Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (video game)

The NES box art.

Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles is a platformer beat 'em up video game with Metroidvania elements developed by Konami and published by Ultra on the Nintendo Entertainment System on 1989-05-12 and later ported to eight home computer platforms. The game was released around the same time as the arcade game, and, between the two of them, they are the first games set in the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles universe.

My step-brother introduced me to this game. I didn't get to play it much, but I watched him and my older brother take turns playing it. Being a fan of the cartoon, I remember being excited to see the game, but, even at a young age, I was confused at all the weird unrelated crap I saw in the game. Looking back now, the game has a lot of charm, but serious flaws. I watched my brother and step-brother make it to stage 4, but I never got that far myself. Later, after hacking the game to be invincible, I played it through to completion and discovered just how insane it gets near the end.

Status

I own this game on the NES, but I have not beaten it.

Review

• Overall: 4/10
• Best Version: NES

— This section contains spoilers! —

Good

• The game features a lot of characters from the cartoon, including heroes and villains alike.
• The graphics are well-drawn, I especially like the look of the turtles.
• Jun Funahashi's music is really good.
• There are different locations for each act, each separated with a cut scenes, and the whole game plays out like a comic book.
• I like the mechanic of being able to switch between turtles to have more energy and heal them as needed.
• I like the shift between top-down street view and side-view indoors view. It makes the sewer and indoor elements seem like part of a wider world.
• The manual is well-written.

Bad

• Moving from one map to another often puts you immediately in danger with enemies approaching you and requires fast reflexes to not take damage.
• The enemies constantly respawn the moment you leave the screen, and cease to exist the moment they leave the screen. While this isn't too unusual for an NES game, it's still pretty annoying and silly. For enemies that require multiple hits, you often have to backup to not take damage, but, after defeating the enemy, it will have respawned by the time you can return to area where you first encountered them.
• The collision detection is pretty bad. Many enemies and hazards will hit you even when they're not visually hitting you.
• The turtles should have been balanced better. They're all identical in movement speed, the only difference is in the range and swinging speed of their weapons. Donatello, actually hits for more damage, but this is probably because his weapon is so slow, it hits multiple times. Because of this, Donatello long range and extra damage makes him a powerhouse, while Raphael, with the shortest range, is completely inferior.
• While I like the idea of having minibosses throughout the stages, I just wish they were something other than the regular enemies you see all over the game.
• The majority of the enemies in the game have nothing to do with the cartoon and even those few that do don't look like they're supposed to. The first time I saw a Mouser, I thought it was a giant ant. And, the Foot Clan guys look more like aliens in pajamas.
• Although the top-down sections of the game make it more interesting, they could have been improved. It's easy to die even at full health by being run over, your regular gun is too weak, and the controls are pretty awful.
• Despite being turtles, they're pretty difficult to control underwater!
• It's common for the era, so it's not a big deal, but there is no point to the score. If you were so inclined, you could go in and out a door, over and over again, killing enemies until you max out the score, but would never affect the game in any way.

Ugly

• Throughout the game, there are several annoyingly difficult jumps that have to be timed perfectly to make. Most of them don't kill you, but they set you back to the point where you'll probably take more damage returning to them. It seems they were added just to piss the player off.
• In the last three levels of the game are insanely difficult. Far too hard for the average child. There are all sorts of insta-kill hazards, and enemies are purposely positioned to knock you into them.
• Your secondary weapon is replaced automatically if you touch another one, even accidentally. This is frustrating when shruikens replace your boomerangs, but game-ending when they replace 99 kiai!
• There are a couple traps in the game that can kill you entirely with no indication they're dangerous like the algae in the Hudson River and the pits on the over-world portion of Shredder's Base.
• To stand a chance late in the game against the fast-moving over-powered enemies, you're expected to farm Kiai scrolls for each turtle, which is a long and boring process.
• The DOS port has an impossible jump in area 3 which makes the game unwinnable without cheating.

Media

Boxes

• 

  The Japanese Famicom box is just a crude drawing of the turtles. Lame.

• 

  This art was used for all US releases as well as the NES European releases (although they used "Hero" instead of "Ninja"). This is my favorite art because the turtles are in wonderful action poses, but it uses an older style when the turtles all used red. I wished they altered it to their later colors.

• 

  This box was used for all European home computer releases. It uses the lame "Hero Turtles" name and gives them a friendly cartoon style. Lame.

Documentation

• Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles - NES - Manual.pdf

  Manual - NES.

• Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles - DOS - Manual.pdf

  Manual (UK) - Amiga, Amstrad CPC, Atari ST, Commodore 64, MS-DOS, ZX Spectrum.

• 

  Early ad.

• 

  Ad.

Maps

• 

  Area 1 - Fifth Avenue / Greenwich Village.

• 

  Area 2 - Hudson River near the Holland Tunnel.

• 

  Area 3 - Wall Street.

• 

  Area 4 - J.F.K. International Airport.

• 

  Area 5 - Shredder's Base inside the South Bronx.

• 

  Area 6 - The Technodrome.

Videos

• youtube.com/watch?v=XjUz8IT0CYg - Angry Video Game Nerd.
• youtube.com/watch?v=Jn_vb8tu5bQ - Longplay, Amiga
• youtube.com/watch?v=JiIKUFjw6KA - Longplay, Commodore 64.
• youtube.com/watch?v=LRg-yK-O1t0 - Longplay, NES.
• youtube.com/watch?v=gxMvIUf_rPU - Longplay ZX Spectrum.

Titles

Language	Native	Transliteration	Translation
English (Europe)	Teenage Mutant Hero Turtles
English (North America)	Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles
French	Les Tortues Ninja		Ninja Turtles
Japanese	激龟忍者传	Gekikame Ninja Den	Turtle Ninja
Spanish	Tortugas Ninja		Ninja Turtles

Links

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