Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Arcade Attack (DS) Playthrough - NintendoComplete

A playthrough of Ubisoft's 2009 license-based beat 'em up game for the Nintendo DS, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Arcade Attack.

This video shows the entire story mode being played on the normal mode.

In 2009, TMNT: Arcade Attack was marketed as a way to "[c]elebrate the 25th anniversary of Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles" in a "classic arcade-style game for the DS." The 25th anniversary of the original comic book, which began life in 1984, was certainly an event worth celebrating. Did Ubisoft give them a suitable bit of pomp and fanfare?

Nope! Some things definitely worked better than others, but in all honesty, this is a repulsively disrespectful pile of garbage. The turtle legacy deserves far better than anything of this… caliber.

They tried hard to make the game sound cool with its “features,” and if it had been released in 1993 with better in-game graphics, a larger move set, a better framerate, and a soundtrack that used nostalgic TMNT music, it might well have been a success. If Ubisoft hadn't happened, it might have been good. But Ubisoft did happen, and this title lamentably feels like shovel taken directly to the face.

The 3D graphics are ugly - I get that it is a DS game, and that the system wasn't a juggernaut of 3D processing power, but it can do far better than this. The style is alright, and there are a few cool animations, but TMNT Arcade Attack's graphics would have been acceptable for a relatively early PS1 title. Everything is lifeless, bland, and uber-pixelated. The framerate also likes to eat itself in the final stages - it's quite difficult to keep track of what's going on when four foot soldiers all throwing things slow the gameplay a stuttery, choppy mess. The soundtrack is okay - it's not terrible, but it never sounds like Ninja Turtle music. And why are there no voices? Of course, maybe that's for the best, given how the rest of it came out.

The prerendered FMV cutscenes of "animated comic book art" are thoroughly amazing, though. I must concede that. They actually look like an animated comic book. These cutscenes the sole redeeming feature to be found in this scrap heap, leaving me wonder why couldn't we have just gotten an adventure game that used those.

The fighting engine is pretty ropey. It's better than the one in Turtles in Time Re-shelled at least, since it lacks the 8-way fighting. Unlike in Tit:R-S, you can usually hit your enemy in this one as long as you are close enough, though that alone can be hard to do at times. The moveset is far more limited than Turtles in Time’s, leaving every level feel like endless mindless button bashing minigames. There's very little challenge, and the entire thing becomes quite a bore early on. By level 2 you'll be asking if it's almost over. By stage 8, you’ll probably be comatose. Get those Life Alert pendants ready.

But hey, if you didn’t get enough after the story mode, there’s more! In order to make it appear as if there is more content than the 90 min. long base game offers, there are several options that let you play the same game in essentially the same way! Go to a menu after finishing an area rather than going to the next stage! Play all of the stages without any cutscenes in between! Fall asleep slogging through the fiftieth wave of red, black, and blue ninjas!

The more "throwback" style games I play by Ubisoft, the less and less I like the company: TMNT: Arcade Attack is an utterly wretched waste of time and money. The only reason why I bothered going through it is because I didn't see any playthroughs of it on YouTube. Big shock, right? But this should be preserved as a reminder of just how dire cheap cash-ins can truly be.

Kinda like how kids still study the Holocaust in school. It was absolutely horrific, but it really happened, and the only way to be sure that it doesn’t happen again is to not forget it. The same lesson applies here.

Go play ET on the Atari 2600 instead – it would be something of an improvement.
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No cheats were used during the recording of this video.