Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Tournament Fighters

"As great a pioneer as it was a rip-off! Both mean good!"

TMNT Tournament Fighters was released in November 1993 by Konami, who simultaneously released this with the Genesis and Nintendo versions. A few months before the game came out, it got quite a bit of press. I saw it on a couple of magazines like EGM and I was drooling over the pictures. I was very excited about being able to play a fighting game starring the Turtles, seeing how I was watching the cartoon, playing the arcade games, reading the (Archie) comics and buying tons of the toys. Abeit my brother did all four more and was a bigger TMNT fan than me, I was a bit more excited since I was such a fighting game fanatic. After I saw EGM give it an 9, 8, 9, 8, I was completely convinced that I was GOING to buy it- period. I didn't pay anything into mind- like how EGM also gave Quantum Fighter four 9's, or how Street Fighter 2: Turbo and Mortal Kombat was out, or how Konami had never even tried to make fighting games before. Still, I had faith in Konami, especially after they made Castlevania 4.
It was released at a pretty handy time, since my birthday was only a couple of weeks later in January. So I went to the handy Wal-mart and layed it away. Piece by piece, It finally came to my house on my 10th birthday (along with the granny-purchased Aero the Acro bat), thus making it the first game I've ever brought (although mom did the last $15 or so) and one of the only two games I've ever payed full price for (the other was Donkey Kong Country 2).

You choose between 10+ fighters from the cartoon, comic and/or toy line. You have the four turtles, Armaggon (shark), Aska (deadly flower, as in female ninja), Chrome Dome (robot mysteriously shrunk a few hundred feet for the tournament), Shredder, War (something), and Wingnut (mutant bat), plus two bosses.

There are two different plots; the main plot is on the Tournament mode- where 12 fighters compete in a tournament to try to win the prize money. Each of them want to do different things with the money- for example, Leonardo wants to open up a dojo, Shredder wants weapons to rule the world/city, and Wingnut just wants to beat people up. I thought it was weird that they made the ''tough'' turtle, Raphael into such a wuss. His goal is to buy presents for his friends, and he's very wussy on his ending! The other plot is on the story mode. On the story mode, you can only pick the four turtles as they go off to find a mysterious kidnapper that abducted April O'neil- AGAIN!

On the tourney mode, you fight through all 12 characters and two bosses. After each character beaten, the winner gives a short speech according to who it is. Leo says some Ryu-style ''honorable'' lines like ''do you see the results in many years of training?'', and so on. On the story mode, the Heroes in a Half Shell, or Green Dudes with Attitudes, or whatever corny dead nickname you want to use fly around in their blimp (no it's not controlable) looking for clues to April's whereabouts (in other words, picking fights).

The normal moves are pretty basic for a fighting game; there's light punch, hard punch, light kick and hard kick. They're completely unique for every fighter (although the Turtles have slight similarities). Of course, there are all the usual moves like jumping, throwing and Vega-style back-flipping for the turtles. And yes, all the characters have special moves that are done just like SF2's (charge back 2 seconds, push forward+kick, down, down-forward, forward+punch etcetera). Most of all, this was the very first game to feature a special move meter. It's a green bar that rises whenever you hit your enemy (blocked or not). When it gets to the top, you can unleash an Ultimate Attack move. While it invented that, nobody seems to give this game the credit. The super moves worked the exact same way a few months later on Super SF2 Turbo. Guess they did a theft for a theft.

OVERVIEW I

GAMEPLAY: 10!

The control is second only to Street Fighter 2: Turbo and Super SF2 on the SNES. It's very responsive and simple. Many consider this game as a rip-off, and they're right! But it ripped off in STYLE! This ain't Fighter's History- TMNT TF is full of very unique characters and moves, but I'll get to that later.

The engine is almost perfect; fighters shift back when get hit just like on SF2. They're only two buttons, but the balance between the light and hard moves, along with the special moves sets up the best combo system I've EVER seen! No, you can't hit someone 32 times by pushing 3 buttons, no you can't remove a fourth of someone's health with one throw, and no you can't hit someone in the air three times before they land. In any other case, that last line would mean good, but this is my main problem with the game; sometimes it's way too easy to avoid the blunt of a blow just by jumping. It can be extremely stressful when you spend two minutes staying back, then finally get the meter full for a desperation attack. Because some of the most powerful attacks on the game can be rendered useless if a you just jump into it, because then it will only tap you one time. Of course, some attacks like Don's mighty Fire Dragon can't be neutralized by that, but most others can. If it wasn't for that, I'd give it a 10+, but the bottom line is that I love the simplistic yet complicated two to seven-hit-combo engine.

GRAPHICS: 9

The backgrounds are quite entertaining to see- especially if you're a turtles fan. It's cool to see some special guests like Casy Jones, Backster Stockman the Fly, The Foot Soldiers and even Chompers cheering in the background. The arenas range from a construction zone to the top of a building to a rock concert. The buildings in the background are beautiful on Mike's skyscraper stage, as is the stone head and pyramid on War's mountain stage. I get a much cooler feeling when the battles are set in trains and skyscrapers than normal arenas like on SF2 and MK. The only problem I have with the backgrounds is their being too light for the gritty poses they give the fighters. That's no big problem at all. On another note, I love the cover art.

The animation isn't perfect, but it's decent and you'll probably never complain about it. Some like the octopuses' tentacle swinging on the Pirate Ship stage are very cool. The graphics and animation of some Ultimate Attack moves is superb, like Shredder's Lightning Crusher and Armaggon's Tidal Wave (too bad the actual move itself is much more useless).

SOUND: 9

Once again, bested by it's SF2 and MK peers, but still very good. The kicks and punches don't have the roaring souns they do on SF2 and MK, they also don't sound too realistic. The super moves sound a lot better- the Lightning Crusher sounds like real lightning and the Tidal Wave sounds like a real rolling boulder.

The voices are near-perfect with most of the fighters. You hear them whenever you get hit or scream the names of the special moves they perform. I always thought that was kind of weird- you never hear anyone at a boxing match scream ''LEFT HOOK!'' do you? Anyway, Chrome Dome has a cyborg voice, Shredder has a malignant voice and Wingnut has a mutant bat voice (not that he'd have a choice- can you name another mutant bat?). The only voice problems I have is that of the turtles. All of them except Leo are supposed to have ''attitudes'', yet all four of them, even Raph, sound like the ''serious warrior'' types. That throws out certain elements of the feel, but not that much.

MUSIC: 8

The music is nothing special in most cases. The few levels with attempts at soft rock music (like Leo's stage) are uninspired. However, most of the other music goes very well with the action, Like the Mount Olympus (War) stage, with classic ''jungle drum'' music, and Chrome Dome's dark sci-fi music. Some of it, like Ratking's stage even sounds like cheap casino music. Overall, the music doesn't meet up to Konami's SNES game standards (Mystical Ninja, Castlevania 4, etc.) but it's still cool.

DESIGN: 10!

It doesn't get much better. There simply isn't one fighting game I can think of with better character balance. They require you to use all kinds of different strategies. Armaggon works best with a fast and furious style while Leo is on the defensive. Shredder is a combination of both, Raph is a combo machine and Chrome Dome is an interesting Dhalsim/Zangeif hybrid with long limbs and special throw moves. Others like Aska are best for trying to build up the super move meter by forcing opponents to block. Yet all of these matches are pretty fair. The only characters that are even halfway unfair are Donatello and Michaelangelo. But you'll probably have to play a LONG time to reach their full potential! Even after that, you still won't see anything like Zangeif vs. E Honda or Dhalsim vs. M Bison!

This game also had some pretty cool move sets. Leo is a total rip-off of Ryu, but Shredder has completely original moves- one where he charges to wherever his opponent is and does a two-hit uppercut, and the ''Aura'' that deflects fireballs! Both of those moves were never heard of at the time. Of course, the Ultimate Attacks were the only of their kind at the time too. Some are extremely well-thought, like Chrome Dome's super move where he blows himself up then magnetizes himself back together. This brings me to another complaint; some of the moves, despite being pretty flashy, are like, totally useless, dude! Like Leo's Endless Screw- a move where he spins around above almost every character's head, and even if it does hit the first time, that opponent can just duck from there and let em' have it when he slows down! To make things worse, it can easily be done by accident. I soon gave that move the name, ''Endless Screw-up''. There are a few pathetic moves like that, but they don't ever really detract from the fighter's overall usefulness.

CHALLENGE: 4 to 6+

It's not that hard to beat the computer on any level, since it has so few patterns. This isn't really a game to play 1 player, like most fighting games. The story mode can be fun, though. You only have 5 continues to go through all of the characters. It's the most fun if you play it as if you can only use each turtle once. The computer is good to practice on sometimes, but the endings aren't much inspiration to play through the game at all. As you get better and better, you can up the speed and handicap level a few times. Unlike on most of these new fighting games, on this, an expert player can crush some button-mashing 6-year-old under his thumb, and that's the way it's supposed to be!

REPLAY VALUE: 10!

I really enjoyed this game for about a two-year period and I only had one playmate. It's likely to take a while to get into, maybe a week of frequent playing, but it's well worth it. There was about a one month period when I enjoyed it better than SF2: Turbo! You gradually get better and cheaper everyday, so it's recommened that you play with the same person frequently, or you won't have the true experiance.

Quick note: this game has a ton of codes, and I'm sure you can already guess one of them since this IS a Konami game. When I got the boss code in the mail from Video Games magazine, it was the most excited I'd been over a code since the boss code for Street Fighter 2! The difference is, this one actually worked!

OVERVIEW II

COWABUNGA!

*the no-tricks fighting engine
*the variety in character styles and strategies
*the cool Ultimate Attack moves that started it all
*the lively battlegrounds
*the original moves

BOGUS!

*the simplicity of avoiding very powerful moves by jumping
*the average computers
*unescapable re-dizzy combos (don't worry about that for a while)
*this game is very underrated!

AWESOME MOMENTS

When you first see the Ultimate Attacks and when you pull off your first big combos.

HOW DOES IT RATE IN THE SERIES?

Definitely the best of the three Tournament Fighters games, and yes, they are all completely different.

SAY WHAT, DUDE?

This was one of the three games featured in Blockbuster Video's Febuary 1994 Video Game Tournament. I entered and got a score on this game almost twice as high as the 3rd placer (the second was my brother), and it didn't even go as well as I'd wanted it to because I fought the wrong computers! I was way ahead of everybody else on Clayfighter, also. But I really lagged in NBA Jam. I still have the flyer to remind me of my humiliating defeat! That cursed game caused me to lose! ARRRRRGGGGGGG!!!!!.......... Wait- I just would've gotten to go play an early version of Primal Rage anyway, so.....

OVERALL: 10!

This is my favorite fighting game on the SNES next to SF2: Turbo. It doesn't have any very bad flaws and has an absolutely perfect balance of innovation and basics. The moral of this story is- no matter how little people will believe you, any company can do anything as long as they put they're minds into it!

Reviewer's Score: 10/10, Originally Posted: 11/06/00, Updated 11/06/00