Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (NES)
The Whole Damn Thing
"Alright... awesome!!! Ninja Turtles!!! It's an awesome cartoon series, the movies rocked, and the arcade game is probably the greatest ever made. Now I can finally enjoy the bliss that is playing Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles in the comfort of my own home, without draining quarters upon quarters of my allowance money. This is gonna be awesome!!"
How many of us shared that same feeling when bringing this game home for the first time only to get started and see this..............
WHAT?! What is this?! A top-down view TMNT game? That's not like the arcade!! I don't even understand it!! But ok, relax. Give it a chance.
And immediately after...
HOLD UP!!! Is that a steamroller?? Did I just get run over by a STEAMROLLER!?!?! What is that even doing in this game? In all my experience with TMNT, I have never heard the warning: "Whoa dude, make sure you check for steamrollers before you come out from the sewers, don't wanna get flattened up there."
I call foul!! Right from the beginning, it's clear that this game has nothing to do with the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles.... Nothing. It's like they took a crappy game and threw in the Ninja Turtles to make it sellable (sellable, not necessarily playable). It almost reminds me of Doki Doki Panic; how they threw in the characters from the Mushroom Kingdom and slapped on the "Super Mario Bros. 2" title. I say almost because there is one glaring difference between that and this: Super Mario Bros. 2 was a good and quite enjoyable game. This is... the opposite. Seriously... someone explain to me what exactly this enemy (on right) is supposed to be.
This game just frustrating and disappointing on all fronts. The enemies are all wrong, and even though you can swap in and out between the four different turtles at any point, doing so is completely useless. Raph and Mike have absolutely no range and by the point at which they are close enough to actually hit an enemy, they've already taken damage themselves. If you accidentally move off screen, all of the enemies you just spent all your time killing magically re-spawn. This goes on for countless underground "levels" or "dungeons" (I'm not even sure what to call them), and just when you thought this game couldn't get any worse...
BAM!! Water level!! Sure, try deactivating 4000 bombs in 10 seconds all while navigating through a narrow pathway getting electrocuted by everything. And if the time constraint wasn't already enough, let's throw in electrified seaweed that is LITERALLY IMPOSSIBLE to get past without getting damaged to the point of near death. Who in their right mind would–while making a game designed specifically for kids– see this and say, "yea that looks great. Put it in."
You can't take it slow navigating through this section or you'll run out of time, and you can't rush through or you'll quickly die. Your only option is to continually switch out the turtles when their health gets too low... Frustration thy name is this.
This game will forever stick in my mind as a sore spot. All that built-up excitement completely gone to waste on a less-than-satisfying TMNT experience. This was my first experience with a TMNT console game and simply ruined my expectations for the rest to come. I cannot forgive nor will I ever forget the frustration and utter disappointment that came with the number of times I saw that damn Game Over screen and had to...
- Childhood Me
How many of us shared that same feeling when bringing this game home for the first time only to get started and see this..............
WHAT?! What is this?! A top-down view TMNT game? That's not like the arcade!! I don't even understand it!! But ok, relax. Give it a chance.
And immediately after...
HOLD UP!!! Is that a steamroller?? Did I just get run over by a STEAMROLLER!?!?! What is that even doing in this game? In all my experience with TMNT, I have never heard the warning: "Whoa dude, make sure you check for steamrollers before you come out from the sewers, don't wanna get flattened up there."
I call foul!! Right from the beginning, it's clear that this game has nothing to do with the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles.... Nothing. It's like they took a crappy game and threw in the Ninja Turtles to make it sellable (sellable, not necessarily playable). It almost reminds me of Doki Doki Panic; how they threw in the characters from the Mushroom Kingdom and slapped on the "Super Mario Bros. 2" title. I say almost because there is one glaring difference between that and this: Super Mario Bros. 2 was a good and quite enjoyable game. This is... the opposite. Seriously... someone explain to me what exactly this enemy (on right) is supposed to be.This game just frustrating and disappointing on all fronts. The enemies are all wrong, and even though you can swap in and out between the four different turtles at any point, doing so is completely useless. Raph and Mike have absolutely no range and by the point at which they are close enough to actually hit an enemy, they've already taken damage themselves. If you accidentally move off screen, all of the enemies you just spent all your time killing magically re-spawn. This goes on for countless underground "levels" or "dungeons" (I'm not even sure what to call them), and just when you thought this game couldn't get any worse...
You can't take it slow navigating through this section or you'll run out of time, and you can't rush through or you'll quickly die. Your only option is to continually switch out the turtles when their health gets too low... Frustration thy name is this.
This game will forever stick in my mind as a sore spot. All that built-up excitement completely gone to waste on a less-than-satisfying TMNT experience. This was my first experience with a TMNT console game and simply ruined my expectations for the rest to come. I cannot forgive nor will I ever forget the frustration and utter disappointment that came with the number of times I saw that damn Game Over screen and had to...
