Two days ago, Konami revealed they are collaborating with Nickelodeon and partnering up with game developer Digital Eclipse to re-release 13 classic TMNT to modern consoles! This collection - titled Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: The Cowabunga Collection - ranges from titles from the arcades, the Nintendo
Entertainment System, the Super Nintendo Entertainment System, the Sega
Genesis, and the Game Boy. All of them were inspired and based around
the 1987 cartoon that was airing on TV at the time, as well as the original Mirage comic book and even the Archie comic book.
The game list goes as follows
• Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (Arcade)
• Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Turtles in Time (Arcade)
• Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (NES)
• Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles II: The Arcade Game (NES)
• Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles III: The Manhattan Project (NES)
• Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Tournament Fighters (NES)
• Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles IV: Turtles in Time (Super Nintendo)
• Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Tournament Fighters (Super Nintendo)
• Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: The Hyperstone Heist (Sega Genesis)
• Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Tournament Fighters (Sega Genesis)
• Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Fall of The Foot Clan (Game Boy)
• Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles II: Back From The Sewers (Game Boy)
• Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles III: Radical Rescue (Game Boy)
Additionally, the game will come with their Japanese counterparts as well! The only exceptions are for TMNT (Arcade) and TMNT: Tournament Fighters (NES), which have none. Online support for multiplayer will be provided for TMNT (Arcade), TMNT: Turtles in Time (Arcade), TMNT: The Hyperstone Heist, and TMNT Tournament Fighters (Super Nintendo).
The player will also be able to save their game at any point, as well as rewind to an earlier point if they made a mistake somewhere. (This will no doubt prove valuable to some games, such as the notoriously difficult Tournament Fights (Sega Genesis))
The game will also come with extras, such as a Museum that compiles images from the original cartoons, comics, and other TMNT-related content. Additionally, there will also be never-before-seen development artwork, sketches, and game design material.
The game is planning to release sometime this year in 2022 and will retail at $39.99. The game will release on PlayStation 5, PlayStation 4, Steam, Nintendo Switch, Xbox Series X/S, and Xbox One.
Pictured above: Mario's intended sidekicks. The guy on the bottom-right's textures are really messed up.
According to Dogon McBanana, these unused characters appear to be intended to be sidekicks for the Team Captains (Mario, Luigi, Peach, Daisy, Yoshi, Donkey Kong, Wario, and Waluigi for those who never played the game) and would've been styled after them.
Pictured above: Donkey Kong's intended sidekicks. The middle one kind of resembles Bluster Kong from the Donkey Kong Country cartoon show.
However, only Mario's and Donkey Kong's teammates were left in the game's code.
Luigi has a teammate as well, but it's nothing more than a duplicate of himself wearing his usual attire, which may suggest these original sidekick characters were scrapped early on. (and possibly replaced with the Toads, Koopas, Hammer Bros., and Birdos)
Additionally, some other interesting unused characters include a Security Pianta (which was initially found in the E3 Prototype of the game) as well as a 3D interpretation of the Dull Bones enemies from the Paper Mario series who are simply labeled "Medic."
There are also some models of a camera crew, specifically a yellow Pianta, a Shy Guy, and a TV Van. Dogon McBanana theorizes they were replaced with the futuristic cameras the game went with.
There are also a variety of unused banners, though the textures for them were coded differently compared to the other stuff, so Dogon McBanana didn't know how to properly fix it. (Even Diddy Kong gets a banner, even though he's not in the final game!)
Finally, a Goomba Guard was found that has ties to a cut stage in the game, "peach_palace." While it's not a lot, it does give one an idea on the stage's theme.
Would do you think? Would you have liked to see these original characters make the cut, or do you think Nintendo and Next Level Games make the right call scrapping them? Tell us your thoughts in the comments below!
