Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles

[Discoalucard]

www.hardcoregaming101.net/tmnt/tmnt.htm

Previously we had an article here covering Konami's TMNT beat-em-ups, but Audi's massive article here totally supersedes that, covering the entire history of Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles related games, starting from the original Konami NES game up until Ubisoft's movie tie-in and Smash Up!

[Gendo Ikari]

Oh wow, another mega-dossier! Opening and saving the pages, reading later... Separate pages for character profiles is a good idea.

[acidonia]

Baxter Stockman is in TMNT 3: Mutant Nightmare but only in the DS version.

Turtles in Time Re-Shelled was only Delisted in America it is still available in Canada and Europe. japan never got the game at all this seems to be the case for almost all Ubisoft Published Download titles. Because it was part of the Summer of LIve Arcade Promotion japan got Bubble Bobble Neo instead a Port of the Wii Ware title Bubble Bobble Plus!. Bubble Bobble Neo was at at a later date brought out in the rest of the world.

[nickz]

This article is huge! I learned more about ninja turtles today than I had through my entire life.

I used to go to a game store that had the arcade game still working in 2009. The machine worked for a while and munched a few good quarters before some idiot broke it when he threw a fit and started stealing things. I never got to try the game out, but from what I heard, it was pretty awesome.

[vnisanian2001]

Although both the NES TMNT 1 and the arcade one were released at the same time, it's possible that the NES game was developed (keyword: DEVELOPED) first, as it was based on the source material, much like how the NES version of Strider was developed first, as it, too, was based on the source material.

[Audi]

Dec 12, 2011 23:09:59 GMT -5 vnisanian2001 said:

Although both the NES TMNT 1 and the arcade one were released at the same time, it's possible that the NES game was developed (keyword: DEVELOPED) first, as it was based on the source material, much like how the NES version of Strider was developed first, as it, too, was based on the source material.

...but the article does state NES TMNT 1 was developed first, I had the details on those old games confirmed internally from Konami.

[vnisanian2001]

Oops. Sorry about that.

[ReyVGM]

Great article.

As for this, in the Turtles in Time part:

"Interestingly, Splinter shows a bit of a meanstreak in this game, serving as the timekeeper for each stage and ushering the turtles to move on if they stand still. Each time Splinter appears, he grows larger in size, and eventually if players have not moved within the alloted time, he drops a lethal bomb on each of them, killing them in the process. "

The article should have screens of this. Huge ass splinter for the win.

[Gendo Ikari]

Read the first 8 pages. Some typos I spotted so far.

Supporting cast page:
the first small paragraph about Karai is part of April's info instead.

Page 2:
"sic sections" --> six sections
"is polluted waters" --> missing a "the"?

Page 3:
the paragraph about music is repeated soon after
"less actively on screen" --> less activity on screen

Page 5:
"walking buy" --> walking by
"NES brawer" --> NES brawler


- Played the arcade a lot back in the day. While it's a great game, I found myself in agreement about the lack of impact of the attacks.
- TMNT Engine is made on Multimedia Fusion, a versatile game making tool that it's becoming dated and limited however, especially compared to Game Maker. I doubt it would ever be able to re-create the original arcade perfectly.
- A friend of mine owned the first NES game. We never managed to go past the first stages. Didn't know a DOS port existed until a few weeks ago - so there's two of them? One "bleh but at least you can finish it" and another "bleh and you cannot even finish it"?
- My cousin had Turtles in Time on the SNES and we played it a lot. Foot Soldier throwing was always fun. Re-shelled, aside from the excessive filters, looks too much "plastic" to me.
- I knew of the existence of Manhattan Missions but I thought it was just a subtitle given to one of the DOS ports of the early games and not a PC exclusive! Differently from those ports, they seem to have taken advantage of the VGA graphics at the time. Sounds really interesting despite its imperfections.
- The first Game Boy game seems bland but the other two look interesting.
- I always thought Tournament Fighters was just the same games on the SNES and Genesis, with the latter receiving the obvious technical downgrade, so I'm surprised to find that they, in fact, share little. I like the Genesis version's backgrounds however, they may not be the best technically but many are quite imaginative - what is that freaky... thing in the Leo vs Clone Leo screenshot anyway?

And so, I'm going to read about the games based on the 2003 series, which I liked as I liked the old one in the early 1990s, probably for the reason they have very little in common, so the newer series mostly stands on its own instead of aping the past animated incarnation. Here in Italy, the great choice of re-casting the same old dubbers of the Turtles helped. From a peek at later parts of the article, it addresses a problem I agree about, 2K3 got sometimes really convoluted with the plots, so much I remember a string of episodes made just to resolve some. I may add that, later on, some episodes were really, really dark - especially the one with Stockman getting a new human body *shudder*
Finally, I saw a few episodes of Fast Forward and didn't like it. Hope they'll dub Back In The Sewers and Forever in the future.

[Audi]

The 2k3 series started out fantastic by using many of the key plotpoints from the original comics, but pretty much per season it gets drowned with plot twists and illogical pacing, then finally murdered like Herman Cain's political career with the Fast Forward stuff, which is just unbearable. The last season and Turtles Forever does at the very least end the show on a high note.

To everyone who haven't seen it, the feature length movie Turtles Forever from 2009 is great and combines the 2k3, 1987 and original Mirage comic cast together in one film.

[copyrightedname]

A typo I noticed in page 2.

"The other port for DOS" should be "The other port for Amiga".

[Digitalnametag]

Very interesting read! I have serious respect for you guys playing all these terrible ports of games just for a couple lines in the article.

Lots of fond memories of TMNT having grown up during that time period. Had me laugh out loud a couple times. I sincerely hope you really sleep on TMNT bedsheets.

I remember my father picking up the original DOS TMNT game on discount in the 90s. The most notable thing I recall about that game was the password book required to start the game. Some good memories of playing Hyperstone Heist and the original Arcade game as well.

[vnisanian2001]

Let me just say this right here, right now:

I enjoy the original TMNT on the NES. Sure, it's hard as hell, but it's great, and has a great soundtrack, just like most Konami games. The controls and sound effects are tight, too.

[Audi]

My bed sheets are just like my boxers, mean, green and unclean. Though my boxers aren't TMNT merch.

TMNT 1 NES isn't a bad game at all, it's just brutally unforgiving. The controls, graphics and music is for the most part of very high standards for the time and especially for license based game, which makes the difficulty all the more infuriating, because you can actually control the game, it just throws so much stuff at you.

[Gendo Ikari]

Read the rest. I didn't even know that TMNT2K3 and Battle Nexus were released on the PC too, maybe due to the "elitism" of some computer gaming magazines. I don't know, however, how much I can fault them for how the PC audience was shafted with Battle Nexus - bad game and no unlockable Arcade. Was a reason for such omission ever given? I wouldn't be surprised if the sales of the PC version of BN were abysmal compared to the other platforms.