Retronauts - Retronauts Episode 470: Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles - Shredder's Revenge

Episode Date: July 25, 2022

Two halves of the same shell, as Stuart Gipp speaks to Limited Run's Joe Modzeleski about TMNT: Shredder's Revenge. Afterwards, an interview with the game's lead designer Frédéric Gémus! Turtle power! Retronauts is made possible by listener support through Patreon! Support the show to enjoy ad-free early access, better audio quality, and great exclusive content. Learn more at http://www.patreon.com/retronauts

You're listening to Retronauts a part of the HyperX Podcast Network. Find us and more great shows like us at podcast.hyperx.com. This week in Retronauts, the podcast goes to Shell in a Handbasket. Hello and welcome to another episode of Retronauts hosted by me, Stuart Jip. Now, don't worry, I've banished Dave Balmer to the Retronauts Shed. He's snuffling around in there. I think he's found some sort of jigsaw puzzle or something to occupy him. Because I know you hear my voice and you think, where's Dave?

But he's not in this episode. There's going to be absolutely not a trace of Dave Bulmer. In fact, I've got someone else in for this one. I've got Joe Moduleski from Limited Run Games. Hello, Joe. How are you? Hey, I'm good. How about you? I'm excellent, because I'm recording my favorite podcast and having a lovely time, and I'm about to talk about a really good game,

because the subject of this episode is the recently released Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, Shredder's Revenge. Of course, for me, it's Teenage Mutant Hero Turtle, Shredder's Revenge, and Michelangelo has no weapon. but we, you know, we can't win them all. It's been a long time. Wait, so, forgive me for my ignorance on this one, but did they actually localize Shredder's revenge to the Hero Turtles?

No, no, no, no. That was just a bad joke about me being British. No, sure, I remember that, you know, being localized differently, but I just realized it. I didn't know if they localized the game special for that region or not. If they had done, that would be amazing. I would have been so in awe if they're done that, you know. It's like when they let you play a game,

there's the probotech der robots in the contra games now, you know? Yeah. So just a little something, something for us. You know, we don't normally get much, us, Brits. We're historically very wanting. There's a history joke there. Anyway, the point is this game from Dot Emu has been eagerly awaited by, I'd say, anyone who's interested in retrogaming and also, frankly, anyone who's

interested in gaming. A brand new 2D turtles beat him up. the likes of which was completely unprecedented. Of course, we all love the classic games, Turtles Arcade Game, Turtlers in Time, you know, Manhattan Project, all those stuff. Nobody likes the ES game Turtle's Arcade Attack. It was not a great effort.

But Joe, I wanted to ask what your personal sort of history with Turtles games is. It's kind of based around the Konami stuff, right? The Konami Arcade games and then the NES set, three games for the NES, and then Turtles and Time and Hyperstone Heist. Oh, yes, the Mega Drive one, yes, yes, that's a good game. Yeah, which is really good. It's really good. I think it got a lot of flack for years just because Turtles and Time was so good.

I mean, it is a kind of a pound band turtles and time to an extent, but it's also really fun because even like a slightly worse, turtles and time is really great. Yeah. The fact that you can dash on a button is opens up the moveset quite a lot, I find. though dashing isn't hard in turtles and time it's just that I prefer pressing a button to double tapping so that appeals to me you know one that I recently

got into for the first time I was making a video about turtles which you can watch on my YouTube channel a little plug there for my YouTube channel I was making this video about turtles games so I was playing Manhattan Project the NES game for the first time really I mean I'd dabbled in it you know whenever I sat down and actually played it

And, you know, it turns out that Manhattan Project is actually really good. I mean, who knew? I mean, everyone except me, I guess. Yeah, no, that's easily to stand out of the NES games. It's been years since I've played it. But I definitely remember as a kid vastly preferring that to the NES port of the arcade game. It's still, like, super limited, right? Like, those games didn't have a lot going on, like, for them.

They find a way to make it very dynamic, despite that. a lot of tricks and little gimmicks in the encounters and stuff, which the Turtle's arcade game, bless it. It doesn't really have that variety. No, I think Manhattan Project has the benefit of being, like, a game designed for NES at a time that when, you know, they'd been designing plenty of NES games. They're a little bit more experienced in home console games at that point.

Yeah. I think it has the benefit of being designed with that mindset. in a way that the arcade game, you know, port to NES was really just trying to be the arcade game. Yeah. Although I think I added some new bosses and stuff into that version as well. I'm not really sure. I've never got super far into that, to be honest, because I don't think it's, I find it a bit boring compared to, it's kind of sacrilege, but I genuinely do find it a bit boring, unfortunately. Are you talking about, like, the NES version specifically or the actual arcade version? Yeah, that's right. Yeah. So I have a very difficult time going back to play the NES version. of the arcade game because

it doesn't compare anymore because there's so many ways that you can play the actual arcade game now. That's right, yeah. Why would you ever play this kind of compromised version? There is additional content in it, but it's not, I don't think that content justifies what you lose.

It doesn't lose. Okay. I mean, when the Traudder's Revenge was kind of announced, the comparison inevitably is two Turtles in Time, the arcade and Super Nintendo game, though I consider it a Super Nintendo game first, because that version to me is superior by quite an order of magnitude.

The arcade game is fun and all, but it just doesn't have the pacing of the SNES game for me. and for that reason I would put Super Nintendo Turtles in Time at like honestly consider how many great games are on the Super Nintendo there's like a lot

of really great like all-timers on there I would probably put this in the top five for me maybe top three at a push I think it's that good there's nothing really technical about it particularly I mean there is but you don't need to know it you can just bash through it

have fun and at no point point will you ever be like I don't know this level is going on a bit I'm getting a bit bored it's perfectly paced it's flawless I could gush about it for hours but that's not why we're here however I will allow this small space for gushing about

total of time because it feels necessary I think it's kind of impossible for me to argue with you that it belongs like in somebody's top five on that platform and it's not just the merits of the game itself but like when you take into consideration when it came out

and compared to other IP games at the time just how well Turtles in Time took advantage of its IP to deliver something that kids of that era which was me at that time what we wanted out of a Turtles game it was perfect at the time what you could have expected from a

home console beat them up it really just did not get better than Turtles in Time I mean for me the sort of I don't say there's only two so I say it's the holy duology of beat-em-ups on console is it was Tettles and Time and Streets of Rage 2 on the Mega Drive

and they're both very different brawlers. I find Tertals and Time is a much faster-paced always moving forward kind of thing and Streets of Rage is more methodical and difficult. Like, I don't really have a problem reaching Super Shredder and being Super Shredder

in Tuddles and Time on, I'd say, probably I think probably even on hard with a friend. I could do it. But Streets of Rage, on normal, like, is a big challenge. So Turtles in Time being approachable is a big deal for me, I think. And as you said, the adherence to, like, pleasing the fans, but not in a, not in a sort of cheese, cheap kind of way, but by having even little things, like the fact that you can

choose the colour scheme is either from the comic books or from, well, it says in the game anime, but, you know, the 90s cartoon, 80s, 90s, which makes them a bit darker, I think, the darker green. it's just little attention to detail like that that really just sells it and of course with Shreda's Revenge that's the game everyone is comparing it to I mean there is Hyperstone Heist

which is good but Tettles and Time is really the Don like when it comes to Turtles games I think that's a fair statement to make Yeah absolutely So when Shredder's Revenge was coming I was thinking I mean it looks the part It looks fantastic even in trailers and such But with the beat-em-ups you can never

tell on that until you get it into your hands and you hit that first foot soldier and you know that the feel of it is going to be right. How are you feeling in the run-up to this game? What was your sort of thought process? The run-up to this game is very interesting. So it's no secret at this point. Limited Run was involved with the publishing of the physical edition of this game. Yeah, with that free pizza. That's really cool if you, thank you for that. We have a long-running relationship with dot MU and tribute. This was something I've known about for years. I knew this game was coming for a long time. That must be something to keep in, like, to hold on to for that long.

It was, it was difficult because you can't talk about it, but it was also difficult because it put me in a position where I knew this thing was coming and I had no idea what shape it was going to take. I can't really talk too much about stuff that, you know, was behind the scenes, but it's like basically what I knew kind of going into it was these guys are pitching this game. We think it's going to happen. And we know the inspiration is like Turtles in Time specifically. So this game was kind of a surprise, I think, for a lot of people when it got announced. It kind of just came out of nowhere. People seemed really excited. But I knew for a long time before that. And I actually, before it was ever announced, I had already

played it. I played a really early version of the game that was just, it was just the first two stages. So it's the channel 6 building and then the street level outside. And I picked the game up. I grabbed it. I picked Mikey. And I mean, it's like you said, once you hit your first foot soldier, like I played the game in 30 seconds. I put the controller down. I looked at Josh Fairhurst. And I was like, this is it. Like they absolutely nailed this. This game's going to be a hit. Like it's going to be good. It did not take more than just that. And then you go further into the level and it was like okay they really are nailing this stuff but yeah

my lead up to it was there was no mystery to me oh is they are they going to put this off are they going to stick the landing I knew already before it was even announced like they have the chops for this I've already seen it's going to be good it was just a matter of like

can this game please come out well and not necessarily this is what stuff came forward but I played the tributes previous game Panzer Paladin and I really enjoyed that really, really good game. Yeah, kind of underappreciated, don't you think? I don't hear...

I think so, too. You hear people talk about Shovel Night and all that's a great game. Don't get me wrong, but I think Panzer Paladin, I think people misunderstood what it was going for, you know? Mm-hmm. I think Panzer Paladin is one of those NES-inspired games, and we have a... There are a dime a dozen nowadays,

but it's one of the ones that actually truly sticks to that inspiration very accurately. Yeah. And I think it's funny that you mentioned shovel night because it is one of the games I bring up a lot with Panzer Paladin. I think Panzer Paladin is the first game since Shovel Night of that quality. That's not just like, oh, we got the aesthetic, okay. It truly is of the same caliber at Shovel Night, and it's like nobody cared. Yeah, not to get sort of too off topic.

We've got time, I think. But what got me when I, because I reviewed it for Nintendo Life, and I was struck by, hey, hang on a minute. This isn't trying to be your super challenging Nintendo hard kind of experience. This is just supposed to be fun. Like, you're supposed to get fun, core weapons, and you're supposed to kill monsters and blow up mechs and fight big bosses. And, you know, maybe you'll lose a few lives.

But you'll get through the game, and you'll think back, and you'll be like, man, I kicked ass. One of the things it does super well is it has this gimmick to it. Yeah. That's a great gameplay hook. that is very easy to understand, very quick to adapt to. It's something that they excel at with making games. And to bring it kind of back around to where we're going to be talking,

I think that's shown in full force with Shredder's Revenge. Oh, yeah, absolutely. so much a case of, for me, of not that you said this, but it's not a case of, like, they needed to make plans of Paladin in order to make Shredder's revenge, because I think they're both excellent at different things, obviously.

Yeah. One's not a stepping stone, to the other, in my opinion. But Shredder's revenge, man, I mean, I think the most telling thing you can say about it is, like, where do you even begin to praise this game? Like, seriously, it's every element of this game. I mean, I think

the first level of of the game, getting right into it, really. The very first level is just like rich, like every screen has something in it going on. And that kind of persists throughout the whole game to the point

of 16 stages, which is quite an absurd length through a belt scroll. But I beat this game in one sitting with a friend, not drinking lots of coffee. And I don't know how long it took. I actually don't have a clue. But it never felt like oh this is dragging like i'm getting bored of this i wish this game would end no it ends

at like just the perfect point where i think maybe it could start to be getting to that stage yeah um it is paced really really well uh and there's a there's enough variety both aesthetically and you know in a way gameplay wise that um it it never feels like it's treading water you're constantly being introduced to new enemy types that yeah you know what those you're the they'll introduce a new enemy type to you that changes up a little bit about how you want to face them. And then they re-contextualize these enemies by mixing them up with previous enemies you fought and stuff like that. It's a really brilliantly paced game. And the core combat of it is so fun that when you start back over, maybe playing as a different character,

it's kind of fun to take what you've learned and just start walloping on the like the foot soldiers. Like they just do nothing to you, you know what I mean? it's really, really well-paced. I've played through the game, I think, five times now. Nice. And I've played through, you know, a good amount of every character, but I've only, like, actually finished the game, like, five times. Yeah.

I couldn't say how long it takes either. It's definitely longer than trying to play any of the old Konami games. Yeah, yeah. I mean, it's longer than, and this device direct comparison is Streeter Rage 4. Yeah. It's definitely longer than that, I think. Because Street of Rage 4 is sub 2 hours, I believe. Or at least it is when he's beaten it once.

I think it's usually two or more hours to get through this game. But, again, I've never timed it. No. I mean, I was impressed by just the way that the different characters do genuinely feel different, unlike, well, frankly, Telters in time where the differences are very minimal. Well, that doesn't make the game worse. It's mostly just that Donnie has longer reached than everyone else. It seems like in those original Konami games, the arcade games,

It really came down to a range. And that was really the only differentiator. But I think the most glowing praise I can give for this game is like everybody, not all of us still play retro games, right? We may have grown up with them and we just remember them. We don't go back and revisit them. And for those people, you have a memory of what some of these games are that isn't necessarily going to line up with reality.

And I think what they managed to pull off here is they pulled off a game that is not only a love letter to the IP, but it's very much a love letter to those Konami games, and it manages to create something that I think hits the bar of what people remember those games being, and exceeds that bar of what people remember those games being.

Even though the actual realities, those games are nowhere near as complex as this. I mean, I can't chisel Turtles and Time out of my heart. I couldn't stand here and say out loud that I think that Shreda's Revenge is better than Tellers and Time.

Tell Us and Time is not... It's not just a game to me. It's part of my, like, skull or something. It's, like, in my brain somehow. And I can't say that. And while I was playing Shadows Revenge, there were times when I thought to myself, you know what?

I think this is the better game. I think I like Tillers and Time as a complete entity more, but I think it would be very difficult to argue that Shedd's Revenge wasn't the superior actual game, which is a wild thing to say after, like, 30 years of, like, borderline worship Ping. It's almost like a unanimous thing for, you know, people anywhere in our age group

that grew up with turtles and grew up with these games. It's almost a unanimous thing that's like turtles and time, it's not debatable. We know that's the best turtles game. And it's been that way for so long. It seems weird to even have something else in the conversation to say, well, this might be the best game using this IP. Let's be, let me be as reasonable as I can. And I don't say this to tample anyone, because I don't.

how hard it is to make games. Turtles have had a rough ride since Konami years. I would say they had a little renaissance in 2000s because Kalami got hold of them again and made some quite good Game Boy Advance and GameCube games. But since then it's been sort of a wild west with Ubisoft making some games that I would personally call not good.

For example, their attempt, like arcade attack, their attempt to recapture this, and of course most egregiously Turtles in Time re-shelled which was horrible to me very upsetting I played it at a friend who had a 360 because I didn't and I started playing it and I couldn't

stop whinging I couldn't stop complaining the whole time I was just like this is rubbish music's wrong feels wrong you can attack in eight directions and doesn't feel anything like turtles in time and then I said about how bad the music is and my friend said the music is the same and I nearly fell out with him

over it I was that mad I was like, how dare you say that this dirge is the same as sewer surfing, which is one of my favorite pieces of game music of all time. I think it kind of goes hand in hand, though, that, like, you watch, yes, they, you know, they, they kind of stepped away from Konami for a bit, right? But the turtles at their best in video games are kind of, you know, married to the beat-em-up genre. Oh, yeah. And it's not just the, you know, the distancing from Konami, but it's also that for a couple of decades, it feels like the beat-em-up genre was just sort of dead.

Yeah, yeah. There wasn't a lot of innovation going on in it, and there didn't seem to be a lot of interest in it. You had, between, like, say, the end of the Mega Drive, the very early PS1, and all the way up to, like, 360, there was very little happening in that genre at all. Very little. There was no real interest peeking, bringing it back, and I think the Turtles suffered because of that. Yeah, I mean, we're talking, like, fighting force on PS1. Yeah, that's, so I couldn't remember the name of it, but I was thinking it in my house,

this game that was on, it was on 64 as well, I think. Yeah, it was pitched as a stream. Feats of Rage sequel to Sega, who were just like, nah. And then Fighting Force 2 was a more of an adventure game, but not really much about fighting whatsoever. And then the other one that springs to mind is Final Fight Streetwise, which is one of the most horrible takes on the series ever. So, yeah, I mean, then Castle Crashes lit a spark, I would say.

And then from there, you got stuff like Sacred Citadel, and I guess it kind of kicked off. Scott Pilgrim was a big one. And, of course, that shares. some talent with tribute games. Yeah. In fact, this team, there is DNA going back to the TMNT game on the GBA based on the 2007 CGA movie, which was a brawler like this, heavily hamstrung by being single player only, I would say. But a lot of gamers very fondly remember that one. I don't want to wade in and argue with them about it, but I think the way that it goes from that game,

to Scott Pilgrim to Shredder's Revenge is almost quite beautiful. They had a crack at it, then they had their in-between Scott Pilgrim game, an aesthetically fantastic game that has a few issues with pacing, and if you'll ask me. But then this game, Fredder's Revenge, came along, and boom, one of the best belt scrolls has ever made, clearly, like, not even up for debate. No, it's not a question as far as I'm concerned. The game's absolutely fantastic. There are some little, like, absolutely minor things.

Oh, yeah. I have a couple of very small issues. Sorry to interrupt you. I'll get mine out of the way real quick. I'm curious what they are. I really hate games that tell you you're doing badly while you're playing them. And this game has some sort of achievement system where it's like don't get hit during this level or don't take hits from these things more than twice during this level.

It's challenges, I think they're called. Yeah. And it super bums me out One of the first things that happened When I started playing the game Is I got hit by a foot And the message appeared on the screen In big red letters saying like

You failed a challenge I think that's a bummer I say don't tell the player When they're losing Tell them when they're doing well That's my personal opinion It's like why I find Bionetta quite hard to enjoy

Because after every fight It's like you are garbage You're terrible When I've won a fight I want to be told that I've done well I don't care about, like, S-Ranks or whatever. I mean, have that stuff in the game, for sure, but don't punish people who just want to play it.

That's why I don't like challenges. It's so minor, though. All I'd ask for is patch in something that lets me just turn that off. That would make me happy. That's so funny. I hadn't considered that, but you're absolutely right. It's a pet peeve. It's just a pet peeve.

I don't even like it when you finish a level in, like, Sonic, and it says, like, D-rank. I'm like, I finish the level. Tell me I'm a good boy. that's just my personal pet peeve though other than that I don't really have any other problems with the game I previously had an issue where

there was some slowdown on the switch on the final flying level when the screen gets really really busy but it's the kind of thing I expect isn't in any of the versions and also could be patched out in theory yes I played the switch version I played like

the 1.0 launch switch version I want to say about a month before the game came out. I got to play through the entirety of it. And I noticed some slowdown issues, especially if you're playing six-player, which we didn't even talk about how absolutely incredible it is. It doesn't be a six-player. But I definitely noticed that slowdown.

I've been playing the Xbox version on Series X since the actual launch. And I have not noticed that same slowdown. So I'm thinking it may just be a switch thing. That's my thinking, essentially. Other than that, I guess the only thing I could say that I'm slightly critical of, ground chuck and dirtbag are pretty hard for where they're placed in the game. That's about it. But they feel almost like a wake-up boss.

You know, they're like, come on, this isn't going to be a complete walk in the park. Let's go. Yeah, I think I can agree with that. Because they appear pretty early in the game. Yeah. What's funny is I think some of the later bosses, say, like Baxter, I think are much easier than them, but I think the difference

I think the difference is if you don't pay attention to that opening tutorial and this is where we're going to start to get us like a little bit of my gripes about it. If you don't pay attention to that opening tutorial, a really easy fight like Baxter can be very hard if you don't realize that you have that anti-air

attack. Baxter suddenly becomes very brutal to fight in a way that is reminiscent to how annoying some of those air enemies are in the original. Konami games. The handful of grapes I have with the game is that the game has a

really strong kit for the player of what they can do, but I don't think it appropriately telegraphs that to the player because I have noticed quite a few, far more like casual

people in this genre that are just coming back into it because it's hurdles thinking, they're playing the game with literally just jump attack and like dive kick and they don't realize they can dodge they don't realize that I didn't know what that at first I didn't the thing is when that tutorial came from it said one of 19 moves I thought nope yeah I'm not sitting through that I think they do the right thing by letting you have the full kit from the start I think locking any of that stuff would be absurd

but I think there is I don't know what the solution is here um but I think there is a solution somewhere to tell the player what they're capable of because sorry go ahead no all I was going to say is It's an evolution from what they did with Scott Pogrom where they did lock all of these moves behind experience. Which is, I think, is the far worse way to do it. Oh, yeah, I agree. If I know how to play the game, I should be able to just pick it up and play it. But, like, you know, you have a little bit of things that are not complicated for people

that are super experienced in this genre, but for, you know, people coming back into it, these are a little bit more complicated things to consider. Like, when you dash in turtles, you have a couple options out of that dash. You can do it like a straight dash attack. You can do like your sliding attack. you can dodge and then do an attack out of that dodge. The game is really set up in a way that if you master its mechanics, you can go through levels and bosses without getting hit,

just absolutely dominating the game. But you have to know that those abilities are even available to you. And I don't think they picked the best way of communicating that to the player. I only found out a couple of days ago, because I saw it on Twitter, that using the taunt gives you special energy. Yeah, well, it's interesting that you mentioned that because that's actually my second gripe. And again, I don't know what the solution to this would have been. But I kind of think the game would be better if you generated your super bar faster from just attacking.

Yeah. And that the taunt did not charge it up because I think it can mess with the pace of the game. Once you're playing on like hard mode, which what do they call it like gnarly or whatever? once you're playing on hard mode it becomes like hey every time I have a moment to breathe I got to charge that up and if you have

if you have the level up that gives you three bars of super then it like especially when you're playing in multiplayer online it just becomes constant points where the game's pace completely stops because all the players want to sit there and taunt repeatedly three times in a row

to get their super back yeah I wonder if they're going to cut that like that patch shit or something because it seems like a huge oversight the problem with that though is now that it's there that's not them fixing a problem that's them taking something away from the player and there's always going to be a part of the audience that gets frustrated with that i don't think it really ruins the balance of the game um because i actually find it kind of interesting when you're in a boss fight in multiplayer and one of you kind of takes advantage of you know the agro being on your friend so you can quickly taunt you get a super back i i think there is merit enough in that mechanics for it to be there in some way. Yeah. But the downside is, the reality of it is now that people have understood the meta of the optimal way to play the game,

that's what online play has seemed to devolve into, is just constantly everyone's stopping to taunt several times. If I can larp for a second, I think that the way I would do it personally is maybe have it so, when you're not in an encounter, it doesn't do it. anything. Oh, that'd be interesting. Maybe when you're in an encounter, you can taunt, but if you get hit during the taunt, you lose all your

super. That'd be interesting. Maybe that would be a way of making it, or maybe you can only taunt, and it only works after you've just defeated an enemy or something. That might be interesting. And again, that might be interesting, too. I mean, that's probably, I mean,

the way I see it is Streets of Rage 4 when it's super moves, did it perfectly. They cost you health, but then you can get the health back, I would if it was me, maybe I would just rob that system, like wholesale, just steal it. Yeah. It's definitely like a different way

that they could have done it. There's a couple of different options to how they could have done it. But I think at the end of the day, it doesn't really harm the game in any real way. It's just like I can think of some ways that maybe this part could have been better to avoid, you know, I

hate thinking of it in this way, but it's almost just like the way I think of fighting games and stuff like that. It's just eventually the player base that sticks to the game, they discover the meta, what's the best way. And this has been found to be the best way to play, so it's all you see online. But that's incredibly minor gripe. I think there's a couple of bosses that rely too heavily on like a invulnerability period where you just kind of have to wait it out before you can hurt them. I think that's not too big of a deal. Again, it's a minor gripe.

But I think it unfortunately makes the fight with Super Shredder far less interesting than just the fight with... Yeah, I found that when I was playing. It's a very modern thing to do. It's a very modern trope. And I have never enjoyed bosses, really, that... I mean, what it reminds me of, and I know this is a really silly comparison,

but you've got to have to bear with me on this one. It reminds me of, like, PS1 games like Croc, because in Croc... Okay. In Croc, every single boss fight was literally dodged the boss's attack until they get tired and while they're tired hit them and then you dodge the attack again

and it doesn't change and the Super Shrida fight there is a bit where it steps up but that's actually easier than the normal fight attacks Yeah So that's yeah I'm not saying I didn't enjoy the Super Shrider fight because I was kind of pumped when I fought them

With adrenaline you know But it's definitely a good fight at the end of the game Maybe it could stand to be easy a bit shorter or a bit more varied. It's where it lies to me is that, you know, it's a great cap on the game. But because this is the genre that it is, and it's the length that it is, this is a very replayable game. And replaying that Super Shredder fight is not very fun.

No. It's maybe the only part of the game that I can say this is not very fun. But like the rest of it, just like the music is such an incredible surprise. It's very clear every single level of this game is just lovingly crafted. There's cool little things like I love on the overworld when you're playing story that the music's playing. And then there's like the van, the horn goes off and plays like the turtles theme, like the little melody in the horn honking to the music. There's just all kinds of stuff in here that is just clear. passion-driven

that makes the game I just haven't gotten bored of it yet it's so much fun to pick it up grab a character and just hop in and play because I want to

keep this relatively breezy I'll move towards there's a couple of things I wanted to that are just kind of fun things, really. What's your favorite boss battle in this game? In this game. Because there's so many, you could be a contender.

Yeah, this one for me, and I wonder if this one will just seem like a weird pick for you, but I really, really like Leatherhead. I mean, I love Leatherhead in general, so it's a good pick, I know. Yeah, he's my favorite villain, so I've really liked the fight with him. a lot, but also the Bebop and Rocksteady fight is great, too, because that's a classic matchup that you always want to have. Like, every Turtles fan wants that fight, and it's so great that this one comes a little bit into the game so that it's not a complete pushover, but it's also not, like, really spammy

and overly difficult or cheap. It is just a fun fight. Yes, agreed. What about you? For possibly nebulous reasons. I'm very fond of Metalhead, mostly because he gives me such Turtles and Time vibes with the fact that

they've actually redrawn his poses from that game. When you're hitting him, he's doing his, like, damage pose and stuff. I like this phase where he locks down and starts firing missiles at you. And then when you beat him, I thought it was cute that they put in the nod to his, like, story.

They're like, oh, Mattel, I realize the turtles are friends, and then he's done. They just beat the crap out of me. Oh, they're my friends. Yeah. But it's, Yeah, I mean, it's accurate to the show. But I just really enjoyed that as a throw, as a very obvious homage to turtles in time. I was being panned to, and I loved it. And I also wanted to ask, sort of just to wrap things, round things off, the most important question of all.

What's your favorite, who's your favorite turtle? Oh, it's Mikey. Good choice. Interesting choice. Not one I normally hear, though, but I respect it, I have to say. Really? Yeah. Yeah, Mikey's my boy. What about you? Yeah, I mean, for me, it's rough because, you know, edgy, angry people are cool.

I mean, that's just how it is. But he's got size, and that's just sick. I mean, come on. So what's really interesting is Raphael was always my bottom-ranked turtle. I'm sorry. No, that's all right. I don't take offense. That's fine. But what's interesting, and I don't know if the devs would, you know, take something out of this or not, but this game actually turned

Raphael around for me. So much of my experience with this IP is the games growing up. Yeah, I had the cartoon. I had the toys, but I played the games a ton. And Raphael always kind of seemed like the one people picked last because his

range was so bad. He didn't seem to have any benefits to make up for it. Playing as Raphael in this game is so much fun. He hits like a truck and he's fast and he's got cool little quips. his animations are great it's just funny that he's so

fun to play in this game that it totally changed my perception of this character that I've ranked as the bottom turtle my whole life but it is other than that it is we brought Raff back around I mean the question

the question that comes up for me now is where the hell do Turtles games go from here like what where can they go and I guess do we even need another one No, this is it. Just no more Turtles games. They've done the best one now.

There is no need to make any more. We do not need another smash-up. We don't need another arcade attack. We're fine with Shredder's Revenge. You know, maybe in a few years you can do Shredder's Revenge DX or something. This is kind of an interesting thing. I was curious, before we wrap this up, and I know that's where you're heading. We've talked a lot about Turtles in Time and Shredder's Revenge kind of next to each other.

there's something I noticed at the very end of the game that's going to spur this question. I think it's cute that they have the Big Apple 3 p.m. thing in this game for the second level. And then at the very end of the game, when you're fighting Super Shredder, the clock in the background says 3 a.m. Clearly an homage to Turtles in Time, right? So my question here is, is this game a sequel to Turtles in Time, or is it a prequel to Turtles in Time? If it's a prequel, it's weird that they steal the statue again and then immediately steal it again. Right. After you've beaten up the statue of tyranny, and it returns to being Lady Liberty presumably,

they then immediately steal it again. However, it's not impossible that that could be the case. So my vote is that it's a prequel. I'm curious what the devs have to say about it. Yeah. I didn't ask them. I found it so funny the first time I was playing the game when you're in the the flying stage on the flying like

surfboards. Yeah. And you're kind of going through the clouds towards the end of the level just before the boss fight. And it reveals in the background that they've got like a bunch of blips or whatever like on the Statue of Liberty. And it's just like that little moment with no spoken words at all where it hit me. Like these guys are trying to steal the

statue again. It's just such a stupid premise. And I loved so much. They're like, what if they're, what's their motivation? What 20 years? More than 20. Oh my God. 30 years later. The decoy Dei Quay Final Boss is the final boss from

Ghostbusters too to some extent it's trying to stop the Ghostbusters I just I just love that they came back 30 years later unapologetically like hey what if they did the same thing again this is the exact same thing well because the game is so good they can pull something like that off without being sort of

self-indulgent it's like I mean with Paul Robertson involved on the visuals, they were always going to be good. But some of the little animations, some of the, even the like, pain animations and stuff, the animations, when you get

bit by a mouser, for example. Oh, so good. Just hilarious, you know. The winning animations, like, or the animation of, like, Donnie playing on, like, a little Game Boy and stuff like that. It's so good. There's just so much love poured into it. And, you know, that's ultimately what I wanted to get across here,

is there's a lot of love in this game, and you should consider playing it. Like, it really is the perfect sort of love letter to the Kalami games, but there's also more to it. There's more tech. There are more levels, more secrets, more stages, more playable characters. Casey Jones, for God's sake. You know, how cool is that? April O'Neill is finally playable. Now they just need to do a weird mode where Shredder is playable for DLC. I would like to play that. Yeah, I think there's room for them to either just drop a bunch of new characters for this game. Yeah. I don't even think you need

new levels. You just give me, like, some cool new characters. New levels are maybe put in directly steal survival mode from Mr. X's nightmare. Or, what if they just remake all of Turtles in time in this and just like, here, yeah, do that. Only if it's got the original music, though. Oh, yeah. Because Turtles and Time, Richel did not have anything from Tarles and Time when it was stinking. Do not play Totters and Time Resheld? Oh, wait, you can't.

the only time it is being delisted and I've gone good very pro-preservation that's a joke I just want to say that for the people who would genuinely get mad if I say that obviously I would rather it was preserved and it has been preserved for piracy so if you really want to torture yourself

you can go and play that piece of crap anyway yeah I think that it's time to move on now to the interview week I spoke to I don't know how to pronounce the same Jemis? Jumus? I don't know.

But he's the game designer. Frederick Jemis, it is. And if I get that wrong, I really do apologize. I should know better. Oh, yes. And before we wrap up, I should say, where can people find you on the internet?

They can find me at Twitter.com slash super N-E-S-Joe. Excellent stuff. I'll be sure to do that as well. And thanks very much for listening to this first bit of the podcast. I'll be back after the interview to explain to you

how to do Patreon stuff and I'll try and throw some jokes in there as well to make it worth listening to you can listen to my type five, it'll be fun Joe, thanks very much for coming on hopefully I can have you want to get at some point really enjoy chatting with you about turtles so yeah do take care

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for the new launches and content drops. Mark your calendars and set your alarms. Deals like this won't stick around long. Hi, I'm Stuart Jep. I write for retro-in-law's Nintendo-white, all sorts of outlets, freelance, basically. But, yeah, this opportunity came up and I could not possibly refuse it. And I've been playing through the game for the last, I say about three days.

I sort of did it in about three sessions. Yeah, it's great. I know what else I can say about it. I was saying to Thomas, like, you've got the throwbacks in there. You've got the references to these sort of homageers, but you've got new sort of confident things. That's great. But I'll get into it with questions.

So, I mean, the first thing that's... comes to mind. How was it for you personally to work on a series like Teenish Meets and Turtles? Yeah, I mean, it's obviously something that's a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity for sure. Like, I'm a big retrogamer on myself, and I'm a big fan of the older games. And when I joined Tribute Games, I joined about two years and a half, three years ago. And I wasn't aware that they were in talks to develop a TMNT game because it was something that they contacted So that was sort of already

in process, a progress, excuse me, when you came along, because that must be quite an involved process. Yeah, exactly, and I mean it takes time, you know, you have to have discussions and such, but then Dadimu came in, like, Nicodian reached out to them and they were like interested, of course, to work on the, on the franchise

themselves too, because they're big retro gamer fans, and they were, they were just not aware, like, they didn't have like a team for that, they were like, oh, who could, well, we're not sure if we could uh jump on that right now because we're not sure if we knew know any team for to to work on that game and they were nicoladio was like well we we have a team that is already looking forward to work on that so they introduced nikola not nikoliyan but doddy moved to

tribute games and it was a match made in heaven and then the long process started and someday i just walked into a meeting room and there were the guys told me like okay uh change of plan So after Panzer Paladin, we're going to work on TMNT. And of course, I was super excited. Yeah. I mean, this is, I think, one of the franchises that any person who grew up in the 90s, 80s, 90s, they just, they love it so much. Especially, like, gamers, I think the video games for the Turtles were amazing back in the NES, Super NES era, like the 8-bit and 16-bits era. so and of course having you know knowing how tribute makes their game

knowing that we could have a shot at this you know it was super exciting because we knew that we you know we approached it with fan highs so that was definitely something that was super exciting it must be at least a little bit intimidating considering that sort of legacy the thing that interests me is now I'm trying to put this in a way that's polite there have been a lot of turtles games in the last 20 years that haven't been super good and the thing is

every time one of these drops you the gamers are just saying just do another belt scroller, just do a beat-em-up it's like not difficult and they say that, you know, people say that and saying it's not difficult, they don't know that, they don't know that. I mean, so I guess the question I wanted is how, why, how has this

finally happened? You know what I mean? Like, how have we finally got the dream game? Absolutely. I think you nailed it. I mean, we're fans of the franchise, we're fans of Turtles. I mean, we're gamers. We've been, we always wanted to play another beat them up. At one point, you know, the guys attribute, they worked on Scott Programme versus the world.

They even worked on TMNT on the GBA on the Game Boy Advance. Yeah, I remember that one, yeah, yeah. And, you know, it couldn't be the same type of game because of the Game Boy Advance was more of a solo console. And multiplayer was kind of tricky to do. but I mean at the end of the day we're fans of those games so it's you know I think having a fan's perspective

is very important because we're you know we're making the game that we feel that we wanted as fans and I think like you know when we we started the project we knew that probably people would be you know very excited and happy to finally have another beat them up but I don't think

we were expecting them to be that happy that was a bit overwhelming like we we that you know of course we it was the the right thing to do with the franchise but yeah i didn't think like on day one the fans reaction and especially you know you know just having people gets their hands on the game you know the first showing we did was at packs east with you know where the general public would be able to play the game yeah and the reception was amazing was once you have the the sort of license how much uh how much freedom did you have to sort of play with it i mean it's it's it's it's

I would say, like, 99.9% based on the 80s cartoon, which is what people want. That's what people expect. But within those boundaries, like, was there anything you wanted to do that they weren't allowed to do? Or you'd have pretty much free reign to make the game you wanted to make? I mean, you have to always be respectful. You know, it's never just like, do whatever you want. I mean, it has to be part of the DNA of the franchise. And the reason why we go with, you know, the TMNT-87 era of the...

of the turtles, you know, based on the cartoon. It's because it wasn't only like cartoons. There were like Archie Comics that were based on the cartoons. There were video games. There were a lot of toys. So there was a lot of materials. And I think this is where, you know, the era where the turtles were the most iconic. So for us, that gave us like a lot of freedom to explore, you know, things that we've seen in other games before or in the show.

But also introduce new things that maybe people forgot about. too. Oh, yeah, I was going to ask like that, um, because I mean, I ran into like tempestra, the boss fight with tempestra. Now, I have freely holed my hands up and admit that I haven't seen every episode of that cartoon and I didn't remember

the character, which was quite exciting. It was like, wicked. I Google it now. And ground chuck and dirtbag the dual boss fight. Like, I didn't remember those characters either. And it was kind of exciting to see these deeper cuts turn up because there were a lot of turtles games where you just fight the

same bosses. Yeah. So was it one, so was, was, was, were you watching like every episode was being claimed through to find sort of candidates for these these fights? So, yeah, I rewatched mostly, I think,

the first, well, the first seasons of the show are kind of short, but like, once you get to the third season, it's like 60 episodes or something. So it's very long. So yeah, there's a lot of, there's a lot of episodes to cover. So obviously, we kind of

built a wish list at first and and speaking of you know well you mentioned working with nicolodeon like it was also a matter of making sure that those characters would would be you know uh part of the the whole uh the deal like saying this yeah yeah yeah so coming up with the the the baddies for the game i mean we have a lot of we we had to make decisions for sure we have over like 20 buses still but yeah it is a huge it's a huge rose gallery but uh but uh But yeah, you know, we wanted to also bring back characters that we know that people loved. Like, of course, Bebubracksteady, you can't, you know, you need to have them. You call them.

Yeah, a letterhead and such. But we also wanted to kind of have, like, a deeper cost, like you said. Like Temprestra for us was a big, we needed her because, I mean, she's a video game villain. So, like, we're making a game. How come she's not into any of those games? And it was also a fun way for us to kind of, okay, how can we? We pull in Tucka and Razar from them. Because they were kind of like,

Tucker and Razar were very iconic to the second movie, but at the same time they appeared in the cartoon, but their cartoon appearance was kind of a, like, it's inspired by what's happening in the game because it occurs into the same mall. But at the same time, you know, it's not, they're not that much important in the show. So we decided, okay, let's just merge them all together,

have this cool arcade, because we wanted to have a fight in the arcade and an arcade. it's a very way of the whole thing for me it's a really fun boss fight with Tokonurazzo being summoned it's a lot of fun thanks I'll ask sort of on a sort of personal note I suppose

ground chuck and dirtbag that's a really hard fight is there a because I don't I'm not I don't know about how these decisions are made but is it a conscious decision to have a more difficult boss fight

sort of relatively earlier in the game and then pace the bosses out so once you have some breather ones as well as the more challenging ones or is the intention to do a smooth kind of difficulty curve there? Yeah, I think we always try to balance our level

between if you have like maybe a smoother stage this can introduce like a tougher bus fight and also in terms of pacing we want to make sure that it's not only well you always try to have something you know that the challenge that gets increasing we ended up a bit higher and higher.

And once you get to the bus fights, this is something, you know, we really wanted to introduce the multiple boss fights like near the beginning of the game because we thought it would be, I think it's something that is part of the show, you know, to have multiple characters. You know, it's always Evob Rock City and Shredder running around and the turtles throwing their weapons, triggering traps and stuff. And we kind of wanted to recapture that especially since, you know, we have a six-player multiplayer game.

So we wanted to make sure that, you know, the challenge, not necessarily have tougher bosses, but introduce, you know, bosses that can team up together. How is it balancing a game where you can have six characters on the screen instantly? It's a bit chaotic for sure. You know, at one point, you've got to accept that at one point, the six-player multiplayer is going to be more about, you know, it's more of a party game than a rather, like, challenging,

beat them up in the sense that there's so much happening on screen that at that point you just want to have players you know have fun that's why we introduce those team attacks that can trigger themselves mostly if you attack the same enemy you're going to trigger that attack just for fun if somebody lands a kick while you're attacking you're going to grab them and you're going to throw them as a fireball so yeah we wanted to have these small things happening just to make sure that you know the game would have those fun moments but at one point you kind of understand you know you know you don't you it would be very hard to have something super precise. Yep, when we build the stages, something that we really wanted to make sure is that the game would still, you know, present a challenge. It's not necessarily like super challenging, but at least the pacing would still be there.

So based on the number of players, we're going to adapt the number of enemies on screen. So if you play one player, it's going to be one encounter design, but if you play two players, four players, it's always going to adapt so there's going to be more enemies and the patterns will change and it's not just like doubling the amount of enemies sometimes we'll change enemies we'll have different enemies and such so the game is not necessarily like four players against one

enemy but it's more four players against four enemies so that's great so you'll have the three difficulties settings also accounting for one to six players that must be well it must be time consuming to say the least there's a lot to take into account yeah speaking on the subject of difficulty or of challenge again this for this genre 16 stages is quite a lot yeah i think and i'm not saying i think it's too many because i think the length of the game is perfect personally but how was it how did that come about to like was it just a matter of um oh we've thought of another idea that there's another idea for a stage another idea for a stage or was it sort of set on quite early there'd be 16 or how did that sort of come about yeah i think we decided right at first

that we wanted to have 16 stages like we felt for a modern release you know arcade games are meant to be short and you know very aggressive on taking all of your quarters but you know making a console beat them up is a bit different you know you want to have enough meat to to have fun with but at the same time you don't want it to be too long either so we kind of settle on the stages based on you know just saying okay so each stages is around probably 10 15 minutes depending on the skills so we felt like it would be interesting and at the same time we kind of wanted both to have a challenge that you could you know probably and i know other people are waiting for the game to come out on Thursday to have their friends over and go through it and you know be able to beat it

yet at the same time we also wanted it to be you know replayable if you're single player probably story mode is more interesting because of the safe progression, you know, the character leveling and such. So, you know, it's all about trying to find a balance. And we really felt like, I think from turn day one, we knew that it would be 16 stages. And there was no, like, that's what we aim for because that's what we felt was fair, you know, in terms of longevity and content for sure. Yeah. So what were the sort of biggest challenges that you faced in developing a game like this as much fun as it must be working on it? There must be some challenge. There was one called COVID-19.

Oh, yeah, yeah, there is, of course, yeah. So, yeah, for sure, you know, there's doing beat-em-ups means, you know, having a lot of things on-screen happening and, you know, being perfectly balanced. And whenever you do multiplayer with that, you know, the synchronicity of all of these elements is something that's very hard to do and make sure that, you know, every character's, like, every day. At the end of the day, you're not trying to replicate exactly everything

perfectly but you want to replicate perfectly what players are seeing and uh and this is something that we we we had to work on like a lot earlier for sure because maybe if we didn't have a pandemic going on would all be at the office and we would have worked during the multiplayer doing sessions on co-op on the same couch at the studio but obviously we were all at home so we had to basically work on the multiplayer the online multiplayer aspect very early in the production and these These are, this is very tricky, especially with so much action happening on screen. You know, we kind of had to adjust the philosophy on how we would, you know, make the game work in an online multiplayer to make sure that, as I was mentioning, like, we're not, it, it would be impossible to replicate everything perfectly. But, you know, focusing on, you know, what the players are, you know, who they're fighting with, who they're, you know, the way that we made it work, made sense, you know, that you're not feeling like.

oh okay there's a lag or whatever happening you know it's all kind of adapted to to your own experience as a client so the game so that was a that that's a big challenge for every games i think yeah yeah that's agreed agree for whatever reason that didn't occur to me to mention i think i think there are obviously a lot of things to you know that we discover through the whole game and i think that this yeah especially for that production that was a big one for sure Now, looking back at the sort of legacy of the Turtles games and how it sort of applies here, Turtles in time for Super Nintendo, that is, I mean, that's one of my personal favorite, like probably top five games. And even I am happy to admit it's not particularly deep.

yeah it's a two-button brawler with a few modifiers um so how was that expanded on how did you add depth for um fed's revenge to the to the gameplay yeah so we kind of wanted to you know of course go deeper for sure because we i mean first of all the the fans that loved the turtles and time back in the day they're probably older now and more used to more complex games yet at the same time we kind of we wanted to recapture that simplicity in a sense

so the younger audiences that are the age that we were when we played turtles in time can probably have a lot of fun with treasurer's revenge just using two buttons and mashing those and once in a while pressing the other ones without going into the depth of the fight that we

have you know by using the dodges the new special attack systems we have in such and we really wanted to make sure that you know this game would be because in the team and tea are like especially in turtles in times the turtles they're doing all of these super cool things but some of them some of those moves are kind of hard to pull out you know and they're more contextual and such we really wanted to have like that depth where players could grow with the game and you know get better and start to do actual combos and I mean and a lot of that is of course of possible because of the of how much more stuff we can put in the game you know having unique characters not reusing that much animations for the main characters and such yeah but also you know we really wanted to make sure that each characters would feel different too you know it's not just

donatello as a long stick yeah raff as shorter weapon we really wanted to make sure that they kind of they kind of all play the same yet they're all different so that that was a where we we kind aimed for so to make sure that you know it was relevant to have seven playable characters in the game but yeah it's always uh a perfect balance you know we want to recapture how you remember the game yet try to make it more modern and fun and you know we so we added a bunch of little things like the juggling is something that came very early in the production you know being able to because back in the days the enemies would leave the screen or sometimes you spend time just waiting on the edges of the screen to just and button mash waiting for the enemies to walk in your

attacks but you know having uh collidable edges mean that you can throw enemies in the air and juggle with them at one point we had to change their color when they were killed because basically people would juggle forever so now we had we needed to have a sign to tell people that okay yeah they fade down sort of into the color i liked that because i like the fact that you still let us juggle if you wanted to it was just a visual cue of by okay this this guy's done for which i thought it was fun. I personally I noted when I can't know which character was but doing a dodge roll

away to make sort of clear distance holding towards and hitting attack I would sort of do a kick that said them flying into the air but then if I held the button and released you then do the charge attack and that was and I thought to myself you can't do that until it's in time there's anything like that

and that's not even a particularly complex maneuver it's just still another I'm just scratching the surface I've never I don't think I've even played as April yeah Yeah, playing as April, that had to be a fun decision. How did that come about? Because that's the first time she's been playable, I think, in any Turtles game that comes to mind. Yeah, I think this is the first time she's playable.

I mean, that was something also that we knew from day one that we wanted to do. Because we, you know, she's the most important character is in the show, apart from the Turtles. She's always there. And to us, it made just, it made sense that, you know, she's been hanging out with the turtles for so long. at one point she's going to learn how to fight with them she's going to train with them for sure there's no point of not doing that and we also wanted to have new characters for this game obviously with master splinter kisi jones too and and april was a no-brainer i mean she she was a must and what's fun with her also is that

you know she's not a turtle so she doesn't carry a big shell on her back and she's not you know she can be way more agile than them and she fights differently So, and we thought it was really fun. And we really wanted also to make her, like, a very easy to pick up character, but also one that is very, very quick and great to chain combos, you know. She does that flying kick where she, you know, triple hit the enemies, but you can also link it with other moves. And as you said, you know, doing the slide and the charge attack, it's all of these little things, all of these little details on each of the characters, you know, it's all bringing, it's adding. not only adding depth to the game, but also, you know, creating more replayability. And it's true also for, you know, Splinter who's a bit more slower, but a very powerful character,

who does a lot of, create a lot of combo opportunities where, you know, you can bounce some enemies with his attacks, so you can basically create juggle or launchers opportunities. And having, you know, Casey, which is more like a big goon character who's very, it's a bit more slow, but also, like, all of his attacks, they all pack a lot of punch. and creates a lot of opportunities for the other players also to just throw the people that KC just bounces up in the air. So, yeah, we had a lot of fun with the new characters for sure, especially, and then we're very happy to be able to actually introduce April.

And that's something also that everyone was on board with from day one. With KSC Jones being held back as a reward for beating the game, Was that a easy decision? Because you had an announcement trailer at Samar Games Fest, and I wonder if people might pick the game up and then be like, oh, no, I can't play this case off the bet. Yeah, I mean... No, I think from early in the production,

we wanted to have at least one unlockable character for sure. Because, well, you know, the game is playable six players, so you need to have six players at first. But we wanted to have like some sort of reward to play another run on the game and obviously we're you know big fans of older games so we didn't want it to have like

you know oh Casey has a DLC or anything you know we want it we love you know the older games that gives you meaningful reward when you complete the game and I think having another a new character was pretty cool reward in itself and it's very it's very fun because it gives you

right away another incentive at replaying the game again so we always knew that We wanted to have like that sort of rewards. And especially with Casey, I mean, in the show, Casey is not there that often. I think in the fans' heart, he's up there. Yeah, he's more of a film in 2003 version kind of. Exactly.

And so I was excited to see him turn up because it wasn't necessarily a given that he would. I mean, he'd be there in some form, but it could even be a boss fight based on his first appearance. Yeah, and those things are kind of like, you know, transcending. from the TV show was kind of a hub for all of the turtle love so a lot of things that were not necessarily

that much present in the show are still very present into the fans' minds just like Casey we thought it would be like a very generous reward to give them away as a

as a reward for completing the game Yeah, we'll be able to be able to be able to be able to be able to be elements from outside of the cartoon that creeped about elements from outside of the cartoon that creeped. in um i suppose at this point it would be more of an element from the canami games but super shredder is is from the second film i believe secret of the ewes were there any other elements from outside that weren't necessarily from the cartoon that you brought in at all or was it mostly pretty much focused around that uh there's a few things that we we brought in like especially like so okay so we had a lot of things based from the the toys yeah like uh the the the the the the The knuckleheads are kind of more, like, in the TV show, the knuckleheads is kind of a big vehicle, like, the trang uses.

But in the toys, it's more like that spider-like claw thing that can, you know, drop and crab figures. So we really wanted to recapture more the essence of the toy. Sorry, just to be clear, because my memory is a bit short. That's the mecca that some of the foot soldiers write that looks like a big claw. And is that what you mean? Yes, I remember the one you mean. Yes, that was a lot of fun of the fight. Yeah.

Apart from that, in terms of toys, I'm trying to, because we also introduced some few creations of our own. Oh, yes. That would be great. I'd love to hear about those as well. And I'll just try to, yeah, for the toys and, well, just to finish on the toys, there was also like the tenderizer, the vehicle from the third stage, which is basically, I think it was a canceled toy.

And I think it appeared also in Manhattan Project on the NES, but we wanted to bring it back. absolutely but yeah and there was also a throwback to both turtles and times and the toys with in the fifth stage when you fight the rat king he's standing on the uh the foot ski which is a was a toy like the it was a floating toy for bathtubs playtimes but yeah you know i mean there's a lot of little things like these and like i said like we we also introduced some creations of our own, like what we call the monsters

model tree, which is basically the monsters with the extended arms, the bouncing robots. Yes. We also adapted the pizza monsters

to kind of make them our own, so that they're a bit different from the TV show, which is slightly less legally actionable. Like, slightly less like a set them off, I guess.

So now there are like actual pizza monsters and we kind of created some behaviors for them and such. But yeah, so we, we really wanted to make sure that, you know, they, these, of course, we approved those

designs with Nickelodeon, and they liked them, and they, they were, they were on board with those, again, because they kind of feel like, you know, things that would have happened into the show, and they, they were also kind of cool, and I think they just, they just really like them, so it was a very easy, but, I mean, like I said, you always have to still be careful and remain true to the source material and very respectful. And I think when you approach it with, you know, a fan approach and you understand, you know, the, the implications for everyone, you know, obviously, Nicolodeon, they have a strong heritage with the TMNT franchise.

And there has a lot of history and, you know, people, everyone loves turtles in time. It's very hard to find someone who played that game and didn't like it. So, of course, you want to preserve that legacy and make sure that, you know, it's respectful of that too so i think our approach was pretty much you know we're not certainly trying to do fan service but we're really doing like a fan game yeah we're fans so there are some touches that are sort of adjacent to fan service or sort of homage because for me personally the fight with metalhead just put warmth in my heart like the whole even the poses he does look straight out of turtles the timing they're all redrawn obviously

beautifully redrawn but everything about his fight is just uh absolutely just fantastic so i guess i want to ask if you have any particular sort of favorite touches or sort of easter eggs or in the game that you particularly are very sort of fun or proud of uh that's that's good like yeah the metal had fights is pretty cool because like you said we kind of took some of the abilities he did on the turtles in times but we tried to make him like more efficient more active and then he'll have some missile moments in there. Another fight I really love is the Chrome Dome Chrome Dome fights in the digital thing.

When we wanted to approach it in a way that people would expect it to be Shredder. I assumed it was Shredder when I saw the silhouette. I thought it was super shredder. I thought, okay, is the end of the game. Yeah. In the cartoon, he's kind of that robot that built by Shredder and it's trying to replicate him and such.

So we're like, okay, so he's rebuilding, you know, the techno drone that was besweary back in the, back in the days. And then the whole fight, the way the fight occurs is it's both based on turtles in time, you know, having to throw toward the screen the enemies to kind of knock him down and make him vulnerable. But also inspired by some random trivia from the show where in the show at one point, like when they approached him, I think it's Donatello that shout something about hitting the end. exhaust on his back and we're like okay we have to hit the exhaust on the back so you have to knock him down so basically you expose the weak's point but yeah it was a lot of uh i think that this fight is is fun you know when we approach bus fights we try to have you know bus fights that are kind of a build on the same AI behavior core let's say in a sense that it's more of a standard fight where the enemy will position itself you know and do different things but we also want to have like a good chunk of

fights that are going to be more exotic and more unique, you know, that are going to be more different like the Chrome Dome fight, the Tenderizer fight, the statue of tyranny and the Super Shredder. So, you know, we tried to kind of find a balance because obviously making these is as complex as, you know, making a whole stage. So we have to make sure that we kind of are smart about how we approach these. Yeah, that statue of tyranny. That is wild, that ending, I have to say, I loved it. that whole finale is just fantastic the

did now working with Nicolode is presumably the way you were able to use original voices for the characters how was that like working

did you work with them at all or was that more of that yeah I didn't personally work with them but the the way it happened I mean so Dari Mu they always have this this philosophy of

whenever we do something what is the best version we can do what's the most awesome thing we could do and at one point you know our script writer was writing all of these lines for the game you know the shells and bars and such and we needed

to find people to do voiceovers for the game and you know the obvious thing for Dadimu was mostly to say well just let's just ask the original cast and most of them are still doing you know voiceovers today

so and they were really on board with it too like for them i think they did the four of them they they love those characters so much that they they were super on board to come back and do especially for a video game because i didn't really do any in the in a sense that you know the back in the days during the the cartoon era the video games were too limited to have any of these types of voiceovers so for them there was a new experience you know and it was a another way to just, you know, slip back into all the old shoes. And from what I've been told, I mean, like, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the script writer was also, uh, with them with the recording because it was a, a remote recording. So he, he was attending the meeting with them. And it was basically just, just hanging out with a bunch of old friends and, yeah, yeah, stories and such.

So it was definitely something that, you know, made a big difference for the game. And as I said, like, for, for, for Dotimu, it's always. the same thing it's what is the best version and what is the most amazing thing that people would love for that and obviously you can't go wrong with the original cast no it gives the game a lot of life um there's a lot of dialogue you don't hear that you're not hearing the same two sound bites over and over again which is nice i noticed even falling into a pit has multiple different lines for it that's a just a nice touch yeah it was a throwback you know we wanted to make sure that you would get the the original idea but also new things. But yeah, it's probably one of the beat-em-ups with the most forsovers for sure.

And we have to add more because when we knew that we would have the original cast, we're like, okay, we need to make sure if we have more. One of the first, when I saw that pit, I fell in a lot on purpose to see if it would do that this cave is creepy. And now he said something else. It was like, okay, they changed

it. Then later in the game, I felt like, again, then it came up, this game is creepy. I'm like, there it is. There it is. visually it's strongly based on the 80s 90s cartoon but there is flair to it that's that moves it away from that how is that sort of style uh how did that come about the whole I would I know how to describe it it's like almost like an adaptation of the 90s cartoon like you get in a comic or something where it doesn't look exactly the same but it has the soul of that yeah um it's a lot chunkier the characters look chunkier and uh more video gaming i guess i would say but i'm you know it's you i'm asking so i'm not answered for you obviously no i mean how do you know

obviously when we we didn't approach it in a way to you know reproduce exactly the cartoon either Even the Konami games, they had their own flair to, you know, the characters and such. So we really wanted to make sure that it would be a take on that, too. You know, we're not necessarily trying to replicate the TV show, but we're making a game inspired by it. But we also wanted to have, like, our own adaptation of the characters themselves. Because if we just stick to the show, I mean, the turtles would not use their weapons. And April would be fine us. It changed a lot.

And we, and of course, I mean, at tribute games, like part of our king, we have some of the best pixel artists in the world. And, you know, having them, you know, being adapted to kind of match the expression that we also wanted to have, you know, even if it's pixel art, the old character, you know, they're very expressive and they all have their own personalities reflected in all of their attacks and animations. So it was important to us, I think, to still, you know, not get too much stuck into the original look, but having like our own shot at it too, you know. And just in terms also of, you know, the chunkier characters, it's something that was kind of a, that kind of came up because of the statistics players, multiplayer also, you know, having such, well, we're lucky because we have, you know, white screens today. So it's a bit different than the standard resolution back in the days. But we, we still knew that, you know, we had to kind of make the characters a bit smaller than in the previous games and yet, you know, more expressive too. So, yeah, we thought that this kind of look would also match pretty well with having that much action on the screen, too. It's nice.

I was as I say, on the note of sort of fidelity to the cartoon, there's probably more here than there has been in any previous Turtles game with characters like Vernon and Amar turning up, because it's, and the punk frogs as well. I don't recall seeing any of those characters in a previous game. Maybe I'm forgetting one, but... I don't think there are now. No. So with the sort of characters that turn up and give you the quests to find the disgusting bugs and videotapes and such, and the challenges as well, when did they come into the process? Yeah. So we really wanted to make the ultimate tribute, but intended, to the older, the cartoon and such. And, you know, we wanted to make sure that we just didn't have baddies to beat and fight. So we wanted to have, like, some of those support characters that are so important to the show, you know, come in, like Irma, the punk frogs, and even the Nurtry Nose, which a lot of people forgot about.

Yeah. We also wanted to make it in a way that it wouldn't be, like, intrusive and, you know, distracting from the core gameplay. So very early in the development, we wanted to kind of have these cameos. And we wanted to kind of find a way to make sure that the players would not only discover them, but also interact with them at one point. So the ideas for the side tasks where you collect basically like your random items related to these characters was something that we decided pretty early on

because we felt like it was not something that was distracting you or forcing you to kind of diverge from the beat them up aspect of the game. But it was also a cool way to have small moments in the stages that would remind you of these characters and would like, oh yeah, let's go. back to Irma and see and bring back her diaries and such. And obviously it was also a way for us to kind of put

a bunch of little jokes here and there and have those characters bring more life. But yeah, it's always hard in those type of games to have support characters that kind of make sense and not, you know, break or distract from the main loop. And yeah, and

the way we thought about them was really like having them, that's why we have the world map also, you know, to have possibility to visit them. and have them live in that world too. It felt the world map for me felt like sort of immigrated from Scott Pilgrim but improved on because the Scott Pilgrim world map is very similar

but less functional, I would say. It leads me to something else I wanted to ask as well. The story mode with its very uninterusive RPG aspect as in gaining experience points for doing these side missions for just generally playing as well was there any point in which those RPG elements were more I don't know how to describe it

not intrusive because that sounds negative but were they ever more prevalent was there ever more to that and then it was kind of cut back for what's the word expedience you know yeah because I think it's come out perfectly personally I think it's a great balance but I do wonder how that balance has come to

because it must be quite a challenge to introduce a system like that. Yeah, we, I think it was the, almost like the other way around. Like, people were not sure about having it, you know? Right, yeah. It was never meant to be like a skill tree or, you know, okay, now you can purchase move or you can, you know, have Raphael specialize into one type of fighting rather than the other. Like, we really wanted to make sure that it was never going to be that debt yet.

At the same time, we, I felt like there was an opportunity for us to kind of, Well, first, have become some sort of progression for the players, too, in a sense that, you know, you feel like your character is getting better and things are getting easier. So basically, it balances itself to the challenge, too, because you have more 80 points, more lives, more Ninja Power bars. And you basically discover those extra special moves as you go along to. So it was a bit more used, like, as a tool to kind of help, you know, introduce the players to the game in a sense. you know it was meant to be more like here are new things that you can do that you can jump in the arcade mode at any time and you won't have the same HP and inch of power bar things bonuses yeah you get all of the moves from from the get-go but you know it was really a way to kind of introduce these to the players but also kind of give uh the story mode is basically there for you know players that might want to you know just take a slower pacing to the game so you know it has safe progression. It's a lot more chunkier for him. There's a lot

if you play single player for sure. Even though you can play it in multiplayer and it's still fun, I think it's more like for the longer play sessions. It's more for, okay, let's, I want to unlock everything, you know, I want to explore everything. So I think it's more

for that. Things like the challenge, like to complete this stage without taking damage, that doesn't seem feasible on six player somehow. Although I'm sure within 10 minutes of release it will be uh it'll be happening yeah it's always uh kind of uh have the you want to have those challenges that are quite hard and that people will have like a lot of uh of a hard time to do but at the same time you don't want to you know have anything super meaningful you know

blocked by that you know we didn't we knew that these some of these challenges like each stage it tends to have like one challenge that is quite hard to achieve but you know at the same time we don't block any content or achievements or trophies being that neither because we know that people that will try to like get a platinum trophy for the game we don't want to block them into any frustrating situations neither like we're not doing a very hardcore focused game no it feels like uh to me personally it's it's an evolution of the well i say an evolution it's like how scott pilgrim played with the leveling up but it loses the currency system, which I thought muddied that game to an extent,

as much as I love Scott Pilgrim. So I have to ask this, and I feel guilty asking, did you have half an eye on Streets of Rage 4 at any point during the development of this game? Because if it was two and a half years ago that this was starting up, there must have been some overlap at some point, or am I getting my timing wrong? So, yeah, we started the game maybe two years ago. and of course Suisse of Rage 4 was still on the way

did we did we get early access I think maybe we had early access and played a bit before but yeah it's I mean the development for for Suisse of Rage 4 was obviously you know very

very late in the in development I mean not late in the sense that it was running late but in sense that it was far you know in the development it was near release so obviously we were able to gather some advice from them for sure on different topics and different things that you know

different things that they had issues with like especially when you work with a lot of animations uh hitboxes you know making sure where we cheat not cheat but you know where we adjust them to make sure that they're more generous and where we need to kind of know verify things same thing for multiplayer like they they were working a lot on the multiplayer when we started So we, for sure, like, had good advice from them. But we, I mean, we were never really involved in the streets of age four, and they didn't, like, get that VIP treatment.

But, I mean, we, they kind of knew, like, of course, they announced turtles afterward because people were so excited for streets over H4 and, like, having turtles, too, I think people would have exploded. Yeah, well, I remember playing streets of H4 and thinking, oh man a turtle's game with this level of polish would be so good and now it's here now we have a turtle's game that's exactly and i think you're on top the same too so yeah yeah yeah um i actually only had one final question i'm actually i've gone through everything on my list here and i have to know just on a personal note who's who are you picking who's your favorite turtle

uh yeah i always say don't tell lo donnie because i mean donato we're kind of there the same like I'm a designer in life so I try to solve machines and I love machines you know and Donnie is more the the rational one you know he's always approaching every problem with some kind of distance and trying to find creative solutions and I mean that's that's what game designers do like we spend our days trying to solve problems and find you know ways to make things fun and work so I think I connect a lot with him Like, when I was young, it was already my favorite, too. Like, that was, uh, maybe because it was the, the easiest, uh, turtles to, you know, just

role play in your backyard because you could just take a long stick or something. Oh, okay. Something jumped into my head that I feel like I've got to ask what I've got time. Uh, feel free to not answer it, obviously, but do there any cheats in this game that you haven't told anyone about yet? Can you play as the same turtle? That's what I want to know. No, I don't think we have any sheets.

trying to remember I mean we obviously had cheats for the development of the game for us but I don't think we have any in the game though that's a good question it's not that it needs them but it might be cool to play as the same turtle that's all I mean we'll see

I mean we'll keep supporting the game afterwards so there's always you know well I mean we're going to have like if there are any issues and stuff we'll probably and we'll see how it goes depending on the reception like of course we'll fix any bugs

if there are any left that's kept us but depending on you know the player's reception and like the other game goes we'll see what we do next but yeah I mean it's all realm of possibilities

for sure thanks thank you very much for speaking with me I think it's I mean when I played this game I was thinking nothing could replace

totals in time in my heart it's just not going to happen it's just so nostalgic but there were times playing this when I find myself thinking I think this might be better than tells us time I think you absolutely smashed it it's great it's a great game I really really hope that it does

enormously well because it deserves too I'm very glad to hear it I mean we did our like we approached it with our fans heart and doing our best for sure and we're really you know happy to hear that we actually delivered so that's always very humbling and thanks a lot for that. All right. Thanks again for it. It's very nice to chat to you.

Thanks a lot. It was a pleasure to meeting you. All right. Take care. Hello there. This is everyone's favorite retronauts Stuart Jip. I'm back after the interview, as promised. enjoyed that interview, and I'm here to tell you now about the Retronaut's Patreon.

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