The best Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles games are almost all built on the same idea: put four players on a couch and let them punch through a side-scrolling city together. Four decades of TMNT games have produced genuinely great beat-’em-ups, a few smart experiments, and a long trail of licensed misfires.
Last updated: September 10, 2026
The Turtles have been a video game licence since 1989, and the franchise has an unusually clear pattern: when a TMNT game leans into arcade co-op, it tends to be very good, and when it tries to be a solo 3D action game, it tends not to be. This ranking weights how well each game holds up to play now, not nostalgia.
The best TMNT games, ranked
Shredder’s Revenge takes the top spot as the best-reviewed and most accessible entry, with Turtles in Time just behind it as the genre template it is openly built on. Everything below those two is a question of what you want: a preservation package, a Genesis-era alternative, or one of the recent experiments outside the beat-’em-up format.
| Rank | Game | Year | Platforms | Critical standing |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | TMNT: Shredder’s Revenge | 2022 | PC, Switch, PS4/PS5, Xbox One/Series | 87 Metacritic (Switch and Xbox One); 85 PS4, 84 PC |
| 2 | TMNT: Turtles in Time (arcade) / TMNT IV (SNES) | 1991 arcade / 1992 SNES | Arcade, SNES | Pre-Metacritic; the widely cited high point of the arcade era |
| 3 | TMNT: The Cowabunga Collection | 2022 | PC, Switch, PS4/PS5, Xbox One/Series | 85 Switch, 82 Xbox Series X, 78 PS5 |
| 4 | TMNT (arcade) | 1989 | Arcade | Highest-grossing dedicated arcade game of 1990 in the US |
| 5 | TMNT: The Hyperstone Heist | 1992 | Sega Genesis | Pre-Metacritic; the Genesis counterpart to Turtles in Time |
| 6 | TMNT: Tactical Takedown | 2025 | PC, Switch, Xbox Series X|S | The first turn-based TMNT game; well received, niche |
| 7 | TMNT: Splintered Fate | 2023 Apple Arcade / 2024-25 consoles | PC, Switch, PS4/PS5, Xbox | A Hades-style roguelite; positive but divisive |
| 8 | TMNT: Mutants Unleashed | 2024 | PC, Switch, PS4/PS5, Xbox | 62 Metacritic from 24 critics |
1. Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Shredder’s Revenge (2022)
Shredder’s Revenge is the best TMNT game ever made and the easiest to recommend to anyone. Tribute Games and publisher Dotemu released it on June 16, 2022 for PC, Switch, PS4 and Xbox One, with a PS5 version on November 15, 2022. It supports six-player co-op and, per Metacritic, holds 87 on Switch (28 critics) and Xbox One (19), 85 on PS4 (47) and 84 on PC (49), checked September 10, 2026.
It also sold: Dotemu confirmed more than one million copies in the first week, helped by a day-one Xbox Game Pass release. The roster covers Leonardo, Donatello, Raphael, Michelangelo, April O’Neil and Master Splinter, with Casey Jones unlockable, and the game’s Steam listing documents the later add-ons: the Dimension Shellshock expansion (August 31, 2023) and the Radical Reptiles pack (September 24, 2024) added Usagi Yojimbo, Karai, Mona Lisa and Mondo Gecko.
2. Turtles in Time (1991 arcade) and TMNT IV (1992 SNES)
Turtles in Time is the game every modern TMNT beat-’em-up is measured against. Konami put it in arcades in 1991 and brought it to the Super Nintendo in 1992 as TMNT IV, and its time-travel structure gave each stage a genuinely different look at a point when most side-scrollers reused the same city block.
The SNES version is the one most people remember, and it is the version preserved in The Cowabunga Collection. It is worth knowing that the arcade and SNES releases differ in stages and bosses — they are not the same game with different pixels.
3. TMNT: The Cowabunga Collection (2022)
If you want the history rather than one game, this is the purchase. Konami’s collection, released August 30, 2022, packages 13 classic TMNT titles with save states, rewind, a watchable strategy-guide archive and online play for several entries. It scored 85 on Switch, 82 on Xbox Series X and 78 on PS5 on Metacritic.
It is also the only legitimate way to play most of these games on modern hardware, which matters for a licensed franchise whose back catalogue has repeatedly been pulled from digital storefronts when licences lapsed.
4. Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (1989 arcade)
The original Konami arcade cabinet is where the whole template starts: four players at once, each Turtle with slightly different reach and speed, and a straight line through Manhattan to Shredder. It became the highest-grossing dedicated arcade game of 1990 in the United States and Konami’s highest-grossing arcade title.
Its 1990 NES port was retitled TMNT II: The Arcade Game to avoid confusion with the notoriously punishing 1989 NES game, and most home ports cut the player count from four to two.
5-8. The Genesis alternative and the modern experiments
The Hyperstone Heist (Genesis, 1992) is often written off as a Turtles in Time port, and it is not one: it has different stages, different pacing and longer levels. It is the best TMNT game on Sega hardware and worth playing on its own terms.
The three most recent entries all step outside the beat-’em-up. Tactical Takedown (Strange Scaffold, PC on May 22, 2025; Switch and Xbox Series X|S on August 14, 2025) is the first turn-based TMNT game, and plays each Turtle as a separate tactical puzzle rather than a co-op brawl. Splintered Fate is an openly Hades-inspired roguelite, which began on Apple Arcade in 2023 before reaching Switch in 2024 and PlayStation on May 20, 2025 and Xbox on June 24, 2025. Mutants Unleashed (October 18, 2024) is the weakest of the three, at 62 on Metacritic from 24 critics.
Mutants Unleashed is the clearest illustration of the pattern this ranking keeps running into. It is a tie-in to the Mutant Mayhem film, built largely as a solo 3D action game, and it landed at 62 — 16 points below the lowest-scoring version of The Cowabunga Collection and 25 below Shredder’s Revenge on Switch. The two pre-Metacritic entries in the top four have no comparable score, so this is a comparison across the modern releases only. That gap is the whole argument of the next section.
The pattern nobody mentions: TMNT games work when they are built for a couch
Line the franchise up chronologically and one thing is consistent across 35 years: TMNT games succeed in direct proportion to how well they support multiple players in the same room, and they fail when they chase the solo 3D action template that dominates licensed superhero games.
The four highest-regarded entries here — the 1989 arcade game, Turtles in Time, The Hyperstone Heist and Shredder’s Revenge — are all local co-op brawlers. The genre fits the source material in a way that is easy to miss: TMNT is an ensemble about four siblings with different temperaments, so a format that puts four people on screen with different reach and speed is doing characterisation through mechanics. A single-Turtle 3D action game throws that away and keeps only the licence.
That is also why Tactical Takedown is more interesting than its niche reception suggests. It abandons co-op entirely, but it keeps the idea that the four Turtles are mechanically distinct — which is the part that actually matters. If you came to the Turtles through the comics rather than the games, our pieces on how each brother’s personality has evolved and the most underrated TMNT villains cover the source material these games keep drawing from. Collectors may also want our guide to the rarest TMNT action figures.
Frequently Asked Questions
What is the best TMNT game of all time?
Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Shredder’s Revenge (2022). It is the best-reviewed entry in the franchise at 87 on Metacritic on Switch and Xbox One, supports six-player co-op, and sold over a million copies in its first week.
Is Turtles in Time still worth playing?
Yes. The 1991 arcade original and its 1992 SNES version remain the template for the genre, and the SNES release is preserved with save states and rewind in The Cowabunga Collection, which is the easiest legitimate way to play it on modern hardware.
How many games are in the TMNT Cowabunga Collection?
Thirteen classic Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles titles, released August 30, 2022 on PC, Switch, PS4, PS5, Xbox One and Xbox Series X|S, with save states, rewind, online play for several entries and an archive of scanned strategy guides.
What is the most recent TMNT game?
Tactical Takedown, which launched on PC on May 22, 2025 and reached Switch and Xbox Series X|S on August 14, 2025, alongside Splintered Fate’s console ports the same year. Check the publishers’ channels for anything announced since this page was last updated on September 10, 2026.
Which TMNT game has the best co-op?
Shredder’s Revenge, which supports up to six players simultaneously, online or locally. The 1989 Konami arcade cabinet supported four, though most home ports of it reduced that to two.
