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Let’s talk about the year 2007, when Ubisoft looked at Konami’s TMNT license, going up for grabs after three straight beat-em-ups, and said “yeah, we’ll take it,” the video game equivalent of adopting somebody else’s very large, very established pet. They tied the whole thing to Imagi’s brand new fully CGI turtle movie and then, in an act of scheduling chaos I can only respect, shipped the game three entire days before the film hit theaters. Bold! Confusing! Possibly the result of someone losing a calendar!

And then, because apparently one platform was never going to cut it, Ubisoft just kept going. PlayStation 2! GameCube! Xbox 360! Wii! PC! A PlayStation 3 version that got paraded around at trade shows like a prize pony and then quietly put out to pasture, never to be seen again! And just when you think the roster’s full, Nintendo DS and PSP roll in with an entirely separate game wearing the same name tag, because why make one turtle game when you could make several turtle games and let the consumer sort it out. Also, bonus points to whoever in marketing decided the title needed zero subtitles, zero colons, zero numbers, just “TMNT,” like it’s the only one that’s ever existed. Confidence!

Climbing out of the sewer to help me survey this multi-console fever dream is Jeremy Powers, host and creator of the Zenspath Entertainment Network, a man who apparently collects retro hardware, works as an engineer, and still finds time to run a podcast, which is either elite time management or a full refusal to acknowledge the concept of a day off.

So track down whichever version of this thing actually ended up in your house back in 2007, because statistically there’s a good chance it wasn’t the same one as your neighbor’s, and let’s find out if TMNT earned its spot in the turtle hall of fame, or if it should’ve stayed a trade show prototype.Continue Reading

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By 2005, Konami had made three TMNT beat-em-ups based on the 2003 animated series, which is the kind of commitment usually reserved for tax filings or long-term relationships. Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles 3: Mutant Nightmare landed that November on GameCube, PS2, Xbox, and Nintendo DS as the trilogy’s closer, and Konami sent it off in style by giving it the series’ first E10+ rating, as if four years of shell-based violence had finally crossed some invisible threshold of Too Much.

The game loosely adapts the show’s third season across four “Episodes,” which means the Triceratons invade Earth, Agent Bishop kidnaps Splinter for reasons that presumably made sense to somebody in a government facility somewhere, and Shredder shows back up to remind everyone that retirement isn’t really a thing that happens to ninja warlords. Along the way you can pour experience points into skill scrolls, transform into a Dino Turtle or an Ultimate Turtle depending on the mood, and, if you clear the first Episode, unlock a modified version of the 1991 arcade classic Turtles in Time, which is Konami’s way of saying “here’s the good one, in case this one doesn’t land.”

Joining me to sort the Triceratons from the Foot Ninjas is Pierce Lydon of Spawnography, the podcast where he and George Marston work through Todd McFarlane’s entire Spawn mythology one hellish arc at a time. Pierce has already survived one trip through the Play Comics gauntlet with me on Spawn in the Demon’s Hand, so they know exactly what they signed up for this time: showing up, being extremely knowledgeable, and getting talked into yet another licensed beat-em-up nobody asked for.

So grab a ninja scroll, pick a turtle, any turtle, and let’s find out whether Mutant Nightmare sent Konami’s turtle trilogy out on a high note, or whether the Triceratons should’ve just stayed home.
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Cowabunga dudes! Grab your nunchucks and order a pizza because we’re diving shell-first into the radical world of the 2003 Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles video game! This gnarly beat ’em up brought the heroes in a half-shell to GameCube, Game Boy Advance, PS2, and Xbox faster than you can say “Turtle Power!”

Join us as we team up with Isaac Fisher from Definitive Film to dissect this game like Donatello dissects a circuit board. Isaac’s currently knee-deep in mutagen, working on a bodacious documentary called TMNT: Evolution, Mutation, & Reboot chronicling 40 years of TMNT history with the rest of the team at Definitive Film. So strap in, because this episode is gonna be more action-packed than a showdown with the Shredder in a pizza parlor!Continue Reading

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Ninjas are cool. Aliens are cool. So why not make a ninja that’s also an alien? And also has a team of rag tag environment saving sidekicks to help him out? Saving the environment via something aimed at kids and hoping they’ll pressure their adult overlords into following suit is still cool right?

Enter Steve Honeycutt from Ray Can’t Sleep to help us take a look at this alien life form that inexplicably wants to save the Earth.Continue Reading