Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Shredder’s Revenge feels like the pinnacle of DotEmu’s work so far, a colourful and joyous brawler that captured the spirit of Konami’s arcade games, ladled on the fan-service, and was a co-op blast. Sure it relies heavily on nostalgia but, as Paul McCartney once sang, you’ll be older too.
The game met with huge commercial as well as critical success, so the announcement of DLC always felt like an inevitability. The direction DotEmu’s gone in, however, perfectly aligns with that strategy of giving the fans what they want: In this case, a popular Japanese comic character that has featured in various TMNT crossovers in the comics and animations.
Usagi Yojimbo has been starring in his own comic book since 1984 and is a samurai rabbit which, if you’ve already accepted the concept of ninja turtles trained by a rat, seems fair enough. Most of the trailer for the new DLC is dedicated to showing off his OP-looking moveset slicing haplessly through Foot Clan flunkies. The blurb also says the DLC brings “new playable fighters,” plural, so expect more announcements closer to release.
The DLC is called Dimension Shellshock and sees Shredder “seeking to conquer the multiverse itself!” One of the other DLC aspects DotEmu’s hyping up is various character palette and costume swaps, including retro-style sprites reminiscent of older TMNT games, and my guess would be that the studio is going to push the nostalgia into overdrive by having its Turtles battle through classic scenes from older games. Total guess, that, but the PR fluff saying that our heroes “need to jump between dimensions” certainly seems on those lines.
The DLC will also bring an unrevealed new game mode, new tracks from composer Tee Lopes (the Shredder’s Revenge soundtrack is shelltastic), and various unlockable looks for the turtles. The latter will also be added free of charge for existing owners who don’t want to buy the DLC. Dimension Shellshock can be wishlisted on Steam, though it currently has no price or firmer release date than “2023”.