Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Smash-Up
Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Smash-Up
For mash, get Smash
In 2007, Ubisoft released Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles Smash-Up for the Nintendo Wii and PlayStation 2. Smash-Up is a party style tournament fighter which pits familiar characters from across the TMNT universe against each other in a 4-player fight to the finish. I picked up the Wii version recently and gave it a go.
The sincerest form of flattery
It's not a surprise that Turtles Smash-Up is modelled on Super Smash Bros. - it’s even got Smash in the title! And by all accounts, that was the intent going in: developers Game Arts (known more for their classic RPG series like Grandia and Lunar) were one of several studios who contributed to the series' Wii entry, Super Smash Bros. Brawl., and Smash-Up looks, feels and plays very much like Brawl. Even design elements like the character select screen, name entry and the announcer's voice feel copy-pasted from that game… not that that's a negative exactly, as it seems to have been designed specifically so that Brawl players can switch over to Turtles seamlessly and immediately feel at home.
The game can be played with pretty much every Wii controller configuration, from just the Wii Remote (either on its side or paired with a Nunchuk) to the Classic Controller and, naturally, the GameCube Controller too - the most beloved of Smash Bros. controllers. I stuck to the GameCube Controller, as I felt that this was the intended way to play; the game was also designed for the PlayStation 2 and its DualShock 2 controllers, after all, and it makes practically zero use of any Wii motion or pointer control elements. Up to 4 players can play on a single console. For a full and fair disclosure, I will note that Turtles Smash-Up had online multiplayer when it was launched, but this is no longer available due to the discontinuation of all Wii online services some time ago, so I was unable to try it.
Any excuse for a Brawl
Although clearly built for multiplayer tournament or party style gameplay, the game does feature a single-player arcade mode, with the flimsiest of plots: Master Splinter has organised a friendly tournament, with the four Turtles, himself, and friends April O'Neil and Casey Jones as participants. Naturally, it's interrupted by Shredder and his daughter Karai, plus the assembled hordes of the Foot Clan… but really it's all just an excuse to have everyone fight each other, and that's absolutely fine. Arcade mode is great for learning how each character plays as you first take on the other Turtles, and then progressively harder AI opponents, culminating of course with a battle against Shredder.
The game's story doesn’t correspond to any one Turtles series or movie. Released around the time of the CGI TMNT movie, it takes much of its visual style, character designs, and an unlockable character - Raphael's "Nightwatcher" alter-ego - from that production, but mixes in elements from the 2003 cartoon series like the Krang-like Utrominator and the Fugitoid, a friendly robot who shows up in cutscenes. All characters other than the Turtles, Splinter, April and Casey must be unlocked, usually by completing arcade mode with any character; unlockable characters don't get to play arcade mode (which saves on ending movies, I guess), but can be used in all other modes.
Arcade mode cutscenes are animated as motion comics in a style designed to evoke the original Eastman & Laird comics. This feels like a choice that's half stylistic and half cost-cutting; although the storyboards are well put together and tell the game's brief story adequately, they look very basic and clash with the graphics of the game. It would have been nice to have seen some CG renders, even if they had to be still frames or storyboards.
A mixed-up Melee
As much as I'd like to write "just like Smash Bros." in every paragraph, this doesn't quite hold true when it comes to game mechanics. Each character has a normal attack and a strong attack, A and B respectively, which can be modified by pressing or holding a direction button. So far, so good - all familiar Smash concepts. But the strong attacks don't have the same kind of identity as Smash Bros.' B-buttons specials. Although each is unique to the character, they don't feel as distinct or flashy, and in some cases I had trouble getting specific moves to come out on cue - the game sometimes has trouble detecting a stationary B+direction press versus one in motion, so you can wind up throwing out the wrong move and getting yourself into trouble. Once you get into a rhythm with your chosen character's controls, though, it's pretty fluid, especially once you learn to integrate blocks and throws into your fighting style.
Matches are most often decided by a depleted health bar, with falls into pits and "smashes" off of the stage edges being almost incidental and difficult to rely upon. It's usually easier just to get into a groove and beat your opponents down with brute strength than to use stage elements, and even if you do find yourself falling into a pit, most characters - being ninjas of some description - can wall-jump to safety. Speaking of stages: they're well designed, if a little small compared to some of Smash Bros.' more expansive environments, and most stages have a gimmick. For many of them it's a Mortal Kombat style crash through the floorboards to another arena, but at least two stages feature an obnoxious crocodile that will jump out from the water and eat anyone unlucky enough to be in its path, resulting in instant death!
Items drop randomly from the sky in crates (which must be broken open) or simply spawn at random. Highlights include an electric field that saps the health of anyone it touches, throwing knives and bombs, an odd interdimensional claw-mark that must be a reference to something I'm not familiar with and deals massive damage, and caltrops which make whoever steps on them hop up and down clutching their foot! Item spawn rate and type is fully customisable for versus matches, which is great if you want to limit certain types or just do away with them entirely and settle your fights on skill alone.
Ultimately, only for Turtles fans
Turtles Smash-Up even goes so far as to throw in a trophy collection mode… say it with me, just like Smash Bros. But here you spend "shells", a currency which you win from mini-games played between rounds of arcade mode, to play a different mini-game (a shooting gallery - the only nod to the Wii's pointer controls in the whole game) where you have to hit targets to win individual parts for figurines of Turtles characters. There doesn't appear to be any purpose to doing this other than to fill a digital trophy room; unlike Smash Bros.' trophies, there's no history text or extra details attached to the figurines. And the hoop-jumping involved in having to play one set of mini-games to play another set of mini-games feels like padding: why not simply have the regular mini-games unlock the figurines?
Other unlockables include character profiles, comic book covers, concept art, trailers and alternate costumes for all of the characters. These all have long-term progression goals attached to them - play X number of matches, earn a certain number of shells, etc. There's also a bonus character accessible through a cheat code: being a 2000s-era Ubisoft game, it's one of the Rabbids, those proto-Minion annoyances from Rayman spin-off series Raving Rabbids, who comes equipped with ninja kitchen utensils…
All of this results in a fair approximation of Smash Bros. style gameplay; it's perfectly playable, if a little rough around the edges, and those seeking a fun 4-player party fighter experience will get pretty much exactly what it says on the tin. But despite the obvious and largely affectionate mimicry of the Smash Bros. formula, it was never going to be quite as polished as Nintendo's flagship fighter - I doubt we'll see this game in e-sports tournaments any time soon.
Turtles Smash-Up suffers from a lack of identity: it does nothing to distinguish itself from its inspiration. I've spent roughly a thousand words here trying to describe what makes this game unique and special, but to be honest, it could be summed up in just six: "It's Smash Bros., but with Turtles". If that's enough for you, then you'll have a good time with it, at least for a little while. If not, then there's no real point in playing it aside from seeing the novelty factor of the Turtles characters - who it's a pretty safe bet will never feature in Smash Bros. - in a somewhat familiar fighting game. It’s a shame that the developers didn’t have higher ambitions than that.
Scorecard (out of 5)
