This is part 1 of my capture of me playing through the arcade mode of Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Shredder’s Revenge for the Switch via online multiplayer. I'm using Mikey (Michelangelo), Keet is using Don (Donatello), ZAV is using Raph (Raphael), and the other players are random people who joined my public lobby. We’re playing on okay difficulty.

Keet's channel:    / @keetandbait  
ZAV's channel:    / @zav1010  

I grew up with the various Ninja Turtles beat ’em ups, including the original arcade game, so when I saw footage of Shredder’s Revenge back in 2021, I decided immediately to buy the game on its release date. But since I wanted the cartridge version, I had to preorder a copy from Limited Run Games and wait until October 2022 instead of the initial June 2022 release date. Ironically, the cartridge version was then immediately sold in stores instead of truly being a limited run.

For a few months after the game’s release, Keet, ZAV and I replayed the story mode numerous times in order to level up various characters. We never had any trouble getting people to join our public lobbies either as this game seemed quite popular. But we occasionally had issues with lag, which could nearly break the lobby. The developer seemed to fix that problem with some later patches.

Shredder’s Revenge is excellent and a worthy followup to the prior Ninja Turtles games, especially with its sixplayer multiplayer and online dropin/dropout functionality. The game adds some cool new features like the charge gauge/special attack and energy swapping/player revival without overcomplicating things. Just like the arcade games, it’s easy to get lost in all the mayhem and lose track of your character. But that’s half the fun.

There are two main modes to this game: story and arcade. In this playthrough we completed the arcade mode for the first time, which ditches the overworld screen and requires you to complete the entire game in a single session. Also, even though you have extra lives, I don’t think there are any continues, so it’s possible to get a game over.

On medium (okay) difficulty, the game is fairly easy, provided that people know what they are doing, but if you try max (gnarly) difficulty, enemies will have massive health bars and you will take much more damage. Although the three of us could possibly beat gnarly difficulty in arcade mode, I’m not sure if we could do it with random people joining us online. We may give it a shot later on though.

In this first part we completed Stages 18.

This was played in the evening on February 1, 2024.

Recorded with the Elgato Game Capture HD60 and the Switch's HDMI cable at native 1080p resolution and 60 frames per second. I'm using a Real Arcade Pro V Hayabusa joystick.