With the announcement for Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Out of the Shadows dropping a little while back, complete with a teaser trailer, it’s time to get people’s interest level up. What better way to do that than releasing some actual in-game footage of what consumers can expect? In a world where vociferous gamers will use any platform necessary to voice their opinions, such pre-release content will make or break a game. In the case of the upcoming Ninja Turtles game, while the behind the scenes trailer, one that features rapper/producer Just Blaze discussing his contributions to the game–a song–and his love for the franchise, while footage of the game runs in the background.

This is all fine and good if you’re trying to attract the trendy crowd, but developers seem to forget that the TMNT series dates back to the early 80s, and its first rendition was a black and white comic that featured more adult-themed adventures of our favorite bipedal reptiles.

Of course, that was long, long ago, and the kid-friendly transformation of the Turtles is the version most are familiar with. While footage from the upcoming Out of the Shadows doesn’t completely do away with the family-friendliness, it does suggest something of a mature approach to the band of ninjas. The game will be presented in the third-person brawler format, which still has the God of War series as its high water mark. The new Ninja Turtles game doesn’t appear to have anything that violent in it, but the fighting does look less like a cartoon and more gritty, to use a term made popular by Nolan’s Dark Knight trilogy.

The Teen rating helps support this lean towards a more mature TMNT crew.

The behind the scenes footage is the newest content to hit the tubes, however, last week, individual character trailers for each of the four–Leonardo, Donatello, Michelangelo, and Raphael–launched and they give a better look at what fans can expect. First up, the Just Blaze video. I can’t but wonder if this “true fan” has seen the original TMNT comics:

To me, the character trailers give us a much better idea of where the game is headed, starting with Leonardo:

Donatello:

Raphael:

And Michelangelo:

The character trailers have been showing up since April, with Michelangelo’s being the first to launch. As for the game itself, it will be on the shelves on August 28th.

Lead image courtesy