Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles

"Getting ninjas off of the streets and back in the sewers where they belong."

The Introduction.
Welcome all, to yet another essay-style review from that guy who's not known for such a style! Today I'll be reviewing a classic game that often gets ignored when the title ''classic'' comes up - Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles! First off, let's give a little background to the game, shall we?

The Aforementioned Background to the Game.
Back in 1983, Kevin Eastman and Peter Laird decided to break into the comic book scene with their own brand of strangeness, with the hopes and dreams of making it big. Their gimmick - weirdness abounding in the realm of ''Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles'', written as a parody of Frank Miller's ''Daredevil'' and ''Ronin'' series' (which the authors were large fans of). Trained by their master, Splinter (a former Martial Arts master, named Hamato Yoshi, who was transformed into an oversized rat by nuclear waste), the 4 members of the team - Leonardo, Michaelangelo, Raphael, and Donatello, named after 4 Renassaince artists - would do battle with the various evils of the city. During their adventures, the Turtles encountered evil ninjas, other mutated beings, alien cows from another dimension, crazed New York renegades...and it built quite the following from it.

Throughout the 80's, T.M.N.T. (as it was dubbed by fans) quickly gained a good lot of fame, eventually spawning a Saturday Morning Cartoon (ah, the memories). Finally, the first T.M.N.T. game was born. That's right, folks, it's a segue!

What's that about a Game?
Well, you ARE reading the review for it. In 1989, Mirage Studios (the company formed by Eastman and Laird) signed on with Ultra Games to produce a few Ninja Turtles games. The first one made debuted on Nintendo's Great Shining Console, the Nintendo (duh). It received mixed reviews shortly thereafter, but was still a popular title with fans of the series. The premise of the game followed along with something one might expect to see in the show or the comics themselves.

Ooh, another segue! Is this on the Premise?
You are correct again. The game was laid out as follows - The Shredder (aka Oroku Saki), Splinter's old rival from Japan, had kidnapped the Turtle's sole human friend, April O'Neill, a reporter for the local News Station. Not a group to be toyed with, the 4 turtles set out to rescue their friend (and save a few other places and people at the same time). The way the game was laid out, though, is a little more complicated. You had control of each one of the Turtles, whom you could switch between by pressing Start and selecting a different Turtle. Each Turtle had their own weapon of choice and separate Life Bar, so you could (and probably would) switch between each hero back and forth, depending on the situation. Since the new Turtle would be placed right back in the same place as the old one, you could swap out a Turtle with low life for one with higher life, then use them until you came across a health-restoring Pizza (the Turtles' favorite food), then swap back. Convenient, yes?

Now, this swapping would come in handy once you began to realize the size of the game and the difficulty of the situations you'd be thrust into. The game started you off in an overhead situation, where you would walk along, avoiding lethal objects while you made your way towards buildings, sewers, or some other area off of the streets. Once you'd entered a non-overhead area, the action would REALLY pick up by switching to a side-scroller bit. You would move your chosen Turtle along in a 2D environment, dealing with a myriad of enemies and the occasional boss or sub-boss. Your turtle wasn't relegated to just their chosen weaponry, though - you could also pick up special weapons that would give your player a more diverse set of attacks (and, since each Turtle could collect a different secondary weapon, the combinations were staggering). Finally, you would have to deal with super-powerful bosses that were from the comics - Bebop and Rocksteady, Mecha-Turtle, The Giant Mouser, The Technodrome, and The Shredder himself. Along with the occasional extra activity (such as swimming underneath a Dam or driving the Turtle Van), the game was a loaded package just waiting to be played.

The Graphics.
Actually, the graphics for the game (given the time when it was released) were pretty good. The Nintendo's mighty 8-bit processor often struggled to keep up with the graphical requirements the game demanded. While not necessarily a good thing, slowdown and flicker (2 common ailments that would occur when a processor couldn't handle all the information on the screen at the same time) would show that the programmers were definitely pushing the envelope for what their system could and couldn't do. The graphics themselves were, for the most part, well-drawn and well-animated. The Turtles were designated by a difference in color of head and armbands (known as Palette Swapping), which brings the graphics' points down a notch. However, the individual pictures of each character talking to you when you press Start bumps it right back up. Combine that with the bevy of locations, enemies, and items, and you've got a winner in graphical terms. Heck, even all the villains look great...however, I DO want to bring up a small point about the size of characters. Granted, the Turtles WERE only 4-feet tall, but by this comparison Shredder (in the game) would be at LEAST 6+ feet tall! And what about the Technodrome? It's supposed to be several stories tall, yet your Turtles can easily jump over the top of the blasted thing (and once you enter it, it's full-sized again). Sure, the game looks great, but there sure are a lot of inequalities!

The Sound.
The sound was actually quite good, too. First off, let's mention the fact that the immensely popular TV Show's theme song was successfully transcribed into the Nintendo, putting you right into the feel for the game. The music for each stage complimented the feel of it, whether it be a somewhat-carefree jaunt through the sewers (in the first stage) or the sullen creeping about an abandoned Military Base (stage 5). I'd rank the music quite high. As for the sound effects, they were excellent in their own right. The slice of a Katana, the smack of a Bo, the whirl of the Nunchaku, they all had sounds that (for the Nintendo) were befitting of their individual actions. I could give more examples, but to do so would probably turn up less than actually playing the game and hearing them in all their splendor.

The Gameplay.
Ok, here's where we hit a bit of a rut - the controls for the game would often send people into fits of rage! Now, I'm not the kind of person who will chuck a controller at something, but when you continually get knocked off of a platform by an irritating enemy that you couldn't hit because of the shoddy control set-up, then it's time to rethink the programming. Granted, it was nice to see the Turtles be able to strike Forward, Up, and Down, but oftentimes you'd come across a situation that would place your character in a very bad situation, often resulting in your being hit or knocked out of the area entirely! This just isn't fun, folks - you work long and hard to get all the way across that darn sewer passage (in stage 3), only to have a stupid little hopping creature knock you into the currents, sending you right back outside of the building! Of course, this isn't the ONLY problem with the game, but when you have continual problems with how the controls handle, trying to traverse even the simplest of situations can often come a chore. Finally, let's mention the challenge of the game - Stage 1 is fairly easy to deal with. Stage 2, due to its rather poor hit-detection, will often stop you dead in your tracks. Stage 3 has many areas that will drive you nuts. Stages 4, 5, and 6 will no doubt get you lost, confused, and angry with the game. Finally, after all your work, you make your way to Shredder...whom immediately uses an attack that kills off one of your Turtles, ending all your hard work. This just isn't fair, I tells ya!

The Verdict.
Ok, so the game had some serious flaws in the way of design and control. However, I feel that the graphics, music, and general feel of the game make up for these oversights. If you're a fan of the series and you DON'T have this game, I highly suggest you pick it up. If you're not a fan of the series, then picking it up would at least be worth a try - after all, it's not the WORST game in the world. While it's not the best, it certainly is a fun game - once you get the hang of those controls!

Reviewer's Score: 6/10, Originally Posted: 09/14/01, Updated 09/14/01