The original arcade game had three full stages and a short boss-rush stage for Shredder. Here, two completely new stages have been added: Amusement Park and Dimension X. Additionally, the Shredder stage is now an entirely different, full stage. The boss rush is gone, but the length of the game has doubled. This being an arcade game, it will only take about an hour to complete, but that’s better than the half hour length of the arcade version. Additionally, players can revisit stages at will, whereas the arcade version presented them in a linear order after the first stage had been selected.
Stages represent a fair assortment of locations from the 2012 series, including the streets of New York, the sewers and subway tunnels, the TCRI building, and more. Each stage includes lots of fights against robotic Foot soldiers and humanoid Kraang robots, plus a handful of additional foes like Mousers and Squirralenoids. Foot ninjas come in many colored varieties, just as in Konami’s TMNT arcade games. The Kraang robots drop the little brain-like Kraangs when destroyed. Players can then kick or throw them off the screen – a fun touch. None of the stages get particularly imaginative, but the sewer surfing sequence and the trip through the Amusement Park’s funhouse stand out a bit.
Each stage has a mid-boss and a final boss fight as well. Some of these include Bebop, Rocksteady, Chrome Dome, and even the classic Krang from the 1987 cartoon. Oddly, Krang’s intro spells his name in the traditional way, but the subtitles for his dialogue misspell it as “Kraang” (the name of the alien race in the 2012 show). With three new stages, new bosses like Rahzar and Karai have been added to the home game, leading to a superior representation of the Turtles’ rogues gallery. See our “Meet the Bosses” story for the full lineup. The boss fights are likely to chew through players’ lives, but the teams’ Turtle Power attacks can reduce much of the sting.
Wrath of the Mutants’ presentation is a mixed bag. The 2017 arcade game lacked an actual intro cinematic, but it at least had an attract screen that established the premise: Shredder has kidnapped April O’Neil. Wrath of the Mutants doesn’t include the attract screen, nor does it add an introduction of any sort. Given that TMNT: Shredder’s Revenge and TMNT: The Cowabunga Collection both feature new animated intros, it feels cheap and generic not to have some kind of introduction here. The game does have an ending, thankfully, though it lacks voice acting. Despite the silent ending, during the actual gameplay, players will hear lots of voice clips from the show’s genuine voice actors: Seth Green, Rob Paulsen, Kevin Michael Richardson, and even Gilbert Gottfried as Baxter. The only problem is that the Turtles themselves quip so frequently that you’ll wish they’d shut up and eat some pizza after a while.
Many cool arcade games don’t receive home versions nowadays, so it’s great that TMNT Arcade: Wrath of the Mutants has finally made its way onto consoles and PC. The only problem is that GameMill seems to have undervalued the property while overpricing the game. The Turtles franchise is big enough that Wrath of the Mutants should have online co-op. After all, Shredder’s Revenge and the Cowabunga Collection both do, and even TMNT Arcade and TMNT: Turtles in Time: Re-Shelled offered the feature in the Xbox 360 days. It’s strange to release a Turtles game with far less content and features than Shredder’s Revenge and yet charge more for it. Wrath of the Mutants is a genuinely fun game; it’s just too expensive for what it offers. Top Turtles fans might want to pick this one up right away, but everybody else should probably wait for a sale.
TMNT: Wrath of the Mutants costs $29.99. The game is available digitally on Xbox, PlayStation, Switch, and Steam. Physical versions are available for Xbox, PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5, and Switch on Amazon. The Steam version is fully Steam Deck compatible.
Xbox and Steam download codes were provided by the publisher for this review.
Verdict
Co-Op Score
Overall
The Co-Op Experience: Other players can jump in at any time and take control of one of the four turtles.
Co-Optimus game reviews focus on the cooperative experience of a game, our final score graphic represents this experience along with an average score for the game overall. For an explanation of our scores please check our Review Score Explanation Guide.