Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Out Of The Shadows
I'm not particularly good at popular culture. What's hip with the young cool-daddies on the streetwalks? I don't seem to keep up. I'm too busy watching 1980s episodes of Spider-Man on Netflix. Turns out I'm closer than I thought, but unfortunately not old Teenage Mutant Ninja Heroes cartoons, however. Which means I've once again missed the zeitgeist. Activision haven't, although their timing for the release of the latest attempt (the 37th, incredibly, but the first in four years) to make the anthropomorphised reptiles into a game could be better. With the first season having ended, and the second not starting until September, presumably they're aiming to plug the Summer gap? Who knows - what I have noticed is that we've not posted anything about it, so why not enjoy some nostalgia-inducing trailers?
Non-UK/German readers may be intrigued to learn that us Brits/Deutsch watched the first run of the show, from 1987, under the title "Teenage Mutant Hero Turtles". It was believed by some hovering authority that John Walker aged 10 wasn't going to be able to cope with the word "ninja" in the name of the show, without breaking out his pizzas and smashing in the faces of all the other children in the playground. The content of the cartoon remained the same, but that dangerous word was excised for our own protection. This went right down to changing the lyrics of the theme tune, the logos, all the merchandising, and even editing the cartoons to remove any use of those dreaded nunchaku - hence Michelangelo's loss of the weapon by season 3, I've just learned! (Incredibly, the British censors wouldn't even allow nunchucks to appear in 18 certificate movies in the 80s, let alone a kids' cartoon.) We've since abandoned such policies, and that explains the endemic use of ninja weapons in British schools, and the deaths of three out of every four under 12 year olds.
History lesson aside, here are the trailers for this genuinely fun-looking game (Leonardo is yet to come):
Donatello:
Michelangelo:
Raphael:
Personally I'm waiting on the April O'Neil trailer.
Activision don't seem to proud of it all. I cannot find a website, and their own site's only mention of it links to a page-not-found. Even their own press releases contain no URLs. Incredibly, the only web presence it as is a Facebook page. The game still has the ambiguous release date of "Summer" on the latest trailer, but the 26th June is bandied about, and will be available via Steam. Meanwhile, I've just noticed that the 1997 live action series is on Netflix. Chances of work being done today: minimal.