Shellback

Four brothers. Forty years. Every version of them.

Shellback is an unofficial tribute to the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. Since 1984 the Turtles have been rebooted, redrawn and recast more times than anyone can count. The names stay the same, but the brothers do not. Shellback picks one brother at a time and follows him through every version: the Mirage comic, the 1987 cartoon, the 1990 film, the 2003 and 2012 series, Rise, The Last Ronin, Mutant Mayhem and the games.

Open Shellback

Why this exists

I saw the 90s films in the cinema, watched the cartoon, had the comics and played a lot of Turtles in Time. Leonardo was always my favourite, even though the expensive action figure I got as a kid was Donatello. My brother had Raphael and my cousin had Leonardo, Michelangelo and Shredder, so between the three of us we had the whole family and a villain.

Years later, TMNT: Splintered Fate pulled me back in. I do not even like roguelikes, I got 100% months ago, and I still play it. That sent me looking at every version of the Turtles I had missed.

Turtles in Time sends the same four heroes through different eras. Shellback does the same thing with the versions of the brothers.

What is in it

Player select. Pick a brother from the title screen, or jump straight to one from the header. This section features my personal take on each brother, exploring why Leo is my favourite, how Donnie and Mikey grew on me over time, and why Raph was always the safe bet.

You will find a comprehensive timeline for each brother where every version acts as a "stage." Each entry is packed with official art, a breakdown of who he is in that specific iteration, the moment that truly defines him there, and an analysis of whether he actually leads the team. Accompanying this is an "Is he in charge?" meter that tracks how each version treats his leadership from 1984 all the way to 2023, while looking closely at what never changes and what keeps changing across all generations.

If you only want to meet one, I have put together a short, opinionated list of exactly where to start, featuring one thing to read, one to watch, and one to play. To keep the experience fresh, built-in spoiler protection ensures that stories with massive reveals, like The Last Ronin, stay hidden until you actively choose to open them.

Status

All four brothers are finished.

Built with

HTML, CSS and plain JavaScript, with Vite for the development server and the build. There is no framework and no backend.

• src/router.js reads the URL hash (#/brothers/leonardo) and decides which page to show.
• src/pages/ has one file per page. Each one returns the page as an HTML string.
• src/data/ holds all the content: the brothers, the versions, the artwork credits and one timeline file per brother. Adding a brother means adding one data file.
• src/content.test.js checks the router and makes sure every version has artwork, alt text and a credit.

Run locally

Use Node.js 22.12 or later.

npm ci
npm run dev

Other commands:

npm test          # Check the router and the content data
npm run build     # Build the site into dist/
npm run preview   # Preview the production build

Pushes to main run the tests and the build, then publish dist/ to GitHub Pages.

Credits

Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles was created by Kevin Eastman and Peter Laird. All artwork is official promotional art from the rights holders, credited on the site's credits page and in ARTWORK.md. The writing is original.

Shellback is an independent fan tribute with no commercial purpose: no ads, no paid features, no donations. It is not affiliated with or endorsed by the TMNT rights holders. Characters, names and artwork belong to their owners, and crediting them is not a claim of permission.