Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles

"Black sheep of the series, a la SMB2"

Back in the NES days, the first games of popular franchises had a knack for being NOTHING like the rest of the games in the series, and this is no exception. While the rest are clear-cut beat’ em ups, it’s hard to say what this game was…it felt like segments of seperate games forced together.

Back Story- 0/10- As with most NES games, the story made no sense at all. The game starts with no introduction, just you standing next to a manhole in the middle of nowhere. After you go through a series of manholes you end up in a dam, then continue on to other seemingly unconnected locales.

But before you can FULLY appreciate these games, you have to go a little deeper…learn a little more about the turtles themselves. Just listen to the title, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. What genius came up with that? Not only have these ordinary turtles been mutated, they were also granted ninja powers along with the mutation…it’s unclear whether the ooze gave them the skills directly, or whether their enhanced physical abilities allowed them to quickly learn the techniques from splinter. It’s difficult to imagine how the ooze would manage to directly affect the brain so that it ''knew'' such refined arts…but then again they were able to speak almost as soon as they were mutated as well, so it isn’t entirely out of the question.
It doesn’t stop there though, they’ve also been referred to as ''teenagers.'' I’m not too sure why their creators were so specific about this, and again the meaning is fairly ambiguous…are they teens by when they were born as turtles, or when they were mutated? Are they even teenagers at all, or do people just assume they are because of their typical teenage-like behavior? (eating entire pizzas in one mouthful, smoking tons of pot, saying cowabunga, etc.) Most of this is left for speculation, but one thing is clear: the games based on these extraordinary turtles will never be topped when it comes to mutated animals fighting foot-themed robots with pseudo-ninja supermoves

Graphics- for an NES game…5/10. Not much to see here, especially the bird’s eye views, but I guess it doesn’t matter much in a game like this. The jumping animation was pitiful.

Gameplay-8/10- Each turtle had their main weapon, plus they could pick up cool secondary weapons such as throwing stars, triple throwing stars, boomerangs, etc. These were only used on the 2D platformer style levels and they were rarely useful, but it didn’t matter much. You could also switch between all four turtles at will which was a bit strange…like you could jump with donatello, pause, switch, then land as raphael. The fact that there was practically no difference between any of the turtles gave the end result of you basically playing as one turtle with four different life bars to work with. There were also levels where you drove around vehicles and collected missiles, plus levels where you could swim around. Weak bosses, pretty weak contol (if you tap A your turtle leaps into the air as if he was just shot in the ass with a 12-gauge) but it wasn’t so bad that you couldn’t adjust to it. It was almost like a variety pack of small levels all loosely attached in one cartridge.

Overall- 7.5/10 – I doubt too many people liked this game, but it has a certain amount of nostalgic value for me, seeing as it’s the second game I ever personally owned…plus it gets points for being quite unlike any other game I’ve ever seen. The only thing it needed was more levels and more throwing scrolls.

Reviewer's Score: 7/10, Originally Posted: 08/12/03