Konami has made an announcement about Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: The Cowabunga Collection, but it’s not one that you want to hear.
On their official Steam page, they made this statement:
“The full game of “Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: The Cowabunga Collection” will be discontinued in Japan on the following date
Friday, March 29, 2024 at 0:00 (JST)
Online play will remain available after the end of sales. Also, purchased copies of the full game will be available for re-download from the Steam Store.”
Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: The Cowabunga Collection is a relatively new video game release, having been published last August 30, 2022. It won’t be lasting two years on Steam in Japan after this delisting. We don’t know for now if the title will also get delisted in Japan on other platforms, such as PlayStation, Xbox, or the Nintendo Switch.
As for the reasons for the delisting, Konami did not share any reasons here. But we know that the usual culprit is licensing rights. In this case, that can be related to music licensed from outside sources, certain characters, all the way to the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles license itself.
The thing with Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, is it was originally a creator-owned property, specifically comics artists John Laird and Kevin Eastman. Eastman sold his share of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles rights to Laird in 2000. And then in 2009, Laird sold the entire Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles property to Paramount Global, which was then going by the name Viacom.
If you had not yet picked up or even heard of Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: The Cowabunga Collection, it is a title worth picking up for nostalgia, or to really appreciate the more refined titles in this collection. Digital Eclipse has bundled in 13 Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles games published on Nintendo’s and Sega’s platforms from 1989 to 1994.
We can’t say if Konami will delist this collection in US or European markets someday, but it’s safe to say that if you had an interest in these games, you should secure your copy in the platform of your choice, lest the opportunity to get them passes you by completely. For what it’s worth, this collection was also published on physical media formats.
But it must be said, that Steam stopped selling their games on disc a few years ago. Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: The Cowabunga Collection is also not available on Epic Game Store or GOG, so if you want it on PC, digital on Steam is your only option.
