April O’Neil joins the fight in Shredder’s Revenge

It was not until the second game also produced by Konami that it truly became a proper beat-em-up. Released in 1989, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles finally allowed cooperative multiplayer gameplay, letting players select one of the four Ninja Turtles: Leonardo, Donatello, Raphael, and Michaelangelo.

It also followed the familiar tropes of beat-em-up games, with the mostly isometric level-designs, palette swapping for enemy mobs, special attacks with the right control and button combinations, and end-level bosses to move to the next stages. It also used more familiar enemies from the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles' lore such as Foot Soldiers, Bebop and Rocksteady, Baxter Stockman, Krang, and Shredder. The arcade version was ported over to the NES, though with the compromise that only two of the four Ninja Turtles could be used.

While more beat-em-up TMNT games came later on, the most popular and successful of them is Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Turtles in Time. This is considered by many fans to be the best of all the TMNT beat-em-ups even to this day. It debuted as an arcade game that allowed up to 4 players and ported to the SNES as a 2-player game. It perfectly captured the art style of the animated cartoon and featured fluid animation, as well as new moves the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles could do such as dashing, slides, aerial attacks (other than just flying kicks) and special throws.

But through all the games based on the first Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles animated series, only the four turtles themselves are playable, except for the Tournament Fighting games that was a versus fighting game. And certainly, April O'Neil was either a background character or even the usual damsel-in-distress that needed to be rescued. Gamescom reveal Earlier this year, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Shredder's Revenge was announced. Developed by Tribute Games and Dotemu in association with Nickelodeon, Shredder's Revenge is intended as a successor to the old beat-em-ups produced by Konami.

But aside from the visual and gameplay style, Shredder's Revenge is also taking a page from another classic beat-em-up that received the modern treatment, Streets of Rage 4.That is by introducing new playable characters to the game. Aside from the four pizza-loving Ninja Turtles, April O'Neil is joining in on the fight.

April sports her iconic banana yellow jumpsuit and carries a microphone. Her character model is slightly different from her animated look, with more stylized features and anime-like expressions and proportions. The Channel 6 reporter attacks with her fists, elbows, knees, and kicks. Her move set has a similar feel as Chun Li from the Street Fighter games. April also uses her mic and TV camera as weapons. She also has unique animations and combos, depending on which of the Ninja Turtles she is performing a move with.

Dotemu went on to send an explanation as to the delay of the release of Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Shredder's Revenge and thanking the fans anticipating the release of the game: We know that TMNT means a lot to you, we hear you and we take into account your impatience, as well as your passion and your trust in us for this game. For these reasons, we prefer to take our time to deliver a game that suits you (and us). If adding more exciting content to this game means taking more time, then we'll take it to make sure the result is worthy of your expectations. A BIG thank you for your passion, fan arts, daily kind messages that show your unconditional support, love and trust in us. With the reveal that April is a playable character, could this also mean other characters will be added? Master Splinter, Casey Jones, the Neutrino Teens from Dimension X, Bugman, and many more are potential candidates from the classic cartoon. Even Batman isn't out of the question, since he teamed up with the Turtles in Batman vs. Ninja Turtles (2019).

Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Shredder's Revenge is beating its way into the Nintendo Switch and on Windows PC sometime in 2022.