StarTopic Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: The Cowabunga Collection |ST| Radical Return

[afternoon delight]

Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: The Cowabunga Collection |ST|
​

Release Date: August 30th, 2022
Platforms: Nintendo Switch, PC, PS4, PS5, Xbox Series X/S, Xbox One
MSRP: 39.99$

Brawlers, adventurers, fighters- that's mutant turtle DNA, and also the basis for some of the best games in their respective genres, as represented in this collection spanning platforms, difficulties, and "bodaciousness". As our own Krvavi Abadas remarked, "A good chunk of this collection has never been re-released before, too. The Arcade games have been spread around quite far, and the first NES game was briefly on Wii Virtual Console. But everything else is new."

Reference image via Wikipedia:

Multiplayer
In the dark year of 2022 we've finally been given a sanctioned space to play Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles games 24/7 online, across the globe, with properly functioning rollback netcode. Now the dream of the arcade will never die, it will play into eternity, freed from the petty quarter system and video store rental fees! No crossplay or Turtles in Time SNES online components are shipping with version 1.0, but we can dream a little dream and hope for the future.


Hints

Here's a slice for all the turtles out there on the streets of rage!!!​

 

[mazi]

great ST @afternoon delight

 

[Bonejack]

First game i played after the DL was done was of course Radical Rescue.

Hot damn, i radical forgot how freaking difficult that game can be. Outside of difficulty, it's a really nice Metroidvania-like game.

 

[Phil32]

My copy is arriving Thursday alongside my physical version of Pac-Man World Re-Pac, so have fun, everyone, in the meantime!
So much TMNT goodness in one package? Shell, yes! Plus I haven't played some of the games in here, despite having wanted to as a kid, such as Radical Rescue!
And excellent thread, @afternoon delight!

 

[afternoon delight]

great ST @afternoon delight

Thanks friend!

First game i played after the DL was done was of course Radical Rescue.

Hot damn, i radical forgot how freaking difficult that game can be. Outside of difficulty, it's a really nice Metroidvania-like game.

Super stoked to play Radical Rescue, it'll be my first time through! That's the one I'm really excited to play too, now that I can properly identify what I like about the genre mish-mash.

Plus I haven't played some of the games in here, despite having wanted to as a kid, such as Radical Rescue!
And excellent thread, @afternoon delight!

Thanks, and we're in the same funky boat my friend, it should be a blast trying some of these for the first time.

 

[ShiFu]

I saw that there was some performance issues / pretty bad input lag on reddit. Are you guys having similar experiences?

 

[ermitron2]

Waiting for my copy to arrive, I bought this only for Radical Rescue

 

[ngpdrew]

I’ve been so shocked by the love for Radical Rescue. I had that on GB back in the day! It was one of those games I played for 10 minutes before quitting because it was too hard for me.

I saw that there was some performance issues / pretty bad input lag on reddit. Are you guys having similar experiences?

Is there a retro release that Reddit doesn’t think has bad input lag and performance issues?

 

[TreIII]

First game i played after the DL was done was of course Radical Rescue.

Hot damn, i radical forgot how freaking difficult that game can be. Outside of difficulty, it's a really nice Metroidvania-like game.

When I later learned that Hiroyuki Fukui (Radical Rescue's director) would later join forces with Tohru Hagihara (with IGA coming in later) to make SOTN years later, it made me smile. Radical Rescue was, truly, the first of its kind.

Pity that those two aren't as well known.

 

[Clix]

Will stand by the fact that the first TMNT game for the NES is a good game, with lots of ambition that has some weird difficulty spikes and imbalance between the turtles, but with save states and rewind and other enhancements, hopefully people will appreciate it more.

 

[Fercho]

Great OT,

So far, the collection seems to be done with tons of love and care, with many extras, this feels like a love letter for fans like me who grew up with the original turtle mania, the original show, had (And currently trying to re-get) the action figures, the costumes, etc. I'm glad i was able to grab the collector's edition.

The only thing so far that i can see and greatly disappoints me is the trophies/achievements. The same care and love for the extras was not putted in the trophies, for a fan who is a trophy hunter, this is VERY disappointing, even Capcom shined in this department with their MegaMan Collections. I hope they are going to be able to update and include more interesting, challenging trophies, but i doubt it.

Otherwise, this could be considered one of the best collections in the history of the medium, amerite?

 

[Josh5890]

Love the ST!

And hey, Target finally decided to ship my copy! Can't wait for Saturday!

 

[KilgoreWolfe]

Thanks to this collection I was finally able to see the end of the arcade game, and I feel like I didn't quite understand that Shredder fight (still got through it eventually though).

Radical Rescue is neat too, I honestly never knew there was a TMNT Metroidvania. The second boss felt a little cheap though, took a lot of rewind to get through.

 

[Bonejack]

Quicksaving everywhere and the Rewind stuff is a god given present for Radical Rescue.

That game is hard yeeesh. No surprise little me never managed to proceed beyond the second boss.

It also sucks so much that (in case you're not abusing the quicksave) you always start from the beginning when using a continue. WTF was Konami thinking.

 

[afternoon delight]

Finally got to play with my main arcade friends and wow, what a fucking collection! I know everyone mentions it, but they're literal obsession with presentation and detail is EXACTLY what I've always wished from these kinds of things- scans, guides, replays, Japanese releases, outside enhancements, holy fuck did they finally hire people who actually play arcade games to oversee these things? Couldn't be happier.

My mate and I hadn't played Hyperstone Heist (US GENESIS) before so we thought, why not? We beat it literally back-to-back with Turtles in Time (US SNES) (which my friend managed to 1CC on Normal, jeez) and HH blew us both the fuck away, we were enticed by its Berenstein Bears level composition and graphics. That boss gauntlet left us HOWLING! The fact that it feels faster even without the dash is great, and honestly, now I'm fucking psyched to learn that the Turtles in Time Arcade version is even a little faster!

So glad to have these on a modern hard drive, with modern code, was such an absolutely wonderful thing to roll up to my friend's house and plug and play these fucking gems. Still part of the GOAT discussions in terms of enjoyable side scroller brawlers to play at any time, but that's just me.

Also, here is a direct answer from a Konami producer about why certain games received online multiplayer support:

"Since none of the games originally had online play, we knew that adding it would be a huge undertaking. We first chose the arcade games, as getting three other friends to play would be much easier with online play. The SNES version of TMNT Tournament Fighters was chosen as it has the most competitive scene. For the fourth game, we chose TMNT Hyperstone Heist for both variety and to give the Genesis fans love as well.”

 

[Koren Lesthe]

An update for the Cowabunga Collection is coming AND it will also fix the atrocious Switch icon with a much better one !



Digital Eclipse will feature the improvements during a livestream on the 22th of December !