Game Reviews on GamingFluid

Review - Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Smash-Up

Fri, 01 May 2026 00:00:00 +0000

Release Year: 2007
Developers: Game Arts, Ubisoft Genre: Fighting
Players: 4 (co-op / versus) Platform: Nintendo Wii Ports: PlayStation 2

In 2007, Ubisoft released Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles Smash-Up for the Nintendo Wii and PlayStation 2. Smash-Up is a party style tournament fighter which pits familiar characters from across the TMNT universe against each other in a 4-player fight to the finish. I picked up the Wii version a while ago and reviewed it on my old blog, and I think it’s time to bring this one across to GamingFluid.

The sincerest form of flattery

It’s not a surprise that Turtles Smash-Up is modelled on Super Smash Bros. - it’s even got Smash in the title! And by all accounts, that was the intent going in: developers Game Arts (known more for their classic RPG series like Grandia and Lunar) were one of several studios who contributed to the series’ Wii entry, Super Smash Bros. Brawl., and Smash-Up looks, feels and plays very much like Brawl. Even design elements like the character select screen, name entry and the announcer’s voice feel copy-pasted from that game… not that that’s a negative exactly, as it seems to have been designed specifically so that Brawl players can switch over to Turtles seamlessly and immediately feel at home.

The game can be played with pretty much every Wii controller configuration, from just the Wii Remote (either on its side or paired with a Nunchuk) to the Classic Controller and, naturally, the GameCube Controller too - the most beloved of Smash Bros. controllers. I stuck to the GameCube Controller, as I felt that this was the intended way to play; the game was also designed for the PlayStation 2 and its DualShock 2 controllers, after all, and it makes practically zero use of any Wii motion or pointer control elements. Up to 4 players can play on a single console. For a full and fair disclosure, I will note that Turtles Smash-Up had online multiplayer when it was launched, but this is no longer available due to the discontinuation of all Wii online services some time ago, so I was unable to try it.

Any excuse for a Brawl

Although clearly built for multiplayer tournament or party style gameplay, the game does feature a single-player arcade mode, with the flimsiest of plots: Master Splinter has organised a friendly tournament, with the four Turtles, himself, and friends April O’Neil and Casey Jones as participants. Naturally, it’s interrupted by Shredder and his daughter Karai, plus the assembled hordes of the Foot Clan… but really it’s all just an excuse to have everyone fight each other, and that’s absolutely fine. Arcade mode is great for learning how each character plays as you first take on the other Turtles, and then progressively harder AI opponents, culminating of course with a battle against Shredder.

The game’s story doesn’t correspond to any one Turtles series or movie. Released around the time of the CGI TMNT movie, it takes much of its visual style, character designs, and an unlockable character - Raphael’s “Nightwatcher” alter-ego - from that production, but mixes in elements from the 2003 cartoon series like the Krang-like Utrominator and the Fugitoid, a friendly robot who shows up in cutscenes. All characters other than the Turtles, Splinter, April and Casey must be unlocked, usually by completing arcade mode with any character; unlockable characters don’t get to play arcade mode (which saves on ending movies, I guess), but can be used in all other modes.

Arcade mode cutscenes are animated as motion comics in a style designed to evoke the original Eastman & Laird comics. This feels like a choice that’s half stylistic and half cost-cutting; although the storyboards are well put together and tell the game’s brief story adequately, they look very basic and clash with the graphics of the game. It would have been nice to have seen some CG renders, even if they had to be still frames or storyboards.

A mixed-up Melee

As much as I’d like to write “just like Smash Bros.” in every paragraph, this doesn’t quite hold true when it comes to game mechanics. Each character has a normal attack and a strong attack, A and B respectively, which can be modified by pressing or holding a direction button. So far, so good - all familiar Smash concepts. But the strong attacks don’t have the same kind of identity as Smash Bros.’ B-buttons specials. Although each is unique to the character, they don’t feel as distinct or flashy, and in some cases I had trouble getting specific moves to come out on cue - the game sometimes has trouble detecting a stationary B+direction press versus one in motion, so you can wind up throwing out the wrong move and getting yourself into trouble. Once you get into a rhythm with your chosen character’s controls, though, it’s pretty fluid, especially once you learn to integrate blocks and throws into your fighting style.

Matches are most often decided by a depleted health bar, with falls into pits and “smashes” off of the stage edges being almost incidental and difficult to rely upon. It’s usually easier just to get into a groove and beat your opponents down with brute strength than to use stage elements, and even if you do find yourself falling into a pit, most characters - being ninjas of some description - can wall-jump to safety. Speaking of stages: they’re well designed, if a little small compared to some of Smash Bros.’ more expansive environments, and most stages have a gimmick. For many of them it’s a Mortal Kombat style crash through the floorboards to another arena, but at least two stages feature an obnoxious crocodile that will jump out from the water and eat anyone unlucky enough to be in its path, resulting in instant death!

Items drop randomly from the sky in crates (which must be broken open) or simply spawn at random. Highlights include an electric field that saps the health of anyone it touches, throwing knives and bombs, an odd interdimensional claw-mark that must be a reference to something I’m not familiar with and deals massive damage, and caltrops which make whoever steps on them hop up and down clutching their foot! Item spawn rate and type is fully customisable for versus matches, which is great if you want to limit certain types or just do away with them entirely and settle your fights on skill alone.

Ultimately, only for Turtles fans

Turtles Smash-Up even goes so far as to throw in a trophy collection mode… say it with me, just like Smash Bros. But here you spend “shells”, a currency which you win from mini-games played between rounds of arcade mode, to play a different mini-game (a shooting gallery - the only nod to the Wii’s pointer controls in the whole game) where you have to hit targets to win individual parts for figurines of Turtles characters. There doesn’t appear to be any purpose to doing this other than to fill a digital trophy room; unlike Smash Bros.’ trophies, there’s no history text or extra details attached to the figurines. And the hoop-jumping involved in having to play one set of mini-games to play another set of mini-games feels like padding: why not simply have the regular mini-games unlock the figurines?

Other unlockables include character profiles, comic book covers, concept art, trailers and alternate costumes for all of the characters. These all have long-term progression goals attached to them - play X number of matches, earn a certain number of shells, etc. There’s also a bonus character accessible through a cheat code: being a 2000s-era Ubisoft game, it’s one of the Rabbids, those proto-Minion annoyances from Rayman spin-off series Raving Rabbids, who comes equipped with ninja kitchen utensils…

All of this results in a fair approximation of Smash Bros. style gameplay; it’s perfectly playable, if a little rough around the edges, and those seeking a fun 4-player party fighter experience will get pretty much exactly what it says on the tin. But despite the obvious and largely affectionate mimicry of the Smash Bros. formula, it was never going to be quite as polished as Nintendo’s flagship fighter - I doubt we’ll see this game in e-sports tournaments any time soon.

Turtles Smash-Up suffers from a lack of identity: it does nothing to distinguish itself from its inspiration. I’ve spent roughly a thousand words here trying to describe what makes this game unique and special, but to be honest, it could be summed up in just six: “It’s Smash Bros., but with Turtles”. If that’s enough for you, then you’ll have a good time with it, at least for a little while. If not, then there’s no real point in playing it aside from seeing the novelty factor of the Turtles characters - who it’s a pretty safe bet will never feature in Smash Bros. - in a somewhat familiar fighting game. It’s a shame that the developers didn’t have higher ambitions than that.

Scorecard (out of 5)

Arcade Adventures - PuLiRuLa and In the Hunt

Mon, 27 Apr 2026 00:00:00 +0000

More Arcade Adventures from myself and my intrepid friend Alma! This time we took on two lesser-known arcade games: first, Taito’s quirky side-scroller PuLiRuLa; followed by In the Hunt, a nautical explosion simulator by our friends at Irem.

PuLiRuLa

Release Year: 1991
Developers: Taito
Genre: Beat ’em up
Players: 2 (co-op)
Platform: Arcade - Taito F2 System
Ports: Saturn, PlayStation

PuLiRuLa is a weird game, starting with the premise: an evil puppet has stolen the key to time itself from Zac and Mel’s quaint little village, and it’s up to them to chase after him and get it back, armed with “magic sticks” that can banish enemies with a single strike! The different locations they travel through each have their own surreal enemies and bosses: a desert town ruled by a fire-breathing snail, an icy glacier where you fight a face wearing thigh boots, a town that’s been invaded by digitised photos of real people bouncing around the screen, and the final boss - a cloaked magician with a globe for a head. Enemies turn into harmless animals when you hit them, and you can scoop them up for extra points.

It’s got that Parodius-like quality of “anything could show up”, and that’s its main appeal - it’s just weirdness for weirdness’s sake. The game mechanics are incredibly simple for a side-scroller, with only one attack, no difference in playable characters, and a desperation move that simply clears the screen. Naturally, this arrives with a random weird effect: summoning a really buff guy, pulling all of the enemies into a microwave to cook them to death, or simply nuking the town from orbit (it’s the only way to make sure)! With this simplicity of control, it seems to be aimed at young children, almost a “baby’s first beat ’em up”.

As one hit kills everything, the only challenge is just crowd control for the waves of regular enemies, and learning the patterns of the bosses so as not to get hit and preserve your credits. It’s also incredibly short; there’s only six stages and they can be beaten in about 15 minutes, with the game looping round and round as a score challenge. Still, the art style is cute enough to be worth the diversion - reminding me a lot of Panic on the Sega Mega CD - and there’s at least some replayability in the random effects that could happen in each fight.

You can see our playthrough on YouTube below:

Screenshots

In the Hunt

Release Year: 1993
Developers: Irem
Genre: Horizontal shooter
Players: 2 (co-op)
Platform: Arcade - Irem M-92
Ports: Saturn, PlayStation, PC

A submarine-themed horizontal shooter, In the Hunt has you fight off wave after wave of enemies armed with two primary weapons: front-launching torpedoes, and upwards-firing missiles. Cleverly, in order to hit airborne enemies you’ll have to surface in order for your missiles to have the desired effect, or else they’ll just cause a small plume of water to explode upwards which might not catch skyward planes. You can also dive underneath enemies and use the missiles to take them out; bosses are often tackled this way, with one player bombarding them from the front while the other sneaks underneath.

The game looks like a predecessor to Metal Slug (and it should, given that most of the team went on to form Nazca and create that series): the clear blue water of the opening levels soon gives way to industrial grey-beige-bronze tones as you get closer to the enemy base. Enemies are the usual arrangement of subs, aircraft, weapons platforms and big machine bosses… although one level has you diving to the depths and encountering a giant stone golem which chases you up to the surface! Destroyed enemies drop power-ups like different weapon types: rapid fire, wide shot, sea mines, but sadly there’s no screen-clearing bomb available here.

While it looks great and plays solidly, performance is an issue: there’s so many explosions happening on screen at the same time that it becomes hard to follow your own sub, and by the later stages so many enemies appear at once that the game suffers from drops in framerate - something very rare for custom-built arcade hardware. The optimal strategy by that point is just to spam both attacks continuously, as there’s no penalty for wasting ammo and you’re bound to hit something anyway. Unfortunately, “finger fatigue” soon becomes an issue!

One last observation: you’ll be travelling from left to right at all times, can only fire forwards and upwards, and can’t turn around. None of the enemies think to attack you from the rear… until the final boss, which flips back and forth and puts you on the run! I would have liked to have seen more surprises like this (and the aforementioned vertical chase with the golem), because the core gameplay is fun - it just gets a bit too repetitive.

Catch our full playthrough on YouTube:

Screenshots

Arcade Adventures - Undercover Cops

Mon, 30 Mar 2026 00:00:00 +0000

Every week me and my amazing friend Alma go on Arcade Adventures, trying out some classic (and not so classic) arcade games and giving our verdicts. The whole playthrough will be uploaded to YouTube so you can see how we did!

This time we checked out Irem’s 1992 beat ’em up Undercover Cops. This one was also ported to the SNES, but only in Japan, so we tried the arcade original in English… which we later found out was probably not the right move! You can see our playthrough on YouTube below:

Amy’s Verdict

Undercover Cops is a standard side-scrolling beat ’em up, and it’s very clearly influenced by Final Fight and Streets of Rage 2. It’s got very similar mechanics, with combat based around a mix of normal punches and kicks, and grapples and throws that are important for crowd control. There’s the usual desperation move too, which drains some health but cuts through enemies around you. Although it’s very satisfying to see moves land and enemies go flying, I found the inputs a little stiff; it was hard to get the timing right, and easy to leave myself open by whiffing a move that I thought would connect but came out just a bit too late. It made it feel like I had to be very deliberate with my moves and couldn’t quickly adapt to incoming enemies.

The graphical style and setting are very reminiscent of the post-apocalyptic landscapes of Fist of the North Star (Hokuto no Ken); the boss characters especially seem to belong in that kind of grimy, junkyard-scavenger world. It’s a little odd as the game never talks about such a disaster, but apparently this is what New York will look like in 2045! There are girders and concrete posts lying around everywhere, but they have to be pulled out of the ground first before you can use them as weapons - which again leaves you open to attack, but this lends a bit of strategy to it, encouraging you to time it so you’re not interrupted.

As an arcade game it’s not too hungry for your coins: enemies have well-telegraphed moves with patterns that can be learned, and only the bosses seem to have extra “cheating” behaviour, like one boss that obviously reads your inputs so that he can counter-attack you perfectly. While it’s a good length and doesn’t feel like a slog, it could have benefitted from more variety in enemy types; the last level in particular throws dozens of the same five or six basic enemy types at you.

Overall, I had fun with this one. The main problem is that it doesn’t do anything better than its contemporaries like Final Fight, so the only selling point is its characters and setting. Still, it provides a solid hour or so of brutal beat ’em up action.

Version Difference

As I mentioned before, we played the English version, which (rather uncommonly) came out before the Japanese version. This meant that Irem were able to add more moves and features to that version - a rare case of the “original” version being the wrong one to go for! It included wake-up attacks, extra desperation moves and different throws, plus more voice samples and better instruments in the soundtrack. The SNES version would retain all of the Japanese features, and a later arcade release called the “Renewal Version” added the extra moves to the English version.

Alma’s Verdict

You can read Alma’s entire review of Undercover Cops on her blog - here’s some highlights!

"This is the NTSC version of the game we are playing and as such, we are missing out on a good chunk of moves that were in the Japanese version of the game, already a gigantic misfire for this game. We missed out on a second special attack, dash jump attacks and various throwing moves! BUT stupid choices aside, how is the game we got here? Honestly, it's pretty good. The fighting itself, the core of a beat 'em up game, is very solid and super punchy. When you land hits in this game it feels great and tossing an enemy after a small combo is the cherry on top of it all. This is a game where fighting feels great, full stop.
To quote Amy about this: It's like they tried to make a Streets of Rage game but inspired by Fist of the North Star, and I have to fully agree on this. It's super gritty and weird in just the right places, like how some of the bosses are complete freaks. I like it and it fits its theme perfectly."

Screenshots

Review - American Gladiators for Sega Genesis

Fri, 27 Mar 2026 00:00:00 +0000

This review was previously posted on my older blog two years ago, when Gladiators had just been brough back by the BBC. We’re now three series into a wildly successful revival, so on the eve of this year’s Grand Final, I thought I’d bring this one back!

The BBC have successfully revived Gladiators - the sports entertainment show where members of the public take on “gladiators”, elite sportspeople, in a variety of physical endurance games and events - which was a mainstay on ITV through much of the 90s here in the UK. It was based on the US late-night syndicated show American Gladiators, which developed a bit of a cult following but was never quite as massive as its international cousins. The UK’s version of Gladiators scaled the whole affair up, taking a low-budget, critically-panned schedule filler and making it essential Saturday evening family viewing. It’s hard to describe it in just a paragraph how huge Gladiators was, and the gladiators themselves - a motley crew of fitness instructors, former competitive athletes and bodybuilders - became household names nearly overnight.

The story of the rise of the Gladiators in the UK could fill books (and probably has done!) - but that’s not the story I’m here to tell. Today we’re going right back to the series’ roots… back to the USA, where the Mega Drive is known as the Sega Genesis, and where in 1991 GameTek published a video game version of the original show. It’s Mega Drive Monday, and this is American Gladiators.

Contenders… READY!

To start off with, the game gives you a choice of Male or Female - although in both cases you’ll play the same events, so it feels simply aesthetic. Tournament mode pits you against CPU opponents in six events; win and you’ll play the same set of six in the next round, lose and it’s Game Over - or at least, straight back to the SEGA logo, as the game never actually tells you you’ve been eliminated. Head to head mode lets you take on a friend directly in one of the events - though only the ones where both contenders are in play together have true 2-player mode, mostly you’re taking turns battling gladiators.

Graphically the game looks fine, if a little basic. The sprites for the gladiators are virtually the same whether you’re facing Ice or Gold, Nitro or Laser - in fact if the game didn’t tell you before the round who your opponent will be, you’d never know the difference. Event arenas are spartan and grey, which matches the look of the American Gladiators series but is a bit drab for someone used to the flashier UK version!

In terms of music, the game has one single tune and plays it non-stop through every event and menu. It’s got a muddy, metallic bassline (characteristic of many Western-developed Genesis games) and a fast beat in a style that calls to mind nightly sports coverage. It’s appropriate to the game but gets very repetitve.

Beyond its looks and sound, each event plays completely differently, so let’s go through them…

Assasult: tennis balls at dawn

Known as Danger Zone in the UK version, contenders run between weapon stations trying to score a hit on the gladiator, while dodging their high-speed tennis balls. It’s one of the more technical games on the show and never a particular favourite of mine; this holds true in the video game, which suffers from an awful control scheme that has to practically be memorized: press B to switch to “weapon mode” at a station, then position yourself in front of the weapon and press C to pick it up, then use the D-pad to aim and B to fire, then C to put it down, B to return to field mode, run to the next station, repeat. All the while dodging shots from the gladiator - get hit once and the game ends. I was so busy trying to remember which button to press to get the weapon working that I barely had time to aim and fire the thing, never mind avoid getting hit!

Joust: weapon of choice, giant cotton bud

Called “Duel” in the UK, this event quickly became the show’s iconic centrepiece: a one-on-one battle with oversized foam cudgels atop small circular platforms, the simple task is to knock the gladiator off their platform before they can knock you off yours. Fittingly, in the game this event boasts the largest and most detailed spritework, and a pretty decent control scheme reminiscent of early boxing games: hold B to enter attack mode, or let go of it to remain in a guard stance, and press a direction to execute one of eight offensive or defensive moves. The game doesn’t give you much of a hint as to what your opponent is going to do so it’s just a question of finding an attack that works and scoring hits while randomly blocking and hoping you’ve got the timing right. I think I had the most fun with this event, but found it a bit unpredictable.

The Wall: BRING ON THE- no wait wrong show

Possibly the simplest concept in the show: race up a climbing wall and don’t let the gladiator catch you. In game it’s pretty simple too, although for some reason the game forces you to mash the B button while holding the D-pad in the right direction, and your contender does tend to get stuck on corners a lot. Not much else can really go wrong here and it’s otherwise unremarkable.

Atlaspheres: or, man vs. hamster ball

One of the show’s big spectacles, competitors are sealed inside giant metal spheres and have to roll around the arena, the contenders trying to hit target marks and the gladiators aiming to prevent them from scoring. This one readily translates to a video game: the controls are just right, the atlaspheres feel weighty and have good momentum, and the clash when a gladiator gets in your way is very satisfying - if frustrating! The only downside here is the incredibly restricted viewport: you only get a tiny square viewing window. Having a full view of the arena would have been fantasic - with some tweaks, you could make a full complete game of just this one event.

Powerball: a real lottery

Another big arena game, Powerball is a kind of cross between basketball and American football - grab a ball from the hopper, try to deposit it into a scoring basket. The gladiators are there to tackle you, hit the deck and your ball is out of play - run to the opposite side and try again. And that last aspect - that you always have to run to the other hopper after scoring or getting tackled - is what kills the video game version here. The game doesn’t give you any hint that you have to change sides, you just won’t pick up a ball when you try - I was standing in front of the wrong hopper mashing B like a lemon on more than one occasion. Compounding the problem is the need to be precisely in front of the hopper to pick up the ball, and the same for scoring - the movement controls just aren’t precise enough and most of my shots ended up “missing”. You’re stuck with the same tiny viewport as Atlaspheres too, hardly fitting for a field event like this.

The Eliminator: max finger stamina!

The traditional final event, a race around an assault course where the contenders face off with each other. The game version preserves the order of the American Gladiators’ event, with the infamous Travelator up first and a random gladiator with a blocking pad at the end - although if you pick the right lane, you won’t have to face the gladiator at all. (The UK version did away with the gladiators and moved the Travelator to the end, making for a much more nail-biting event, a real test of endurance.) Sounds exciting, eh? Well, to tackle this epic event in the game, you have to…. mash A and C repeatedly. It’s a bit like an athletics game’s track and field event - mashing the buttons gets you up the travelator, up the nets, across the beams and through the gladiators’ final challenge. The manual mentions pressing B in places to leap hurdles and pick a lane for the final sprint but the timing on these is hard to pull off while keeping up your furious button-mashing pace! All in all a bit of a disappointment for what’s supposed to be the final showdown.

Final Verdict

Being essentially a collection of minigames, American Gladiators is very uneven in quality. Joust and Atlaspheres are the standouts, being very playable with well-defined control schemes; The Wall and Eliminator are competent but lack excitement; while Assault and Powerball are badly let down by their fiddly control schemes. But that means that only one third of the game is actually any fun to play! And its deficiencies in presentation - single repetitve music track, generic sprites with no personality, tiny zoomed in window for big arena events - let it down too. Finally, the lack of any kind of settings or free play mode means you can’t practice only one of the events to get better at them. The game always forces you through each of the six events in the same order every time.

In conclusion, I wouldn’t have recommended American Gladiators back in the 90s, and I still don’t here. Try it out via emulation, play each of the six events once or twice, and you’ll have seen everything it has to offer in about ten minutes. It was apparently going to be released in the UK in 1992 but this never materialised - perhaps the negative critical reception soured the idea, or maybe the significant changes to the look and design of the show in the UK meant it needed more work than the devs anticipated - who knows? But I don’t think we missed out on much.