Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles

"Solid fun gameplay for moderate gamers"

I can understand why big video game reviewers would give this game a low score, possibly because they have to play video games every day, and get bored after a while, that they want something very new and fresh. This game may not be head exploding awesome, but it's perfect for the moderate gamer like myself who plays video games every once in a while. Add in the nostalgia factor, and how closely it follows the new ninja turtles cartoon, and you can see how much effort the people at konami put into this game.
Maybe the gaming magazines had their hopes too high up, but if you give this game maybe more than 10 minutes, and you get to around the third stage, you'll be hooked. It's a hack'n'slah beat 'em up, but isn't that what we asked for?

Graphics: Truely amazing cel-shaded graphics, konami outdid themselves here. They animated all the new characters from the show perfectly, and did a decent job at creating new characters. The very first cut scenes when you choose your character are a little sloppy so I'll give the graphics a:
9/10

Gameplay: This is probably where everyone gets angry, but in reality it's because they're aggrivated that they can't figure out how to do it correctly. Everyone thinks it's easy just a button masher, but in reality there are some combos that you'll have to figure out and perform at certain times, and it takes at least a day to master. Or at least for an average guy like me it was. Even if it is just a beat 'em up, I think it's still incredibly fun, but it doesn't have a lot of replay value:
9/10

Individual Characters: Here's where I get mad, why is Donatello, the brainy nerd turtle, a better fighter than Leonardo the leader and star pupil to master Splinter. Or Mikey a better fighter than Raph. I think they took the 2 less skilled turtles and made them better out of pity or something. It made me mad that I could get further with Don than with Leo, but eventually I mastered Leo and now they're about equal, but for a beginner choose Mikey or Don...
7/10

Controls: With the gamecube controller everything was fine for me, I didn't have any problems at all, and if you want you can change the controls under options.
10/10

Overall: The game is solid fun. It'll keep you entertained for hours, especially if you're a Ninja Turtle fan. There's even bonus animation made just for this game! They took the better episodes (excluding notes from the underground) and meshed them together to make a really good, fun, game. Sometimes it gets a little hard, but it definately isn't impossible, especially if I could beat the game. It's pretty easy to figure out what you need to do, so maybe you don't need to buy a $15 book on how to beat the game like you have to do with Zelda, but in my humble gaming opinion, this is the way a game should be made. If you want a really extremely fun TMNT game, I suggest going out and finding that old TMNT SNES game Turtles in Time. Next to that this is one of the best turtles games of all time.
9/10

Reviewer's Score: 9/10, Originally Posted: 10/27/03