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#648 – Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles

The Turtles make their NES debut with this bizarre, difficult outing.
The cover remains striking, despite the red bandana confusion.
A gun against a bo staff is never fair.

PLAYERS: 1

PUBLISHER: Ultra Games

DEVELOPER: Konami

GENRE: Action

RELEASE DATE: June 1989

If you were a child in the late 80s/early 90s and you didn’t love the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, you were probably a lonely kid on the playground. Like Pokemon a decade later, the Turtles had their stubby grip on every entertainment outlet possible. The cartoon was one of the most successful of all time, running for a total of ten seasons. To give you an idea of how impressive that is, most network cartoons during that time – even popular ones, like “DuckTales” or “Thundercats” – only ran about four seasons at best. The action figures were iconic. Who doesn’t remember the Turtle Party Wagon, the Technodrome, and how friggin’ difficult it was to find Shredder in toy stores? The 1990 live-action movie (which should have been a disaster, but remains entertaining to this day) made $200 million worldwide on a budget of $13.5 million. There were Pizza Hut tie-ins, a legitimate concert tour called “Coming Out of Their Shells” (totally owned the cassette), and, of course, the latest youthful trend, video games. Whatever merchandise the Turtles emblazoned with their goofy green faces, children were there, ready to shell over their parents’ money.

Splinter gives Mike a fist bump for his efforts.

In 1989, Konami released two Ninja Turtles games. The first was Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: The Arcade Game, a four-player beat-em-up for (obviously) the arcade. It wasn’t revelatory, but it was everything a Turtle game should be. The graphics, characters, and story were lifted from the cartoon. Each player inhabited a turtle (poor shlubs who got stuck with Raphael) and fought their way to Shredder. It was perfect NES port fodder – and it indeed arrived on the NES two years later as Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles II: The Arcade Game. Unfortunately, the original Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (hereafter referred to as TMNT) for NES gave millions of Turtle-loving children a special brand of shell-shock.

One wanted to love TMNT in 1989. Upon first play, it showed promise. The mix of non-linear exploration (particularly in the third and fourth worlds) with side-scrolling action, as seen in Zelda II and Castlevania II, was still unique at the time. You could switch between the four Turtles at any time by pressing ‘Start.’ Enemies, like Mousers, Bebop, and others hailed from the cartoon. The music was jaunty and carefree. If one was a Turtles fan, this was all you needed – or so you thought.

Not for long.

Despite the happy tunes guiding the Turtles’ journey, all was not well in the sewers. The Turtles themselves were bogged down by clunky controls, and Konami took full advantage of their shoddy programming. Many areas have slender gaps that are impossible to jump over without luck. Remember the dam level? Navigating through narrow paths of electrocuting seaweed isn’t reasonable when you’re a four-hundred pound Turtle-man, and your poor health (or the loss of a Turtle or two) at the end of the stage will confirm that. The only Turtles worth using are Leonardo and Donatello. Michelangelo and Raphael’s weapons are too short to do any significant damage to the onslaught of enemies, and thus, two of your four “lives” are pretty useless. Assuming you’re using a Turtle who has a long-reach weapon like Donatello, it’s quite effortless to kill several enemies in one blow. However, it’s also possible to get hung up on one or several enemy sprites, and have your life quickly whittled away. The biggest complaint one could have with TMNT, though, is the repetitive action sections. Konami programmed clusters of enemies, all with varying obnoxious patterns, to occupy any open spaces. It doesn’t matter how well you wield katanas, nunchucks, sais, or bo staffs, you’re going to get hit repeatedly. If you clear out a section of a room and walk an inch or two backwards before venturing forward again, all the enemies will reappear. This nonsense is eighty percent of TMNT. Your affection for the Turtles might not withstand shoddy controls, rambling, long-winded levels, and unfair enemy AI.

Then again, it just might. When I was five, I convinced myself TMNT was a good game. I loved it. As I fired it up for this review, I was warped back to a time when beating a crappy game with my favorite superheros was my only care in the world. During those tender years, I never got past the dam portion, but that didn’t stop me from trying over and over again – while holding the conclusion that TMNT was legit, and I just needed to acquire better gaming skills. I’ll always appreciate the fond memories I have with TMNT, but the game’s a mediocre pile of Splinter droppings. Proceed with nostalgia goggles or not at all.

C+

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18 replies on “#648 – Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles”

I had owned this, at least borrowed it for some period of time, but still never managed to get anywhere close to the end. IT really was the dam section that always did me in.
It's not a surprise that The Arcade game was so successful and equally unsurprising that that would be the formula for the rest of the console NES/Snes turtle games.

You know, I actually enjoyed this one quite a bit. I was the first of my friends to beat it – no doubting it was a hard game, but I was a) a fan of TMNT at the time, and b) was on a kick to beat all sorts of really tough games around around the time I got this (seems like Ninja Gaiden and Ghost and Goblins were also tackled right around the same time).

30 years old, still have no idea how in the hell to rappel across the rope between the two rooftops. With this game, konami did the closest thing to sexually assaulting Christmas morning for many kids.

I had a pirated 60-pin cartridge with this game, TMNT and TMNT III. Hated TF so much that I didn&#039t believe it was a legitimate product; there were many pirates fighting games for NES back then.

Do you know Joy Mech Fight, Dylan?
IMHO, the only decent NES/Famicom one-to-one fighting game.

This was the only Turtles NES game that I ever completed (lol) so naturally I love this game. Playing this game against friends was always a treat; the pirated Street Fighter “Fight Street 12 peoples” game were pretty good too, but Guile, Ryu and Ken easily outmatched the other three characters with their fireball/boomerang attacks, so Tournament Fighters was easily the most well-made fighting game to play back in the day, followed by WCW (as long as the player had turbo controllers)

I owned this one. Probably took me two years to get through the dam level, no joke. There&#039s a battle right after that, right? Where you stand on a pile of boxes and just hit the dude with Don&#039s bo over and over again until you win? Beyond that, I don&#039t remember; I never made it much farther than that. But I thought that game was boss, anyway.

This game is probably one of Konami&#039s best on the NES. It&#039s one of the later games released in the lifetime of the NES, hence the $80.00 going price on Ebay. If you can find it cheap snatch it up, my dad gave me my copy from a pile of stuff he bought at a garage sale years ago.

I loved this game as a kid, even beat it once or twice despite not owning it. I knew it was cheap even then, but it didn&#039t matter; I knew it was doable. I&#039m glad to have picked this up from the Virtual Console before it was delisted.

I still enjoy this one. I didn’t find the dam section all that hard – it was the tricky jumps in the airport that always did me in.

I don’t know how anyone managed to beat the final Technodrome level. I swear it’s impossible, especially without infinite continues. The dam is baby stuff in comparison. I still can’t beat this game to this day because of that final fucking level.

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