Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Shredder's Revenge - What We Know So Far

Everyone's favorite pizza-eating, sewer-dwelling, shelled ninjas are coming back with a brand new riff on the classic arcade games from the late '80s and '90s in Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Shredder's Revenge. There have been many revivals since the turtles first landed on Saturday morning TV screens in 1987, but this latest iteration is going full retro with classic pixel art and arcade-style gameplay.

In Shredder's Revenge, players will attempt to stop regular baddies Bebop and Rocksteady from stealing "super gnarly devices to support Krang and Shredder's latest twisted plan" by taking on familiar foes across classic TMNT locations. Developer Tribute Games describes itself as a modern studio rooted in 20th century classics. Tribute Games founders Jonathan Lavigne and Jean-Francois Major formerly worked at Ubisoft on the beat-em-up Scott Pilgrim vs the World: The Game as well as another TMNT title for Game Boy Advance. No stranger to a retro brawler either, publisher Dotemu also developed and published Streets of Rage 4 in 2020.

So far, Dotemu has not announced a release date for the new TMNT game. However, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Shredder's Revenge will be available for PC and unspecified consoles.

If Tribute Games' Panzer Paladin offers any indication for a time frame, TMNT fans might be looking at a release in early- to mid-2022. Panzer Paladin, a sort of mecha-suit-meets-platformer for PC and Nintendo Switch, was first announced by Tribute in March 2019 before launching on July 21, 2020. Similarly, Tribute announced the development of its platformer Flinthook in March 2016 — a little over a year prior to its April 2017 launch. Both of those titles were self-published by Tribute Games.

Dotemu's Streets of Rage 4 spent closer to two years in development between the game's 2018 announcement and 2020 release. The developer-publisher hybrid has two other titles based on classic games slated for release in 2021 as well: Pharoah: A New Era and Windjammers 2. Given Dotemu's schedule and Tribute Games' development history, fans might expect Shredder's Revenge around the middle of 2022, though a general timeframe is still unconfirmed. 

The Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Shredder's Revenge Reveal Trailer closely resembles the original cartoon's intro, visually and musically, with a remake of the classic intro song performed by '80s alt-rocker Mike Patton formerly of Faith No More. While it's not a shot-for-shot remake of the original show's opening sequence, it's pretty close. 

The Reveal Trailer's art style resembles the animations from the old school action cartoon era (think Captain Planet, Transformers, and G.I. Joe) and shows off some all-too familiar characters for longtime fans. There's April O'Neil, Splinter, Shredder, and even Baxter Stockman and Zorax. The Turtle Van and helicopter also get a little screen time.

The final seconds of the trailer offer a brief peak at the actual gameplay as the four turtles take to the sewers and streets of New York City to brawl with the nonstop hordes of Foot Clan ninjas in classic TMNT settings.

Leonardo, Donatello, Raphael, and Michelangelo all have their signature weapons, but each turtle will also get their own skills and moves "making each run unique," according to the official Dotemu website. "Choose a fighter, use radical combos to defeat your opponents and experience intense combats loaded with breathtaking action and outrageous ninja abilities."

The Reveal Trailer shows the turtles fighting a colorful array of members of the Foot Clan, some of them riding motorcycles and hover vehicles, as well as boss battles with Bebop and Rocksteady. Some of the gameplay footage is a clear callback to the 1991 Super Nintendo game Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Turtles in Time, developed by Konami, where players could throw enemies into the screen. But the TMNT games go back even further to 1989 with a NES platformer and arcade beat-em-up, both titled Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles.

The turtles have continued to make regular appearances in TMNT movies and video games, and have even been referenced in shows like The Walking Dead. But this latest game seems to focus on what made TMNT great to begin with.