During the mid-2000s, the plug and play platform became a popular cheap video game alternative. For the most part, these consoles were controllers running an emulator with supplied ROMs of early arcade classics, providing easy set-up and a cheap buck for the classics of yesteryear. There were quite a few of these kinds of units out on the market at one time, ranging from the very lowest of quality to truly great compilations of console and arcade classics on their own little themed consoles. TMNT recieved three of these sorts of consoles, all of which were developed by Wayforward and released at the same time.

Battle for the City is a Ninja Turtles controller which comes with an original sidescroller starring the four green machines. Over the course of four stages throughout NYC, the turtles needs to track down a number of keys before continuing on to the next stage. The ultimate task is to rescue Splinter from a mysterious perpetrator. Each stage is filled with bad guys, and the turtles can be hotswapped at whatever point. If a turtle gets knocked out, he is captured, though he can be rescued by picking up turtle-shaped tokens. At the end of each stage, there's a boss character.

Mutants & Monsters Mayhem comes in the form of a lightgun and contains a short lightgun game against the Triceratons. It's a completely standard lightgun shooter with little to no animations and some voice clips. Due to its dependancy on light reflection, the gun does not work on HDTVs.

The Way of the Warrior is a webcam that is set on top of the TV and places cutouts of TMNT villains on screen for the player to physically attack, similar to the PlayStation 2 EyeToy games.

Out of the three games, Battle for the City is the only one with some actual fun value with some good animations and action for a really cheap price.

During the course of the TMNT 2k3 series, viewership had began to nosedive during its third season in the latter parts of 2005. The show's next season was held back to properly strategize the direction to take. TMNT 2k3 had ultimately suffered from weak writing, making use of very involved plots but not comfortably telling the stories needed to be told, and as such the audience left. The decision was made to entirely skip the next season in favor of airing the semi-reboot Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Fast Forward, sending the brothers into the future and equiping themselves in cybernetic armor. Fast Forward had a distinctly different art style and the tone was much more lighthearted than before, though it failed to make any great impact on either ratings or merchandise due to the paper-thin premise. Only one game was produced to tie in with Fast Forward, Ninja Training NYC.

Ninja Training NYC is very much a standard action title for mobile phones, dumbing the concept down to make it suitable for a numberpad controller wihout any complicated controls. In this game, the TMNT must train in two specific categories, Combat and Agility.

In Combat, the turtle is situated center screen and must take out holographic men in suits wearing towels on their heads by pressing 4 or 6 repeatedly, or 2 in order to jump and attack. Certain enemies will drop special items which can be used to refill energy, and there is also a special meter that fills up; when full, it can be used to launch a shellshocker attack using the 5 key.

In Agility, the turtle of choice must run left or right to find the correct car which will fall down or find a hole to avoid getting killed off by the downward scrolling screen. The speed of the scrolling increases over time.

There's nothing particularly interesting about Ninja Training NYC - really average graphics, shoestring sounds and no real challenge whatsoever. It's a two minute timewaster while waiting for the bus at best, and even two minutes is being generous, though even that's better than watching the aptly-named Fast Forward television show.

Like most big movie titles, a mobile phone tie-in was developed for the TMNT movie and was available on all Symbian phones a few weeks prior to the release of the console video game and the movie. Based very loosely on the events on the film, Power of 4 consists of mixture of platforming stages and high speed chase sequences.

The platforming stages are heavily influenced by the old Shinobi games, featuring a lower plane and upper plane which the turtles can jump onto, and crates that can be either smashed or used for cover from gun-wielding maniacs and later sword-wielding Foot. There are also some roadside objects which can be used to your advantage like a block of logs which rolls down over any enemy which stands in the way. The Turtles are controlled by the surrounding buttons 4 and 6, while 2 acts as a jump and 8 crouches down. The 5 button will attack. At certain points, there are also other objectives such as protecting April from being hurt in order to complete the mission.

The racing stages are overhead high speed stages where the turtle van is being chased by the prehistoric mythical creature seen in the film along with other baddies. The goal of these stages is to spill oil onto the street to keep the opposing force at a distance. 4 and 6 steer the van in different directions.

These two types of stages take turns between levels, but neither works very well, mostly due to absolutely disastrous controls - a common fault of most Symbian-based cell phone games. The whole game runs at grandpa speed, and there is such a huge delay between the buttons being pressed and the actual action taking place that you might as well just imagine the game in your head and have the game be responsive there, because that is the only way you're gonna have any fun with Power of 4. There are so many occasions where the turtle will just simply not respond or do something entirely different, either due to the game being poorly coded or because your fingers are too fat to dial the phone. Jumps can only be performed straight up, and while you can walk while in a crouch position, the turtle moves even slower then. The worst part is when the mission turns into an escort mission, where April will just simply walk into the line of fire while you frantically try to dial Satan's number to ask to be spared from playing this game further.

The only parts of the game that can be considered somewhat enjoyable are the driving stages due to the fact that they don't involve so much intricate controlling. It's a short-lived feeling of fun, however, as there is only so much driving to be done before the sidescrolling part returns. The graphics deserve some praise and are actually very impressive considering the platform, but there's very little animation in the overall game.

As part of a CD-ROM package released for the very youngest audience, Focus Multimedia delivered a small-sized adventure in the midst of screensavers, icons, and wallpapers based on the TMNT movie. TMNT: Ninja Adventures was only released as a sales product in the United Kingdom and Scandinavia, while in the US the game came packaged with several action figures in both the 2k3 line and the movie line.

Ninja Adventures takes place in downtown NYC during the night as the TMNT are out to stop a mystical shipment brought into the city by the Foot. This is taken from one of the scenes of the TMNT 2007 movie.

Being a mini-game, Ninja Adventures goes on for two stages of sidescrolling action, much like Kung-Fu Master, though also with some platforming elements. The first stage is on top of a New York city metro train car where the Ninja Turtles have to battle the Foot and also jump from car to car without falling inbetween. The second is on rooftops leading to the final destination of the mysterious shipment. Each turtle is selectable on the fly, and each of them have the same basic attacks and jumping capabilities, and there is also a brother meter in this game which fills up to allow for team moves. To end the game, the turtles must deal with the secret of what lies within the crate brought in by the Foot.

Ninja Adventures is more or less on par with the simplest of Flash games, a sort of game that is merely there because of fast product placement and marketing rather than to really provide any deep gameplay. Still, it's not at all very well made to any extent, with choppy animation and dull, repetitive action. All the characters move at a rate where they skip two steps ahead and make the jumps hard to properly execute.

As an extra item packaged in with an action figure, the game as a stand-alone package is not worth any amount of money you could throw at it, even if it's pennies.

The very first TMNT game to be released in 2009 was Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: The Ninja Tribunal. When Fast Forward fast buried the franchise in a way only previously accomplished by a movie about the Turtles traveling back in time (see a connection here?), the producers of TMNT 2k3 decided to unearth the footage that they had shelved some years ago in favor of the futuristic fumble. The season was dubbed The Lost Season, and revolved around a plot in which the four bandana clad brothers go to Japan to train in the Ninja Tribunal in order to save Master Splinter and hinder the ressurection of ancient evil. Continuing the great work they had done with planning so far, 4kids never fully explained which season was which and where they fall within continuity, and to make matters even worse, The Lost Season was cancelled only after five episodes before it was finally made it available on DVD in early 2007. The DVD was then cancelled, then snuck onto the market more or less unnoticed about a year later. During this time, the episodes also began airing again on television. A mobile phone game made to coincide with the 25th anniversary, Ninja Tribunal, was based on the entire Lost Season.

Ninja Tribunal is interesting in that it takes its main inspiration from three titles - Final Fantasy, Chrono Trigger and Adventures of Lolo - which might sound like a funky combination. Set during the majority of the fifth season, the game is, as expected, a rather large-sized RPG, using turn-based combat in an overworld with visible enemies rather than randomly generated battles, combined with intricate puzzles usually surrounding the idea of pushing obstacles together in an order which unlocks a door or frees up a road. There are also some vertical-scrolling raft sections where the Ninja Turtles must avoid certain hazards. The battles are of a very familiar kind, with all characters taking turns and having a list of options on how to approach the fight. The turtles can level up by grinding enemies and aquire new skills and improve their Chi moves, which acts as this game's version of magical spells.

If compared to the DS library or PSP, then Ninja Tribunal doesn't quite stack up in terms of overall quality, mostly due to the weakness of the Java-based mobile phone platform, but if it is judged solely on the grounds of the mobile phone market, it holds up remarkably well. It has really great graphics on both sprites and locations, and some impressive music considering the usually weak midi loops employed in these kind of games. The story and the length of the game is quite deep, all things considered, and it's told relatively well. However, the battles do drag a bit and quickly get a bit uneven as one delves deeper into the game. There is also a Battle Mode in the game which is similar to a boss rush mode.

If you ever wondered what would happen if you cross Final Fantasy and TMNT, then your answer is here: you end up with a middle tier SNES-style RPG, but one with actual quality to it and with some value to longtime fans. It's well worth a try, though just keep expectations in check.

Continuing exactly where Ninja Tribunal left off, Shredder Reborn is the sequel to the mobile phone RPG released earlier in the year.

In terms of new additions to the game, there aren't much to speak of; rather, it is just an "episode 2" kind of game which is meant purely to continue the story that left on a cliffhanger in the first game. At roughly the same size and length, it's just as good and bad as the first game, though it sports slightly cleaned-up sprites and better-balanced battles compared to the sudden spike of difficulty seen in Ninja Tribunal. There is also a bit more emphasis on all the different aspects to the game now, with more storytelling and puzzle-solving instead of the heavy focus on action as in the previous title.

In another stroke of genius, Shredder Reborn was released on Android and Blackberry units in addition to the standard Symbian model cell phones. Even though Ninja Tribunal was just released mere months earlier, that game did not recieve any release on the other models, meaning that Android users will only get the latter part of the story. Of course the story in Shredder Reborn isn't exactly earth-shatteringly complex or refined, but it's still very noticeable that something is missing when the very first cutscene makes references to events from the previous game. For those who can get over the little hurdle waits a version with better graphics and sound.

Shredder Reborn is definitely better than Ninja Tribunal and enjoys the fruits of the extra polish, but it's still not quite on par with any given good-to-average handheld system RPG.

To promote their upcoming console title, Ubisoft commissioned Flash game developer UrbanSquall to handle a small action adventure for browsers in the days leading up to their newest release. UrbanSquall had earlier had success with the Battalion series and the puzzle game Tikiballs: Curse of Tane.

Double Damage is a sidescrolling platform actioner, with the Ninja Turtles throughout NYC on the familiar mission to stop the Foot and The Shredder and save April.

Before each of the 15 stages, there is a choice of any of the four turtles and an extended set of team characters, all with their special team ability. The turtles themselves have the same moves, though they have individual strengths that factor into the choice on some stages. Leo and Don have the long range weapons, with Leo's katanas being more effective towards Foot Clan foes and Don handling machine-based enemies better. Mike and Raph have shorter range weapons, though their overall strength is signifigantly better than that of Leo and Don.

As team members, each of the turtle characters have different advantages as well, with Leo attacking all enemies with equal amounts of strength and Raph striking the screen on a straight path with extra power towards the Foot. There are also additional characters available to partner up with: Splinter, who will unleash a devestating screen-encompassing attack; Casey Jones, with his super attack along a straight path; and the greatest support character in TMNT's long history, the unnamed random Pizza Delivery Boy who will come on screen to deliver a life-replenishing pizza.

The game controls entirely with the use of the arrow buttons along with A for strikes and S for team specials. Each turtle has the ability to double jump, which becomes very useful across the New York rooftops, and they can also wall-jump Ninja Gaiden style to climb narrow spaces. In order to pull off the team special, the team meter on the top left corner must be filled up, either by collecting green pellets or ooze canisters on each stage, or by beating enemies. There is also a Mario-style ground pound move that can be performed mid air by pressing Down and Attack.

The stages are seperated into three categories - Standard, Ambush, and Boss, with Ambush being a constant rush of enemies from all angles. After four levels a story sequence plays in the style of comic books, and scenery changes as the Ninja Turtles traverse the Big Apple.

For being a free browser game, Double Damage is not bad at all, being more in line with the old Game Boy titles in terms of overall style, minus the great music. It's a bit on the easier side with each stage being more or less a two-minute affair where every enemy can more or less be avoided with some double jumps, but the controls, graphics, and cutscenes are fairly attractive and well done. Considering it's just a free promotional tool, it's of some quality and enjoyable in its own right. And it stars Pizza Delivery Guy.