Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles Arcade: Wrath of the Mutants

How much you enjoy Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles Arcade: Wrath of the Mutants will depend on what you’re looking for in a beat ‘em up. If you just want something easy to play so you can laugh along with friends while you’re all splitting a New York pie on your couch, you’ll probably have a good time for the hour and change it takes to burn through it. If you’re looking for something more mechanically nuanced, like TMNT: Shredder’s Revenge or Streets of Rage 4, you’ll probably be hungry for more after the credits roll. What’s here feels good, but I wish there was more of it, and the lack of online co-op is a total bummer, dude. It’s like a two-dollar slice of pizza you pick up while walking home in New York City after a night on the town: it hits the spot in the moment, but it’s not gonna fill you up for long.

Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles Arcade: Wrath of the Mutants is a decent addition to the collection of Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles games. It succeeds by playing it safe. The two original arcade games are regarded as great arcade brawlers in addition to being some of the better Turtles games, and the gameplay of Wrath of the Mutants is heavily patterned after Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Turtles in Time. Fans of the franchise and genre will undoubtedly enjoy playing through the game once or twice, but outside of collecting all the trophies, there isn't much incentive for repeated playthroughs. There are no different game modes, no collectibles and the only difference in difficulty levels is the number of lives. Even with the additional content, it takes only slightly more than an hour to put an end to Shredder's plans and rescue April. It's fun enough to kill some time on a boring afternoon, but even the most hardcore Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles fan would hesitate to say this game kicks some serious shell.

The simple gameplay of Wrath of the Mutants can be enjoyable in the right mood, but don’t expect anything more than a bland and repetitive button masher.

Wrath of the Mutants is an old-school arcade port that adds little new to the 'home' version of the game, which can still be completed in about an hour. It's mainly for TMNT collectors and younger fans of the newer turtles.

TMNT: Wrath of the Mutants puts you on a roller coaster ride through the world of the 2012 cartoon. The ride proves amusing, but digging any deeper into its game design reveals the game to be a rather sloppy bout of sewer surfin’.