YMMV / Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Rescue Palooza

• Breather Boss:
  • Pizzaface, who comes after Shredder himself, has attacks that are much more telegraphed and easier to avoid. Even Scratch, the boss following him, is arguably tougher.
  • Krang's Chicken Walker fought after Super Shredder is defeated. If the player stands behind the legs, its guns will never hit them and Krang will spend a decent chunk of the fight hitting nothing but the ground. Its other attacks are telegraphed so heavily that as long as the player doesn't right next to the robot's feet, it won't hit them.
• Ending Fatigue: The Technodrome is the point of the game where any player is most likely to have their extra lives exhausted; there are no more bonus stages, most of the levels are pretty long, and there's a five-part final battle. Even Shredder gets tired of it after the third phase.
• Hilarious in Hindsight:
  • Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Shredder's Revenge, the first official TMNT beat-'em-up to be released after the launch of Rescue-Palooza, can be seen borrowing some concepts from this game, coincidentally or not.
    • This game was, for a long time, the only game (official or not) with April, Splinter, Casey, Usagi and Karai to be playable in a Beat 'em up. Cue Shredder's Revenge, and now we have an official game where all five are playable.
    • Rat King summons a few giant rats to beat up during his boss fight, leaving him vulnerable. In his official boss encounter from Shredder's Revenge, he summons an entire horde of rats - and he has the sense to actually stay out of the battlefield while playing his flute.
    • Both Tempestra and the mutant duo of Tokka and Rahzar serve as separate encounters. The official game, however, merges them all together - with the former conjuring digital versions of the latter to assist her.
    • The Turtles having voice samples from the show became oddly prescient, due to their original voice actors actually coming back to record some new lines in Shredder's Revenge.
    • The entire marathon of boss battles at the end of the third Technodrome stage goes as follows: War from SNES version of Tournament Fighters, Shredder and Krang together, Super Shredder, Krang piloting the aforementioned Chicken Walker and Shredder piloting the contraption called Cyber Shredder as the Final Boss. Come Shredder's Revenge, and the similar marathon occurs across the final two episodes: Krang, Shredder, Statue of Tyranny (Krang repurposing Statue of Liberty as his own body) and Super Shredder as the final boss. Amusingly enough, every incarnation of Krang from either game is a cakewalk to fight against, while Shredder himself is a relative step-up in terms of challenge.
    • The overwhelming majority of playable characters had been officially relegated to either cameos^note via unlockable sidequests and Dimension Shellshock DLC or bosses^note in cases of Bebop, Rocksteady and Shredder - playable bosses of Survival Mode via special perks for their later appearances in Shredder's Revenge.
    • Rescue-Palooza has a stage set in the Channel 6 building, where the Foot Clan has enacted a Hostile Show Takeover and is holding Vernon captive. That never happened in any Konami game, but it is the first level of Shredder's Revenge. That being said, Bebop is the boss for the level, not Baxter and Karai.
    • Slash's popular video game design, that was also used for the Adventures comic and came from his original action figure, is essentially combined with his show design in Shredder's Revenge.
  • For a case that doesn't implicate Shredder's Revenge, one of April's palette swaps here is the green jumpsuit worn by her action figure in the 1993 "Channel 6 Newsvan" toy set. That exact same palette swap would see official usage in Nickelodeon All-Star Brawl.
• Spoiled by the Format: Once all of the initial 13 levels are completed, the ending cutscene plays out. Since the classic TMNT games typically end with fighting Krang and Shredder at the Technodrome and most levels in this game unlock new characters to play with, it obviously isn't over yet. Sure enough, Krang interrupts the ending as he attacks New York.
• Take That, Scrappy!: As one of the least lovable characters in the series, Vernon purposely has the worst stats and no super move to speak of, so trying to play as him is a Self-Imposed Challenge. Even his boss Burne is more viable to use than him!
• They Wasted a Perfectly Good Character: While the number of characters featured in this game alone is impressive, there are still some characters who are bafflingly left out.
  • The construction site level has the Crooked Ninja Turtle Gang from the 1987 series episode "Return of the Shredder" appear as regular enemies, yet there is no boss fight against their leader Smash.
  • Many of the Turtles' allies such as Mona Lisa, Mondo Gecko, Muckman, Zack and the Punk Frogs are playable, but there's no sign of the police robot REX-1^note can be seen in the second TMNT Game Boy game, Back from the Sewers or Bugman.
  • The majority of the enemy mutants are present and accounted for, but Scumbug is nowhere to be seen. Especially strange, since Antrax debuted in the same episode ("Night of the Rogues") and is in the game.
• Unexpected Character: Amongst all the enemies in the game, the most random inclusions are the giant mutant banana and pizzas from Turtles Forever, the only spin-off that didn't come during the original series' heyday.