‘Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Out of the Shadows’ Looks Weird

Posted 7 years ago by Games

TMNT Out of the Shadows

One of the things I’ve been looking forward to a lot since the Nickelodeon TMNT show has taken off in the past few months is new video games. Ninja Turtle video games were a staple of my gaming life from the NES through the SNES and Genesis. I got excited about the Reshelled game on XBLA, but other than that I haven’t played any more modern TMNT games. I have been hoping Nickelodeon would see to it that we get some awesome TMNT games.

A while back they announced a partnership with Activision to product three games, presumedly based on the new Nick cartoon. Well, now the trailer is out for Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Out of the Shadows, and I don’t know what to think.

Me and my little group of TMNT geeks buddies were discussing the design of the Turtles in this video, and we can’t even tell if this is supposed to be based on the new cartoon or a standalone game. There was even talk of Bay-Turtles.

Those are my two cents, but who knows. With the Nickelodeon show blowing up, I would be a lot of money that they want an actual disc-based game on store shelves as soon as possible, and that this downloadable game will hopefully just make them some money over the summer while they work on the other two games. It may be related to the show or not, but we’ll find out soon. Regardless, I’ll have a reason to dust off my 360 and if it has online play, renew my XBL subscription.

I’m just still crossing my fingers for a LEGO TMNT game, which would be the best thing ever.

  • OK, so I stayed out of the Twitter convo because I’ve been trying to digest this since yesterday. In my mind, yes, these are absolutely “based on” the Nick Turtles. If you look at their eye color, their arm and leg wrapping style and color, Donnie’s height compared to the others, and even Raph’s plastron crack, you can see all these little details taken from the Nick Turtles. Obviously it’s a much different style, but still from the same incarnation, though it is weird that they only have 2 toes.

    I don’t hate the designs, but I don’t know yet if I like them. The nostrils are what’s making them look so weird to me. I just realized they sort of look like a cross between the Nick Turtles and Voldemort. I honestly don’t think these are based on Michael Bay’s version because I don’t expect his movie to try to tie into the cartoon at all, but that’s just my speculation.

    The game is supposed to be “dark” and “gritty” I guess, but I don’t know how dark they can go as a Nickelodeon property. It’s rated PEGI-16 (RP in America), and some people have suggested that’s equivelent to an “M” rated game, but I believe it’s closer to a “T” rating. Black Ops 2, by comparison, is “M” in the US and PEGI-18 in Europe.

    Lastly, it’s being developed by Red Fly Studio. Their claim to fame are a few lack luster titles (including the movie tie-in “Thor: God of Thunder”) and some Nintendo ports of bigger games. That doesn’t build confidence. Plus it’s a downloadable title, which says to me it will be light on features and short on play-time/replayability.

    I’m excited by the prospect of some new TMNT games, but I expect this one to be a pretty generic beat-em-up, button masher. Did you ever play The Watchmen Game? That’s about what I’m expecting here.

    Here are a few more clear images of the turtles.

    https://sphotos-a.xx.fbcdn.net/hphotos-ash3/559942_143595002474027_109817384_n.jpg

    https://sphotos-a.xx.fbcdn.net/hphotos-ash3/574962_142657662567761_73917697_n.jpg

    https://sphotos-a.xx.fbcdn.net/hphotos-ash4/417578_142657749234419_1738366145_n.jpg

    • I think you’re both right – definitely based on the Nick TMNT look, but it does appear to be a human model overlayed with some bad turtle skins, as Tommy suggested on Twitter. Either way, this looks terrible. I really hope Nick has something better in the works. And, yes, a TMNT LEGO game would be the greatest thing ever.

    • Yeah, those nostrils are the pits. The Turtles don’t need that level of “nose” as it goes against the cartoon-y design that makes them what they are. I do agree that there are a lot of the Nick Turtles elements to the designs what with the foot and hand wrappings and the design of the elbow and knee pads. Also, darker and gritty is one thing, but realism on this level is just disturbing. Good call on the Voldermort reference too…