow story and lack of challenge. Maybe it’s just that I was expecting the same thrill I had as a kid playing TMNT games, which isn’t possible as a middle aged man playing a simple brawler. Maybe it’s just the game feels like a slightly ‘off’ cover tune of a favorite song. The game has a version of the TMNT cartoon theme and it’s well done but the scansion is slightly off and it bothered me a little bit. It felt wrong, even though objectively it was fine. I didn’t hate it but it wasn’t the thing I used to love. I kind of feel that way about the game as a whole. There’s nothing wrong with it and I had a good time, but it didn’t quite capture the magic of those old Konami arcade brawlers that inspired it. I haven’t played those games for a while but I plan on picking up the upcoming Cowabunga collection to see how they hold up. Maybe you really can’t go home again, or maybe this game is just suffering from the same effect as you feel when your parents move to a new house after you’ve left home. The new place may be fine and your parents are there with all the familiar stuff, but it’s just not the same as what you grew up with and it never quite feels right because of that. I’m not sure.

But maybe you won’t have these same issues. Objectively this is a fine game and a good Game Pass selection. I had fun with it, especially playing in multiplayer and reviving my friend before he lost a life or competing with him for most kills on the level. If you have a Game Pass subscription then it’s free to play, and at that price it’s hard not to recommend just to see all the stages and hear the all the music. It’s hard to say how it could have turned out better given the game they set out to make, and in the world of licensed games that’s high praise indeed.

GAME PASS GAMBOLS RATING(out of 5):

Game Pass Gambols 1: The Pedestrian

Game Pass Gambols 2: Olija

Game Pass Gambols 3: Mighty Goose

Game Pass Gambols 4: Nobody Saves The World

Game Pass Gambols 5: Pupperazzi

Game Pass Gambols 6: Trek to Yomi

Game Pass Gambols 7: Citizen Sleeper

I played a bit over an hour with a couple friends via Xbox Live last night, and we had a really good time. It’s absolutely a situational recommendation; if you have Game Pass, and you have friends who have Game Pass, and you used to spend way too much of your allowance playing arcade games with those friends, this is a terrific way to spend an evening. Otherwise, it’s something people will likely spend 30-60 minutes on and then move on.

You took the words right out of my mouth with this blog. This game is a solid title that is oozing charm and nostalgia. Unfortunately, it can only maintain that for about a few hours. As such, this is kind of a perfect case study on a type of game that makes the case for Game Pass, at least for me.

Without Game Pass, I would never in a million years buy this game due to its lack of depth or replayability. However, because Game Pass exists, I gave it a whirl and even saw it to the end.

I played a few levels with my son on the middle difficulty and we’ve been having fun with it, but for me arcade brawlers like this are always not challenging until you start ratching up the difficulty in order to more effectively use the toolset your given. I felt the same way playing Streets of Rage 4 but on the lower difficulties you can get away with sloppy play and ignoring mechanics just to get through the story. I’m hoping TMNT will be the same.

Terrific pick for a Game Pass. Easily got five people together to play this on a friday and had a blast going through it, until connection issues piled up too much and forced us to quit. All fine until then.

Admittedly I also would've liked a bit more story to go along with the game, especially since they got all the original VAs for the turtles to speak up some lines, and maybe some bonus levels to mix up the gameplay once in a while, but I can't complain too much. Maybe a possible sequel will be more meaty? I have to imagine that this is going to sell pretty well.

@zombiepie: I mostly agree with you here but I would say something slightly different. I absolutely would buy TMNT: Shredder's Revenge if it weren't on Game Pass...just probably not at full price. At $25 a short beat 'em up is a difficult value proposition, but once it dropped below $10 I would probably be willing to spend that for it. I still might, since this is the kind of game I like to boot up to mess around with every few years and it probably won't be on Game Pass forever.

I've often thought that Game Pass is interesting because it re-creates the concept of the "good rental, bad full price purchase" game. Games that are enjoyable but have very little staying power. If you are old enough to remember game rentals as a major thing you'll recall games that were great to rent or even borrow from a friend but you didn't feel the need to own. Game reviewers often used this phrase to indicate that they didn't think a game was great value but was still worth playing.

I think TMNT:SR is an example of a modern good rental game. It's not something you're going to sink endless hours into (for most people) but it's still fun while it lasts.

The thing about good rental games is that they were often also good cheap pick ups. If your local rental shop decided to sell off some of its older games cheap it often made sense to pick up the copy of Clay Fighter or whatever for $15 or so.

I think Game Pass sort of replicates that dynamic, with games that are fun enough to play on the service and maybe buy cheap later if you want.

Another somewhat similar concept was the "good arcade game, bad home game" for games that were great to spend $5 or whatever to beat in an arcade session but didn't really come home well because they were short or shallow. I recently had that experience with Night Slashers on the Switch, an old arcade game that never got a prior home port. It was $8 and I enjoyed my time with it enough to make it worth that, but at $25 it would have been tough to swallow.

I think it will be interesting to see how Final Vendetta, another new beat 'em up released this past week does. It isn't on Game Pass and is asking for $25 too, with no license, and I think it is in real danger of just getting obliterated by TMNT, which has a lot more buzz for obvious reasons.

I was tempted to buy it but for a 3 hour game I am glad it's on Game Pass. I haven't unlocked the endings though it's definitely a blast from the past.