Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles Cowabunga Collection (PC)

Is there anything more 90s than giving animals ninja powers and sending them off to protect a city while having a need to eat junk food? Of course not and we wouldn’t have it any other way and if you’ve forgotten Konami have released a compilation title just to remind you, everyone’s favourite Hero Turtles are here in Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Cowabunga Collection.

So what is a Cowabunga Collection? Well it’s a collection of the 90s TMNT games starting from that iconic Arcade title, through the infamous NES game and onto the much beloved SNES offerings with everything in between, here is the list of what’s on offer.

• Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (Arcade)
• Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Turtles in Time (Arcade)
• Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (NES)
• Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles 2: The Arcade Game (NES)
• Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles 3: The Manhattan Project (NES)
• Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Tournament Fighters (NES)
• Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Tournament Fighters (SNES)
• Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Tournament Fighters (SEGA Mega Drive)
• Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles 4: Turtles in Time (SNES)
• Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: The Hyperstone Heist (SEGA Mega Drive)
• Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Fall of the Foot Clan (Game Boy)
• Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles 2: Back from the Sewers (Game Boy)
• Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles 3: Radical Rescue (Game Boy)

The only real double-ups come in the Arcade version of Turtles in Time and the SNES version though there are enough tweaks there to make each version worth visiting at least once. 

The other versions such as the 3 version of Tournament Fighters offer exclusive experiences, be it the dark tone of the Mega Drive version or the beautiful simplicity of the NES version. 

The emulation of the titles has been done brilliantly as usual from the team at Digital Eclipse famous for titles such as the Blizzard Arcade Collection and the Samurai Shodown NeoGeo Collection. 

The games come with all the usual bells and whistles you would come to expect, rewinding, save states and display options but there are also enhancements such as smoother frame rates and no screen flickering on the NES Turtles game. 

For those of you who like to play online with your TMNT loving dudes you have the option of online play with the Arcade versions of TMNT and Turtles in Time, alongside the SNES Tournament Fighters for you one on one fans out there and even Hyperstone Heist for that console multiplayer experience from a distance.

There is an absolutely staggering amount of extra content in the gallery, from design documents to stills from episodes of the shows and comic book covers, you can and likely will spend hours in there just soaking it in. 

Another brilliant addition is that every game comes with a digital “strategy” guide which shows you how to get beyond some tricky bits, including that infamous AVGN moment. Another absolutely inspired idea is you can click the screenshot and play the game from there, also you can watch essentially a “no-hit run” of the game and choose when to take over.

The sheer level of love and care that has gone into this package really is the gold standard of what collections should be, as previously mentioned the team behind it always do a fantastic job of curating a history like in the Street Fighter 30th Anniversary collection and again it just shines through to show that despite the higher price tag, it’s worth every penny. 

In terms of actual game quality it varies but there are many videos, reviews and blogs over how good Turtles in Time is, how much of underrated gem in the genre Tournament Fighters SNES is and the mix of fun gameplay and torturous difficulty the NES game is, ultimately if you’re a fan of the Turtles you’ll get plenty of bang for you buck and maybe even discover the Gameboy titles which played alot better than I expected to.

Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Cowabunga Collection is an essential package for anyone who grew up with Mikey, Leo, Raph and Don, it’s a love letter to the 90s and feels like it was a long time coming and still didn’t disappoint.