Senior Mutant Ninja Turtles! Heroes wearing diapers!

To talk about the end of the 80’s and beginning of the 90’s and NOT talk about the global phenomenon that was the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles would be highly blasphemous and disrespectful for your childhood and for humanity as a whole, for that matter. Tradition indicates that sitting about 30 inches away from your TV on Saturday mornings was mandatory, and of course, you had to blur out that ‘TEENAGE MUTANT NINJA TURTLES! HEROES IN A HALF SHELL! TURTLE POWER!’ theme song as hard as your lungs could ever afford to. And by all means, what was NOT to like about the show? It was about TURTLES! That were NINJAS! They talked in surfer lingo (well, mostly Michaelangelo), and ate pizzas like some motherfuckers. Oh yeah, and their sensei was a rat. A FUCKIN’ RAT...teaching FUCKIN’ TURTLES...some fuckin’ NINJUTSU! Insert a cool-looking bad guy ninja with the James Avery voice assist, two incompetent mutant underlings, and a whiny alien brain, and VOILA! You have the formula of success right there!

The transition to a video game adaptation was obviously there, and it seemed like only a matter of time before it would occur. And it was here where our story begins! Ultra Games (a subsidiary of Konami...if you hadn’t realized it back then when you saw the NES game being released by Ultra and the arcade game being published by Konami itself) released the very first NES game featuring the Turtles. And just right off the bat, as a kid, you might have noticed something was wrong.... These Turtles didn’t look funny. Or spoke, like...TOTALLY RAD, DUDE. Hell, they barely even had a line in the game...aside from these gems:

LOL!

Somebody may think that Ultra basically just nerfed the Turtles into faceless minions with no eyes or something (you can even see this in the game’s cover, with ALL the Turtles wearing the same colored headband), but actually, that is because they were based more on the comics version than the ones regularly shown in the cartoon. The comic book adaptation for the Turtles was a LOT more grittier, somber, and obscure than the cartoon ever was. The comic book Turtles were NO fuckin’ slouchers, party-lovin’ freaks. They meant SERIOUS BUSINESS! You could see some pretty disturbing shit, like.... Leonardo lopping Shredder’s head off (FATALITY!), Raphael becomes leader of the Foot Clan, Donatello becomes a cyborg of sorts, and Michaelangelo kills off Splinter. If you’ve heard that shit back when you were a kid...yeah, you would probably be crying right now. I’m such a retrospective asshole. HAR!

Here are the happy Turtles. Look at the Turtles go. RUN TURTLES RUN!

And here is where Leonardo shanks Shredder and lops his head off. Remember, kids, the key word for today is SHANK!

But yeah, that’s why this game feels so...different. And it plays pretty different, too. If you were just some random spaz kid who happened to stumble along this game and was like, “OMG OMG OMGGGGGGG! THE TURTOILS! MOMMA, BUY ME DAT GAME NOOOOOOOW!” and planned to breeze through the game like it was Mario Bros. or some shit like that...oh boy, you were in for a treat (read: major childhood trauma), and most people would know that it would more or less come early on in the game...mainly, that FUCKIN’ DAM STAGE! But let’s go by parts before we start with all that shit, shall we?

OK, so this game is mostly a side-scrolling platform action game, with some overhead action only during the times when you must translate your Turtle from one location to another in any given stage (except for the final stage, which takes place entirely within the Technodrome, hence why you cannot exit to an outside location). The overhead segments of this game aren’t really action-loaded at all (except, perhaps, in stage 3, where you take control of the Party Wagon), except for maybe some random Foot Soldiers wandering about (which you can easily kill in one hit), and some other perilous shit which you CANNOT take on head-to-head (such a steamrollers, fighter jets, and searchlights). Think of these segments as “transitional stages”, if you will.

All the action, of course, will take play in the side-scrolling stages. In these parts, you can alternate between any of the 4 Turtles at any given time (just pause the game and select any turtle you wish). As it is, every Turtle has a given advantage and subsecuent disadvantage...but in my experience, you’ll just end up using Leonardo for running through the stages, and Donatello against the bosses. That is because Leo and Don have the longest-ranged weapons...which also happen to be the most powerful, too. Raphael and Michaelangelo have shitty-ranged weapons, and they can’t really inflict any decent damage before the enemies are all over their shit. Leo and Don can even attack enemies from lower levels with their weapons, while Raph and Mike...are pretty much screwed.

While Don is able to stick pole up anyone's ass (no homo)....

Raph barely strikes the breeze with that kitchen knife of his!

During the game, you can also pick up some sub-weapons, which come in limited amounts, but can help you out in some situations. These sub-weapons can be either found lying around, or as a random drop from some enemies (you can even find them from destroying enemy ammo!). As with the characters, there are certain tiers for these items. You WILL and MUST want to collect as many Kiais as you possibly can. Kiais appear in the form of scrolls, which enables your character to launch a crescent-shaped energy wave (for some reason) that will pretty much clean whatever is in their paths. If not, you could also go with the boomerangs. You can launch several of these babies, and as long as you are on the receiving end when they come back, they’ll never deplete. That’s a pretty good bargain if you like using Raph or Mike, because this will actually give these douchebags some much-needed range without having to worry much about wasting all the sub-weapons. The other 2 sub-weapons (the shuriken and 3-way shuriken) are better off in the gutter from whence the Turtles came from.

Other random gadgets you may find along the way are ropes (which you only really REALLY do need in stage 4, to be honest), missiles for your Party Wagon (only available in stage 3), and some Turtle-face icons (I think they were called ‘Mr. Invincibility’) which makes your Turtle roll all over the place with their weapon extended and pretty much clean house without being damaged (although, in my experience, these icons are only located in places where you really don’t need them). Of course, you also have the trustworthy pizzas to regain lost health. We have them in several presentations, too! One-sliced pizza only regain about two units of energy, half-sliced pizzas recover half your energy, and full pizzas recover (you guessed it) all your energy!

A good way to stockpile on some items (or to constanly chow down on pizza to recover damaged Turtles, considering that the assholes at Ultra never considered the fact to recover the Turtles’ energy at the beginning of each stage, WTF?) is to enter and exit locations which might have nearby items that you can easily collect, leave, re-enter, repeat. If it’s too much of a hassle, maybe you’ll be better off finding another location where you can do this process without too much worry of getting severely damaged just to get some kiais.

Whenever a Turtle gets ‘killed’, they end up getting ‘captured’. There are rather specific locations where you can ‘retrieve’ your captured Turtle, but you can only rescue one Turtle per stage. So make sure not to get two or more Turtles killed in one stage, or you’re going to feel terribly handicapped for the next few stages (and if you’re gonna sacrifice a Turtle, better make it either Raph or Mike, heh heh).

As for the game itself...it all starts out with...YES! You guessed it! April O’ Neill, the TV reporting ally of the Turtles gets kidnapped! Damn, doncha love those sudden plot twists?

DAMN! That dumb ho fucked up AGAIN!

Anyways, stage 1 mostly takes place in sewers and some scattered buildings and warehouses. Right off the bat, you will see that, unlike most Turtle games out there, the normal cronies here don’t consist in 90% of Foot Soldiers, but rather some quite bizarre enemies.... Hell, even the Mousers look quite strange in this game.

Your guess is as good as mine....

Halfway through the stage, you’ll run into Bebop, who is quite of a one-track minded sub-boss. He will just charge, jump kick...add a punch in there, and that’s it. Clobber his piggy-ass with Donatello, jump over him, repeat clobbering. After you beat him, his partner Rocksteady leaves with April in tow.

After you catch up with Rocksteady in some warehouse, he’ll act pretty tough with his pea-shooter (which I guess is his machine gun, but I digress). Just climb atop the stack of crates on the right and keep aiming downwards with Donatello, and you’ll get to him. Afterwards, April gets rescued...already? Damn, that was pretty quick....

Speaking of “damn”, that is where our second stage takes us! To the ROOT of our problems! The much-dreaded, ever-cursed dam stage! WHEEEEEEEEE! Doncha love revisiting childhood traumas? First of all...I kinda suck at geography and so and so, but...is there REALLY a dam anywhere NEAR New York City? And if so I would really like to go check it out...because apparently the underwater geology there is BEYOND fucked up.

Defuse that shit like your name was Solid Snake, nigga!

The stage pretty much runs smoothly until you have to take that fatal dive to the deep blue...er...”river”, and deactivate 8 bombs in about 2:30 minutes. Which would be a LOT easier...if the place weren’t filled with electric gates, electric algae (does that even exist?), deadly spinning rotors, AND man-eating seaweed. MUCH FUN! Accompany this with the funky physics that go along with the stage (and by this, I mean that swimming becomes QUITE the chore in this one...for some reason, sometimes swimming downward won’t bring the desired effect, but if you STOP swimming, you sink. WTF?).

OH, THE HUMANITY OF IT ALL!

For this reason, it’s almost literally impossible to avoid ending up with at least ONE Turtle in critical condition, more likely due to that damn electric algae, which exists in such narrow halls that it is unavoidable to get “shell shocked” with such funky movements. *I* personally could finish the stage with one Turtle near death and the second one at half health, but then again, maybe I’m just lucky (I remember as a kid having at least 2 Turtles nearly kicking the bucket, and the third one barely getting there)....

What kind of warped bullshit is this?!

Hey! You finished stage 2, and it looks like a wrap again (damn, this game jumps the gun one too many times, eh?). But as seen here, Shredder has the kidnapping bug inside of him, and he just can’t get enough of it!

Who says there isn't good shit on cable?

Whew! Stage 3 mostly involves driving the Party Wagon around and going GTA on the Foot Soldiers that wander about, as well as the regular steamrollers, which you can barely do damage with your cannons, but can obliterate with the missiles. However, seeing as missiles are few and far between, I do recommend saving missiles for destroying the barricades and such. I suggest having about 30 missiles in stock before making way through the stage, so in that way you can just go ahead and detsroy whatever steamroller or barricade is in your path (or if you’re lucky, you can destroy both a steamroller AND a barricade with the same missile).

I like his chances....

The boss here is that Mecha-Turtle boy. Or you can just call him a gray Leonardo, whatever suits you better. He does go kinda crazy with the slashing, so stay your ground. Once you deplete his energy, he surfaces again, this time as some kind of armed robot of sorts, which flies around and fires some missiles, too. This is where the boomerangs and kiais may come in handy to destroy the missiles AND damage Mecha Turtle at the same time.

You know what, Master? For being such an expert in martial arts...you sure do get punked pretty often.

So here we are in stage 4, the airport. Or...something reminsicing an airport. This facility is as big as the damn Dallas Ft. Worth terminal with about twice as much chaos (if that is ever possible), and with about...10 times the hazards. Your goal is to reach gate #19, and no, you can’t catch any damn train to get there!

Beds of spikes, bubbling magma, and huge magnets.... Yeah, I would rather travel by Greyhound

Once you get to gate #19, you’re about to face King Mouser! Who actually LOOKS like a Mouser! I like the idea that King Mouser is like a Master Mold of sorts, but instead of churning out deadly kick-ass unflying Sentinels, this baby spits out...Mousers. OH MY! Oh, BTW, this is probably the easiest boss you’re gonna face. Just stand right beneath him, use Donatello, and aim upwards. That’s it. By doing this, you avoid King Mouser’s eye beams, hit him in his orb when he opens his mouth, and destroy the small Mousers that come out of it at the same time! LOLLERSKATEZ!

So, the bad guys escape on a helicopter and we get....a fuckin' blimp. And it's not even the goddamn Goodyear blimp! Fuck THIS shit!

Stage 5 takes place in some dark construction site or whatever. You main objective is to get to the underground areas in search of that bloody Technodrome. Use the warehouses only if you have to heal your Turtles or find a captured ally. Oh yeah, there are searchlights around the place, and if they spot you, they usually drop a Foot Soldier...which is basically no big deal anyway.

Once you deal with that, go to the manholes were you will be facing some pretty annoying enemies (especially the bugs who roll into balls and the oversized porcupines). And you’ll get pretty frustrated if you don’t find the Technodrome right away. But once you DO...oh boy, this fight will get ON!

OK, correct me if I’m wrong, but isn’t the Technodrome like 30 stories high in the cartoon? Why is it the size of a goddamn small house in this game? Does this tiny little shit scrap REALLY carry around the armies of Dimension X? But hey, I would be OK with it...if it weren’t for the fact that the final stage takes place inside that puny little vehicle, and the last stage is no damn cakewalk! BLAAARGGGH!

Behemoth-sized Technodrome vs. pint-sized Technodrome. Kinda like comparing a monster truck vs. a Power Wheels

OK, the Technodrome has several sections you may want to consider destroying. First off, the front trident, which likes to give out HUGE electric shocks. Then proceed to destroy those damn mounted cannons (probably the biggest annoyance in this battle). Then you can take care of the chute where all those red Foot Soldiers come out of. Don’t pay attention to the back trident. If you hit the Technodrome’s eye enough times, you probably won’t even have to worry about it.

Alas! The final stage! Brace yourself, because if you got riled by the Technodrome before, chances are...you probably won’t survive this stage at all. I usually never get through this stage without a continue. If you know the right path to Shredder, you should probably go take it, no questions asked. It’s really not a smart move to go wandering around, mostly because of those goddamn spacesuit fuckers roaming about. GOD, I hate those shitheads! They just fly around with no given path, and shoot hella harmful laser beams right at ya. In the next-to-last hall, you are gonna HALLUCINATE those fuckers (mostly because the hall is so damn narrow and there’s little room for motion). If you kept some kiais with you, you may probably consider pelting those assholes with them at FULL speed.

I love how this game instantly jumps to conclusions for me. That's some cold-blooded shit right there!

REJOICE! You have finally finished the game! Huh?! What about Shredder, you say? Nigga, FUCK that Shredder. He may feel kinda like a G with that mutant gun of his that can one-hit kill you. But if you stand on the right-side platform, pick Donatello, and just keep striking forward, Shredder will just fail every time. Don’t you love such an easy boss after such a hellish stage?

Hmmm.... I never knew this whole game was about turning Splinter back to human? OMFG MIND-FUCKING PLOT TWIST AT THE LAST SECOND!

Like I said, this game isn’t for the sloucher casual gamers. That freakin’ dam stage AND the last stage will make you beg for mercy after a while, although most bosses are ironically pretty easy to beat (only Mecha-Turtle and the Technodrome would give you any trouble). What is also strange is that you will NEVER hear the trademark TMNT theme song at any time. Not during the title scene, not during game play, and not during the ending, either. The music is also pretty damn gritty and stuff, and is usually never upbeat at all.

Like I said, some regular enemies are somewhat difficult to get by because they can take more than one hit OR they usually split into other freakin’ menaces. You might even want to pull out Don from the bench to nail some of those fuckers, because they can get pretty annoying. This annoyance is also coupled with the Turtles’ floaty jumps. Sure, making big leaps is no big deal, but making the SMALL ones is quite the feat to accomplish. You pretty much have to give the B button the “feather touch” and hope your Turtle doesn’t bop his head against the roof and fall down so you have to work all the way back up again (this gets especially annoying in the sewers at level 3, where you have to jump small platforms, or else risking getting a plunge into the sewer trench and be knocked out of the stage).

This game may be somewhat high in the difficulty standard, but it’s not, say...Battletoads-hard. It also suffers from some technical mishaps and what not, but it’s not a BAD game, per say. It’s just that certain segments of the game make you want to just give up and send everything to hell, but then again, what old school NES game DOESN’T have this trait? It also didn't help matters any that it was more based on the uber-serious comic book series instead of the happy-go-lucky cartoon version which all the kids loved, but I guess that's what the arcade game was for (and we are also grateful for that). It sure doesn’t hold up to the TMNT beat-em-ups that came afterward, but I also don’t consider it to be too shabby.

OK, so you could swim your ass in a Satan's-made dam, but you find yourself helpless in a fuckin' sewer trench? MAKE UP YOUR OWN DAMN MIND!

No Cowabunga?