Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: The Cowabunga Collection

If you’re going to drop a collection of games from this moment onwards, you need to look to the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: The Cowabunga Collection as the content benchmark.

Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: The Cowabunga Collection is a true love letter to Konami's own TMNT titles, and one of the best collections of this kind seen to date, with a huge amount of content and extra features such as online play and a very complete Ninja Turtles encyclopedia. A must buy for every lover of the classic TMNT games.

Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: The Cowabunga Collection is how you do a proper Konami TMNT videogame anthology; all the games have been faithfully emulated to look, sound and run their best on modern consoles.

TMNT: The Cowabunga Collection is an ode to the classic TMNT titles and the best Konami ever. A must have title for all TMNT fans.

The ambitious compilation by Digital Eclipse and Konami collects 13 classic Mutant Ninja Turtles titles, providing them with extra content, online play and other adjustments has managed to offer a responsive product, with flaws in the visual improvements, but with a lot to offer in gameplay improvements. Needless to say, nostalgia plays an important role in the appeal of The Cowabunga Collection. In addition, Digital Eclipse has brought games for all tastes and ages.

The Cowabunga Collection becomes a new gold standard for this type of retro collections. It is loaded with games, bonus content and new features. There are some minor issues, and price tag is one of them, but it's still a must for every fan.

The Cowabunga Collection frankly lives up to the expectations placed on it. Despite its status as a “simple” compilation, the work of the Digital Eclipse studio is a lesson for all publishers who bring out the old things of the past. If the 13 games do not show the same interest, we can only bow to the avalanche of options and bonuses integrated into this compilation. Admittedly, some productions have aged and the lifespan is not enormous, but the user-friendliness is there and in the field of compilations, this Cowabunga Collection holds the dragee high for the tenors of the genre. In such conditions, it is difficult not to be seduced.

Like any collection of retro titles, however, much of the appeal lies in the innate nostalgia factor to players of a certain age, and on that front I'm not even sure I need to make a case for Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: The Cowabunga Collection – it's immediately apparent that every one of the games included in Konami's comprehensive TMNT bundle is imbibed with 8- and 16-bit loveliness: the perfect way for NES, SNES, Game Boy, and Mega Drive/Genesis owners to time travel, and, furthermore, the perfect way for twelve-year-olds to play the Turtles' arcade highlights, without getting an angry letter sent home to their parents.

Another fantastic retro compilation from Digital Eclipse that celebrates the golden era of TMNT games with the level of respect they deserve. Newcomers may find a couple of the games haven't aged too well, though, and while there's a huge gallery it doesn't provide as much narrative as we'd have liked.

Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: The Cowabunga Collection is lean, green and totally not mean. This is a wonderfully thorough compilation of the glory days of 8 and 16-bit Turtles beat 'em ups. There's thirteen games here, covering everything you could possibly want from the glory days of TMNT side-scrolling action, alongside an exhaustive array of extras that goes above and beyond what we've seen from most retro compilations of late. Turtles fans and beat 'em aficionados, get that pepperoni pizza order in, kick back and prepare to relive some of the true greats of the late 80s/early 90s era. Over 30 years on and, as it turns out, we still love being a turtle!

TMNT: The Cowabunga Collection is a treasure trove of Turtle games, but our online experience was barely functional when matchmaking. Couch co-op fares a lot better, but some may notice an increased input delay over the originals. All said this is still a great collection for fans.