DAILY MANIFESTO

Retro Revolution: TMNT Love

Posted on Monday, January 30 @ 15:46:59 Eastern by KevinS

I love the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles or "Teenage Mutant Hero Turtles" to some of my overseas friends. [Sorry, TMHT sounds like a disease. ~Ed. Nick] I grew up with them; comics, action figures, movies (ignoring anything after "Secret of the Ooze"), TV shows (the single most evil character in hero history being Venus de Milo), and especially the games. Hell, I started my nephew playing video games on my old toaster with TMNT 2: The Arcade Game. He had to know the classics before he stuck too hard in the "modern" Call of Duty-driven landscape. So with this personal history, hearing the rumor of Rocksteady possibly making a new TMNT game (which, with a name like Rocksteady, is perfect for the series) makes me wanna explore some classic TMNT games.

Surprisingly enough, the games were generally good. They weren't the occasional out-of-the-blue decent game we get now from popular licenses—Toy Story 3 being one—but actually thought-out games from decent development teams. True, the original TMNT game for the NES was originally something else, which explains the flying upside-down legs, killer flies, and electric seaweed, and wasn't particularly good, but the rest had some merit. TMNT2: The Arcade Game really was a scaled-down representation of the arcade incarnation, and its direct sequel The Manhattan Project was the same vein of beat-'em-up awesomesauce.

And that was just the NES! The Game Boy had three games of its own, all three being side-scrolling basic adventures. The first two were amusing, nothing particularly special but pretty straightforward and fun. The first was early in the GB's lifespan and might as well have been an LCD game, the second barely more detail, and the third… well, I hated the third. It was a bastardized Metroid-esque maze where searching for the turtles was the goal, each bringing a power-up to open up more areas of the map. For the GB it was pretty, though, so while it was little more than Samus in a shell (not particularly flattering), it gets a pass in my book.

When the SNES and Genesis were running amok, they each got their own beat-'em-up, but really they were essentially the same game. The Turtle's character sprites were identical, most of the bosses carried over the same way, and aside from the order of the showdowns and final plot points, everything was nearly identical. Still, both TMNT IV: Turtles in Time on SNES and Hyperstone Heist on the Genny are considered two of the best scrollers on their respective platform.

One thing that was different between the three consoles that carried it—the NES, SNES, and Genesis—was the vastly different TMNT: Tournament Fighters, a Street Fighter clone that had each turtle fighting not only each other but a cast that I can't remember from the comics. Some of the characters, like Karai and Rat King, can be found deep in the lore while War, Aska, and Sisyphus were either original characters or cameos from old Archie comics at some point. Not exactly canon, per se, but it filled the ranks a bit in an otherwise thin field… though the SNES incarnation only had ten "playable" characters, the Genny had eight, and the NES only had six. I guess playing as Splinter is like playing Michael Jordan in NBA Jam; the stats and power ranking would be just too damn high.

There were other, lesser known titles playable on home computers, and of course the batch of LCD games over the years (including my favorite, TMNT Basketball!). It took about a decade for anyone to be interested enough to start buying the games again, so let us know:

What's your favorite? Any memories to share? Tell us in the comments!

Tags: TMNT, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, Retro Revolution

Comments

dirty_f
Joined: Nov 2010

Posted: Jan 30th, 2012 at 3:53 pm
not a game moment, but when i was a kid, the first TMNT movie was on tv and i decided to record it with my vcr. half way thru the movie i needed to go to the toilet and get something to eat so i pressed 'pause' on the vcr. it took me a while to realise why, when re watching the movie, there was a chunk missing half way thru.

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Chunibrow
Joined: Mar 2010

Posted: Jan 30th, 2012 at 5:59 pm
lol you went to the toilet to get something to eat...

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dirty_f
Joined: Nov 2010

Posted: Jan 30th, 2012 at 6:12 pm
how else are you meant to steam rice?

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LawnGnome
Joined: Apr 2007

Posted: Jan 30th, 2012 at 4:04 pm
My favorite was TMNT: TIT too. Also, did you guys catch the TMNT references on American Dad last night? Hilarious! "I mostly come back here to do whippits and think about what would happen if the ninja turtles went to college....The dean closes the only pizzaria on campus and the turtles do not take it well at all."

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Guernica
Joined: Mar 2009

Posted: Jan 30th, 2012 at 4:20 pm
TIT was my favorite by far too followed closely by MP. This past summer my gf and I hit up an old school arcade on our way through CO and found an "block" of exclusively TMNT arcade and pinball machines. We played the TIT arcade box for at least a good 1 1/2 hours. Good times.

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De-Ting
Joined: Nov 2006

Posted: Jan 30th, 2012 at 4:29 pm
I LIKE TITS TOO!

I also recently tried the Gameboy version again, but didn't quite make it. I still love it, though.

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Imnickson
Joined: Jul 2006

Posted: Jan 30th, 2012 at 5:21 pm
I think if Rocksteady were to make this game they could bring back the gritty comic book turtle. In the eighties the franchise was much darker than the child friendly turtles we are so used to now. In the original comic they actually killed people and it was much more adult themed.

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Imnickson
Joined: Jul 2006

Posted: Jan 30th, 2012 at 5:21 pm
We actually talk about this in my weekly podcast over at www.everythingstentative.com

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thedarkstar
Joined: Feb 2011

Posted: Jan 30th, 2012 at 5:53 pm
I remember vacation when I was 10, in 1990...Man, I'm old. There was an arcade near the hotel we were staying at and I begged my parents for quarters to keep feeding the TMNT arcade game. Fun times.

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OdiousLupous
Joined: Jul 2011

Posted: Jan 30th, 2012 at 6:30 pm
Saw the movie in theaters the first day out. Kids giving Raphael a standing ovation when he screamed damn. The theater staff built a pyramid of the new TMNT cereal that came with a bowl shaped like Michaelangelo. They built it after we all went inside so it was a surprise as we left the theater. Of course we all whined to our parents to buy us a box.

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sliverstorm
Joined: Jun 2007

Posted: Jan 30th, 2012 at 6:39 pm
Turtles in Time here. Probably played through that game around 20+ times with my best friend. Looking back now, as a kid I got pretty much zero of the level name references.

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Sjvan0
Joined: Jun 2006

Posted: Jan 30th, 2012 at 9:15 pm
TMNT 2: The Arcade Game was my favourite. I used to play co-op with my best friend all the time, could never get past the polar bear guy in the leather jacket without him, but then later he usually got knocked out by the military boss guy with the incinerating weapon, leaving me to take on all those paper tigers in the next level by myself. Never did manage to finish it.

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