PLAY3.DE interview about challenges and development details

Last year was with Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Shredder’s Revenge announced a brawler that aims to capture the feel of the old cartoon series. PLAY3.DE was allowed to conduct an e-mail interview with Frederic Gemus, who works on the title as a game/level designer at Tribute Games Inc., the developer studio responsible. What he told us about the creation of the game, the nod to the classic animated series and the challenges during the development so far, you can find out in the following lines.

PLAY3: How did the collaboration with Dotemu and Nickelodeon on Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Shredder’s Revenge come about? And was it clear from the start that you wanted to orientate yourself towards the classic games, or did you also experiment with other ideas in the early development phase?

Frederic Gemus: The Tribute Games team always wanted to make a spiritual sequel to the classic “TMNT” arcade games, as some people from the team had already worked on the series (“TMNT” on the Game Boy Advance) and a full beat’em -up wanted to do arcade style.

We eventually pitched the idea to Nickelodeon, who had similar conversations with Dotemu: when they saw that they had two passionate teams of fans who wanted to work on the series, they introduced us to each other and suggested we work together! As soon as we met up with Dotemu we knew we share the same passion for bringing retro gaming back into the modern age and it was a perfect match!

The development of video games is known to be very time-consuming. Were there any designs or ideas that you would have liked to see incorporated into the game but ultimately had to remove – if so, which ones?

Frederic: There are always a few ideas that fall by the wayside, sometimes because we want to focus on other core features, but sometimes because they just don’t fit the game we’re developing. We’ve made small cuts here and there, of course, but I think the biggest ones have been in the game modes. We decided to focus on two game modes that fit perfectly with the TMNT experience, rather than having a few more that would end up being less interesting.

In a recent interview, you revealed that your game is meant to be a love letter to the classic animated series. What exactly can the fans look forward to and what was particularly important to you in order to achieve this goal?

Frederic: We’ve been working really hard to include more characters from the classic cartoons and other Easter Eggs so this game can be the ultimate tribute (pun intended) to this generation of Turtles! We want fans to have fun discovering all the Easter Eggs and references to this era, but also to finally see some of their favorite characters from the series in the game!

What do you think of the development of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles series over the last few years? Are there elements from recent animated series or facets of comics that have served as inspiration for your game – if so, which ones?

Frederic: TMNT is such a creative universe that it’s not surprising that there are so many different versions of what it can be. While it always remains something familiar, it can also be very different! I personally love the new series, Rise of the TMNT, and the comic, The Last Ronin! While we love these new versions to recapture the perfect classic arcade experience, we felt we should stay in the 1987 “TMNT” era and explore aspects that weren’t in the previous games.

In recent years, the Turtles have had little success with their video games. How do you intend to revitalize the series and delight both old and new fans?

Frederic: We were passionate about the idea of ​​TMNT: Shredder’s Revenge and I think players will be able to see it: a game made by fans for fans! Like a lot of gamers out there, we wanted to play a TMNT game in the style of classic arcade titles, and I think our main strength at Tribute Games is not building games the way they were back then, but building them like that make them how they’re remembered: Older games sometimes had flaws, a lack of depth, or balancing issues.

At Tribute Games we work hard to make our games feel the way you remember them, but with all the modern enhancements you would expect today. We’re also making sure players of all skill levels can jump in and have fun, either through simple button mashing or by pulling off crazy combos!

Compared to the classic arcade games, April and Splinter are playable for the first time in Shredder’s Revenge. What prompted you to make that decision, and are there things you were particularly keen to incorporate into the characters’ playstyle?

Frederic: We really wanted to make sure we improved on the previous arcade games, and having new characters has been a tangible improvement for us from the start! Since all four brothers are turtles, we thought that introducing April as a playable character would give us the opportunity to have a faster and more agile character since she isn’t a character that wears a shell!

Also, after spending so much time with the Turtles, it made sense that April would eventually train with them and we thought fans would enjoy playing with her! As for Splinter, we knew he should be a character that’s a bit more methodical and slower, but very powerful and awesome at creating combos!

The old arcade games were often known for their high level of difficulty. How would you describe the difficulty of Shredder’s Revenge and how does it change depending on the number of players?

Frederic: Multiple difficulty levels were considered when developing the game to ensure that the default difficulty is suitable for players of different skill levels: We want parents to share the TMNT universe they experienced growing up with their children be able! To keep the game challenging even in multiplayer mode, it adapts to the number of players in real time, bringing more or new enemy patterns to the screen or giving bosses more LP. This way you never play 4 players against 1 enemy, but 4 players against 4 enemies.

You already revealed that there will be more than 20 bosses in the game. Which boss was a special challenge and why?

Frederic: Developing a final boss is always a difficult challenge, because you don’t want to be unfair, but you still need to increase the difficulty. It’s always difficult to come up with new mechanics and twists that are fun and don’t frustrate the player, and I think we managed to create an exciting finale for the game. Of course I won’t reveal any more now and we’ll save the surprise for later!

What was the most enjoyable part of making Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Shredder’s Revenge? And what was the biggest challenge for you personally when working on the game?

Frederic: Developing a multiplayer game is already a very difficult task, but being hit by a global pandemic right from the start made this challenge even greater. We knew we had to nail the multiplayer aspect perfectly, so we made sure everything we developed was multiplayer focused.

This way the game was quickly playable in multiplayer and that turned into one of the most rewarding moments of the production as we could actually all play together even though we were all working from home. The funny thing is that online multiplayer is mostly introduced later in a game’s production cycle, which creates new challenges for teams, but in our case, the pandemic helped us because we were forced to implement it right at the beginning!

Thank you for taking the time for this interview.

Note: This interview has been shortened and condensed.

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