Game: "Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles"
System: Nintendo Entertainment System
Genre: Action
Published by: Konami

Reviewer: Dr. Boogie
Posted: 2/7/2008

Review: As a kid, I used to love the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. How could you go wrong when those four different things came together? And I sure loved video games. Thus, it would make sense that a combination of the two would be fantastic. Well guess what:

A lot of you are already way ahead of me on this, but let me break this down for our younger readers: These days, it's fairly common for semi-successful TV shows to have a video game spinoff. For the most part, these games are bad. In the late 80s/early 90s, however, you could expect to see games like this that were not only bad, they were frustratingly impossible. They were TMNT.

In the game, you controlled the turtles in bird's eye overworld map and in a side-scrolling mode when you entered a building/sewer. You could switch back and forth between the four turtles, but once one of the turtles died, you would have to use the remaining turtles to make it through the game and hopefully rescue that turtle later on. Doesn't sound too complicated, right? Well the fun began as soon as you got to the side-scrolling portion.

Each turtle's signature weapon differed in strength and reach. Donatello had the furthest reach because he would grab the end of his bo and thrust it like a spear (which allowed him to even hit enemies through the floors, ceilings, and walls), whereas if you were stuck with Raphael, game over. You'd walk through each level getting harassed by lots of tiny enemies and projectile enemies that would attack the moment they appeared on the screen, and soon, you'd be in need of the healing power of pizza. They're in short supply, though, so you're forced to switch turtles and soldier forth.

Pretty soon, you're almost out of health for everybody because of all the annoying enemies, and because boss characters prefer to simply ram into the turtles rather than try to hit them with specific attacks. You found a piece of pizza, but it wasn't nearly enough to offset all the damage you took before you found it. Even more troubling, you've only just beaten the first level. Worse, doing so didn't heal/revive any of your turtles! And now you've got the added bonus of having to deal with time bombs which will end your game completely if you don't get all 8 defused in 2 and a half minutes!!

As a kid, level two was as far as I got. As an adult... level three was as far as I got. As a kid with a Game Genie, however, I beat the whole game. I remember it being somewhat satisfying, cheating aside. Now, though, I think the whole game just pisses me off too much. Thank god the sequel was a nice side-scrolling beat-'em-up game that saved the franchise's future in video games.

Overall rating:
(Scored on a 0.5 - 5 pickles rating: 0.5 being the worst and 5 being the best)