TMNT Last Ronin game revealed at Summer Game Fest with new studio, AAA vision

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Published Jun 5, 2026, 5:40 PM EDT

The highly anticipated Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles game returns

Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: The Last Ronin is alive. At the Summer Game Fest showcase on Friday, Paramount Games announced that PlatinumGames, known for its work on Bayonetta, Nier: Automata, and Ninja Gaiden 4, has taken over development of the game that was first announced more than three years ago.

But the re-reveal is a sign of life for The Last Ronin, which was announced in 2023 and described at the time as a AAA, third-person action-role-playing game similar to 2018's God of War. That version of the Ninja Turtles game was ultimately scrapped, Paramount Games Studio head of creative and production Shawn Kittelsen told Polygon in an interview ahead of Summer Game Fest. Now Platinum is at the helm with a new take on the beloved graphic novel.

Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: The Last Ronin is based on the 2020 comic book series of the same name written by Ninja Turtles co-creator Kevin Eastman. That dark and violent story focuses on the lone surviving member of the Ninja Turtles quartet, whose identity remained a mystery throughout most of the series. The reptilian protagonist wore a black mask and wielded all four of the team’s weapons (nunchaku, sai, bo staff, and dual katanas) on a mission of revenge against the Foot Clan.

Like The Last Ronin comic book, the video game seems likely to target an older audience.

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Paramount Games’ Kittelsen said that Platinum, which took over the game late last year, proved it was “the right team [creating] the right genre for the right franchise.” He said that Platinum’s experience with action games made the studio a natural fit, of course, but that the studio pitched something more ambitious than expected.

“When we heard their pitch, that only affirmed that further,” Kittelsen said, “because Yohei Shimbori, who is the director on the title for Platinum, came in with a pitch that was built on the pillars of Platinum action and hard-hitting, high-octane combat.

“But it wasn't resting on combat alone. It was a pitch about the emotional through-line, the seasons of life and the way that we grow from people who are young Turtles fans in a more innocent and simpler time and now live in a much more complicated world where things might be a little bit darker and more challenging.”

Shimbori, who previously worked at Koei Tecmo’s Team Ninja and Bandai Namco, approached retelling The Last Ronin through a nostalgic, highly personal lens, Kittelsen recalled: “We have kids and a younger generation coming in front of us that we want to inherit a better world and we don't want them to just live with all the challenges we have,” Kittelsen said of Shimbori’s spiel. “We get to the end of this pitch, like near tears. We're doing this all through translation too, but still the emotions are hitting.

“By the end of that meeting, I just felt like, Yeah, these are the creative partners that we want. Because we didn't just want people who were there to punch their card and collect a paycheck. We wanted people who were there to make a game that they would want to play as fans.”

PlatinumGames has developed a TMNT game before: 2016’s Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Mutants in Manhattan, which the studio made for publisher Activision. That game received a mixed reception, and was later pulled from digital storefronts.

This time, Kittelsen said that Platinum is aiming for something more “on that prestige level” with The Last Ronin. “We do cite Metal Gear Rising a lot, but we also talk about games like Ghost of Yotei, Ghost of Tsushima, [and] God of War,” he said. “One of the early conversations that we had with Shimbori-san and the rest of the team at Platinum was making this game a combination of Japanese-style combat — Platinum combat — with Western storytelling and to really own the roots of TMNT as a New York-based American comic, so that we maintain that level of authenticity. That means that we are collaborating with them on a really deep level in the story.”

Kittelsen certainly knows story. He’s written for comics and games in the past, including the lauded story modes of NetherRealm Studios’ Mortal Kombat and Injustice games.

“I haven't worked on a story for a game, soup to nuts, since Mortal Kombat a few years back,” Kittelsen said. “This is the first game where I'm rolling up my sleeves and working on the story directly hands-on, in part because Shimbori-san invited me to. He also comes from the fighting game space, from Tekken 8 and Dead or Alive. He was like, ‘Hey, we're a couple old fighting-game folks,’ and he really loved the work on story modes for Injustice 2 and MK11, and said it'd be cool if we could work on this together.

"We had some really amazing creative sessions in Japan together, and have been working on that ever since. I brought in a narrative director named Mike Rogers, who's going to be working on the writing with me and helping to guide the performances and the integration of the story. Meanwhile, it’s Platinum-designed to the core and the game comes first, but they are very serious about supporting the game with the kind of story integration that they had in things like Metal Gear Rising or Nier: Automata. We're aiming for that level. We want this to be a game that we're all proud of in a way that it stands shoulder to shoulder with the best in our careers.”

TMNT: The Last Ronin will be available on consoles and PC. The game does not have an announced release date.

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