A new, very different style of Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles game is currently in development: an adaptation of The last Roninthe 2020 graphic novel that told a grim, futuristic story about the turtles.
Like the comic, The last Ronin video game adaptation will be a darker, more mature take on the typically colorful Ninja Turtles, according to Doug Rosen, senior vice president for games and emerging media at Paramount Global, the rights holders for Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. In an interview with Polygon last week, Rosen compared the upcoming third-person action role-playing game to Sony’s recent God of War titles and said it will be authentic to the story of The last Ronin arc, set in a future where only one of the turtles survived.
While other TMNT games, like last year Shredder’s Revengeare usually about playing as all four turtles (and sometimes their allies Splinter, April O’Neil and Casey Jones), The last Ronin will be primarily a single character game. While Rosen stated that other characters could be playable in flashback sequences similar to how the comic series plays out, the primary action would focus on the lone surviving turtle.
The identity of that one remaining Ninja Turtle was a bit of a mystery back then The last Ronin comic series was announced. The arc’s story was built around a Ninja Turtle who donned a black mask and fought with all four turtles’ signature weapons: nunchaku, sai, bo-staff, and dual katanas. Beware the last pages of the first issue of The last Ronin where the identity of the only surviving turtle was revealed: Michelangelo. The remaining turtles and Master Splinter are all exterminated by the Foot Clan, leading Mike to seek justice for their deaths in a battle-ravaged New York City.
Publisher IDW launched The last Ronin in 2020 as a five-issue miniseries. The arc was written by Kevin Eastman and based on an idea he first conceived with TMNT co-creator Peter Laird in the late 1980s.
Like it The last Ronin comic book series, the video game will target an older audience, much like the recent collaboration with Call of Duty that brings Shredder to Activision’s shooter franchise. Rosen said there are opportunities for multiple TMNT games aimed at both young and more mature age groups, and that Paramount “could take multiple approaches” [to the franchise]and not calling back to make the game something it shouldn’t be.
The last Ronin video game adaptation is being developed by an unnamed studio and will likely be “a few years” before release, Rosen said. But like throwback beat-’em-up Shredder’s Revengedeveloped by Tribute Games and DotEmu, and the Cowabunga Collectiondeveloped by retro game collection experts Digital Eclipse, Rosen said they found the right partner to adapt The last Ronin into an ambitious AAA video game.
Rosen said to expect more details about The last Ronin, and much more of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles in video games, in the coming months and years. In the short term, fans of the Ninja Turtles will soon see the half-shell heroes appear in Roblox, in a new game set that Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Mutant Mayhem, a new animated film. The Roblox game is being developed by Gamefam, the studio behind Sonic the Hedgehog’s Roblox outing, Sonic speed simulator.
Here’s a first look at that game’s take on the turtles:
Image: Gamefam/Paramount Game Studios