Time for some classic arcade brawling now, as developers Cradle Games and Raw Thrills, and publisher GameMill Entertainment brings you Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles Arcade: Wrath of the Mutants.

“Re-experience the 2017 arcade classic with 3 additional stages and 6 additional boss battles! Take control of Leonardo, Michelangelo, Donatello or Raphael in this classic beat-em-up inspired by the cult favorite Turtles in Time. Play with your friends through local co-op and dominate the Foot Clan to foil the Shredder’s maniacal plan.”

From what I gather, this game was originally released in the arcades in 2017. This new version is a port to modern consoles with a few minor tweaks. So, the main thing to keep in mind here is that Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles Arcade: Wrath of the Mutants is a pure arcade game. What you get is a frantic beat ’em up, that is a callback to arcade brawlers – to a fault. In terms of the combat, you get a jump and an attack. There’s no light or hard attack, just a single attack. There’s another button for a special attack that you can use when you fill the meter, which you do by taking out enemies or nabbing pick-ups. There’s nothing complex here, no combos to remember, no hidden moves and so on, This is just a button-masher of a game with some simple and basic combat.

Of course, the four turtles are here, there are no stats to separate the four reptiles and aside from their weapons and special attacks, they all play exactly the same. Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles Arcade: Wrath of the Mutants does come with the option of teaming up with three friends to kick some Foot Clan bum-cheeks and ultimately, take on Shredder. Along the way, you’ll go up against several recognisable bosses from TMNT lore, and the 2012 show that the game is based on.

Priced at around £25 and available now on Steam and all the consoles, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles Arcade: Wrath of the Mutants isn’t a bad game – but it is a very, very light on content one. The game boasts three additional stages, at first I only counted two. The original arcade version had four. Three standard levels with Sewer, New York City and Techno Cosmic Research Institute. Then there is an unlockable fourth stage with Shredder, so four levels. This version has those original four plus Amusement Park and Dimension X to bring the grand total of stages to six and four from six is two, not three. However, with the arcade version, the fight with Shredder was just that, a fight with Shredder. In this version, there is now a level to play through before you get to Shredder. So yeah, there are three new levels.

The big question is, is Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles Arcade: Wrath of the Mutants worth the asking price? For me, no. Not when both Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: The Cowabunga Collection and Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Shredder’s Revenge are available for sub-£20 each and both crammed with content. Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles Arcade: Wrath of the Mutants is a pretty shallow gaming experience for more coin. It’s a fun brawler and all, but being an arcade game, it is very short-lived and there’s little to keep you coming back for more. There are no unlockable characters or levels (except for Shredder’s Hideout), no alternate costumes, no collectables – nothing. You get six stages of simple beat ’em up action, the four turtles to play as, and that’s it. I was sent my review code a month before release. I made my way through all the levels, used all four turtles and made it to the end credits in just over 52 minutes. They could’ve sent me the review code two hours before launch and I still could’ve played through it and written this in review in time. Honestly, this review has been sitting here waiting to be published for a month.

This plays very much like the classic Konami Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles arcade game or its awesome follow-up, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Turtles in Time. I guess even more accurately, it plays a lot like the 2017 Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles game that it is a port of. It is fun arcade brawling action for a short while, but zero longevity. There’s just not a lot of game here for £25 and I think that people do deserve a bit more for their money than a simple arcade brawler with very little replayability. I’d suggest waiting to pick this up on sale for around £10 if you are a dedicated TMNT fan… or just buy a copy of Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Shredder’s Revenge instead. Get the DLC too for about the same price as this one. Or you could download this fan-made game as it is stuffed with content.