Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: The Cowabunga Collection review – worth shelling out

Konami; PC, PS4/5, Switch, Xbox One, Xbox Series X/S
The 11 games bundled together here offer a glorious return trip to a lost age of gaming

In the summer of 1989, two great titans of teen pop culture combined. Veteran publisher Konami, then famous for titles such as Contra, Gradius and Castlevania, won the licence to produce games based on the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, the global stars of a hit cartoon series and action figure line. That year saw the first two products of this fertile relationship: an entertaining action-platformer on the Nintendo Entertainment System, and a four-player arcade beat-'em-up that would go on to become one of the highest grossing coin-ops of 1990. They were bright, ridiculous and brimming with TMNT characters, story arcs and scenarios - and they were just the beginning of a series of tie-ins now collected together in this lovingly produced compilation.

There are 11 games here, taking us from those late-80s originals on through the NES beat-'em-up sequels, the Genesis exclusive Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: The Hyperstone Heist, fighting game Tournament Fighters (three versions are included) and the three excellent Game Boy platformers. Common elements stand out to fans: the way Foot Clan ninjas would burst into the scene by smashing through windows or screeching up in cars, the robots with electrified whips, the interactive scenery (gushing fire hydrants, spinning road signs), the RSI-inducing boss battles, the pizza. You'll hear the famous cartoon theme song in a multitude of chiptune interpretations; there's digitised speech; there are crap jokes and silly cutscenes. They're so resonant of that era's games, cartoons, music and movies. It is weird to recall now that the use of the word Ninja in the title was banned in the UK, nunchucks edited out of the cartoon series. Playing these daft, compelling games brings it all back.