Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles - Arcade Attack

Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Arcade Attack for Nintendo DS is a side-scrolling beat-'em-up released by Ubisoft in November 2009. Developed and published by Ubisoft, it arrived during the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles franchise's 25th-anniversary celebrations and takes its cue from the fast, crowd-clearing action of the earlier coin-operated Turtles games. Rather than adapting a film, this Nintendo DS entry tells an original adventure, presented between battles with lightly animated black-and-white comic-book panels.

The action puts Leonardo, Donatello, Raphael, and Michelangelo back on the streets of New York City to take on gangs and other hostile forces. Players select one of the four brothers, whose individual statistics distinguish the available fighters, then advance through stages by defeating groups of opponents. The basic Nintendo DS controls divide movement and defense across jumping, blocking, attacking, and kicking, while button combinations expand the attack options. It is a straightforward brawler built around closing the distance, managing groups, and keeping pressure on enemies from one encounter to the next.

Arcade Attack uses a special-attack gauge beneath the health display. Filling it allows a Turtle to trigger a more powerful move, and partners can combine their efforts for tag-team melee attacks. Stages also contain helpful pickups such as pizza and other health-restoring items, along with breakable objects and throwable items. The game scores performance as players progress; those points can unlock additional material and can also be spent on a chance to continue after both fighters are down.

Cooperative play is a central part of the Nintendo DS version. Two nearby systems can connect through local wireless so two players can work through the story together, with no four-player option. When one Turtle loses all health during cooperative play, the other has a brief opportunity to revive them before a continue is required. The game also includes a Survival Mode to unlock after completing the story, giving the arcade-style combat a separate challenge beyond the main campaign.

Its presentation connects two corners of TMNT history: the intermissions deliberately echo the franchise's original black-and-white comics, while the in-game character and enemy visuals draw on the then-current animated series. Opponents include the Purple Dragons, and Hun appears as a boss, grounding the game in that animated continuity. Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Arcade Attack remains a Nintendo DS-only, compact tribute to the series' beat-'em-up tradition, designed for solo play or local wireless cooperation rather than as a port of Konami's original arcade title.