I don't normally buy compilations of retro games, as I find they rarely justify their price tag versus simply downloading them for free and playing them through emulators or on a Retropie. However, the siren's call of "let's kick shell" tempted me for many weeks, and I finally caved and bought the Cowabunga Collection for the Playstation 5. Well, actually I bought it for five dollars less on the Playstation 4 and then used the free upgrade to get the Playstation 5 version, because I just had to see these 8 and 16-bit games in glorious 4k and wasn't enough of a rube to pay the mark-up on a box with the PS5 logo on it. Did you know you could just print a PS5 cover for free and slip that into the case? Wake up, sheeple!
Anyway, I think as far as compilations go, this one is pretty good! It has the usual bells and whistles, including various filters, borders, and other options to tweak the presentation to your liking, as well as custom strategy guides you can pull up on the fly and a slew of different per game modifies to further enhance the experience. It's a shame that some games lack modifiers that others have, like god mode or level select, but I imagine there's something on there with what they were capable of programming for each game.
You're also able to play a number of the included games online, though this is one thing The Cowabunga Collection really struggles with. For some reason, Turtles in Time and TMNT 2: The Arcade Game (NES) are both unavailable for online play, and while I understand that the NES version of TMNT2 is probably not popular enough to warrant its inclusion, Turtles in Time on the SNES is. In fact, I think it's up for debate whether or not it's better than the arcade version (I'm personally a Turtles centrist and think they break even, but I'll review them soon enough), so it's weird to me that they appear to be valuing one over the other. Also, matchmaking just kinda sucks! Even when playing over a wired connection I found the experience to be incredibly unstable, with insane amounts of lag and stuttering, enough to make these games virtually unplayable. This is a real bummer as being able to play online without having to fuck around with Retroarch's net play feature was probably the biggest draw for me and one of the main motivators I had for coughing up money on this, and I ended up thinking it's the weakest part of the whole package.
The bonus features, on the other hand, are great. There's some very high quality scans of box art and manuals for you to peruse along with screenshots from each season of the TV show (the TV show. You know which one I'm talking about. The others never happened. Except the live action one. That did, Venus is real.) The menus and presentation for the entire package is fantastic, I really like the incorporation of the original Mirage comics in the main menus, and the Turtles' lair for the bonus content looks terrific.
Ultimately, I don't think any of the features in the Cowabunga Collection make this worth picking up over emulating these games outside of convenience. I know some people don't want to put the time into even getting an SNES emulator up and running let alone MAME. If you count yourself as part of that crowd or just want to give Konami of all companies your hard earned money, then I think this collection is pretty solid and worth dropping about 20$ on.
Anyway, I think as far as compilations go, this one is pretty good! It has the usual bells and whistles, including various filters, borders, and other options to tweak the presentation to your liking, as well as custom strategy guides you can pull up on the fly and a slew of different per game modifies to further enhance the experience. It's a shame that some games lack modifiers that others have, like god mode or level select, but I imagine there's something on there with what they were capable of programming for each game.
You're also able to play a number of the included games online, though this is one thing The Cowabunga Collection really struggles with. For some reason, Turtles in Time and TMNT 2: The Arcade Game (NES) are both unavailable for online play, and while I understand that the NES version of TMNT2 is probably not popular enough to warrant its inclusion, Turtles in Time on the SNES is. In fact, I think it's up for debate whether or not it's better than the arcade version (I'm personally a Turtles centrist and think they break even, but I'll review them soon enough), so it's weird to me that they appear to be valuing one over the other. Also, matchmaking just kinda sucks! Even when playing over a wired connection I found the experience to be incredibly unstable, with insane amounts of lag and stuttering, enough to make these games virtually unplayable. This is a real bummer as being able to play online without having to fuck around with Retroarch's net play feature was probably the biggest draw for me and one of the main motivators I had for coughing up money on this, and I ended up thinking it's the weakest part of the whole package.
The bonus features, on the other hand, are great. There's some very high quality scans of box art and manuals for you to peruse along with screenshots from each season of the TV show (the TV show. You know which one I'm talking about. The others never happened. Except the live action one. That did, Venus is real.) The menus and presentation for the entire package is fantastic, I really like the incorporation of the original Mirage comics in the main menus, and the Turtles' lair for the bonus content looks terrific.
Ultimately, I don't think any of the features in the Cowabunga Collection make this worth picking up over emulating these games outside of convenience. I know some people don't want to put the time into even getting an SNES emulator up and running let alone MAME. If you count yourself as part of that crowd or just want to give Konami of all companies your hard earned money, then I think this collection is pretty solid and worth dropping about 20$ on.