Genre: Compilation
Developer: Digital Eclipse
Publisher: Konami

Like the very best collections, this TMNT package has fun, beautiful, easy-to-navigate menus with loads of polish. As for the games themselves, each and every one of them has fantastic art. It starts with the 1989 arcade game and its NES port, then continues with the hardware-pushing SNES and Genesis renditions of "Turtles in Time". Animation is superb, characters are memorable, and there are a few filters available, such as a totally acceptable CRT TV option.

None of these TMNT games have unforgettable music, but the songs are nonetheless well composed and make use of the respective sound capabilities of each piece of hardware. Even the Game Boy titles do a good job of capturing the spirit of the original television show. The arcade games are chock-full of crystal clear voice acting, which must have been quite impressive to era arcade-goers. The Super NES titles also have nice voice samples, while the Mega Drive titles take advantage of the chip's high sample rate and aggressive sound.

The brawlers in the selection only use two buttons: attack and jump. And yet, they have a surprising amount of nuance: the turtles automatically do certain moves to give visual variety to proceedings, but can be "coaxed" into certain moves by the skilled player. Perhaps the most interesting game in the collection is the original NES title, which is one of those Famicom-style action-platform adventure games, with overworld map and inventory-lite elements.

While it's a shame this collection doesn't include the "Prince of Persia"-like DOS title "Manhattan Missions", it's difficult to argue with the other selections, which include essentially three renditions across three platforms of what some people call the best brawler of all time, "Turtles in Time". There is only one save state per game, but other features such as rewind, plus up to four player co-op, all work exactly as one would expect. This is a superb package.