The Genesis version uses the standard three-button controller, with only two buttons for attacking (punch and kick). To perform stronger punches or kicks, the player must hold the directional pad towards the opponent while pressing either attack buttons. The third button is used for taunting. Some of the stages in the game feature destroyable scenery that gives the player and their opponent access to new areas in the stage. As well as their special moves, each character has a 'killer' attack which is only accessible when they are close to death and the red part of the characters' life gauge at the top starts flashing. This is done by pressing the Taunt button in conjunction with a specific D-Pad motion. These moves nearly take out the other character's life gauge completely. The game has eight playable characters, which includes the four Turtles and Casey Jones, as well as April O'Neil (whose active role differs from the versions of the character featured in other games), Ray Fillet (a character from the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles Adventures comics), and Sisyphus (an original character, named Musha Beetle in the Japanese version). The player can adjust their power and speed after selecting their character. The music in this version was composed by renowned video game composer Miki Higashino, in collaboration with Masanori Adachi.
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Amazing graphics and music ...this could have been so good if it wasn't for the unmanageable difficulty.
It's not very good
Ta chimbo, mano
TMNT: Tournament Fighters (1993): Claramente la versión mala de las dos. La IA es ridículamente hábil, que incluso se salta normas que sí se te aplican a ti, no tiene más modos que el VS y en general, no da motivos para jugar a este plagio de SFII más allá de las tortugas (4,80)
A disaster of a game. The CPU is very cheap and even telepathic at times, and special move inputs don’t always register. The only thing this game has going for it is some decent sprite art.
Minor Introduction
Uhhhh do I have to? Do I have to play this? Why am I even asking, I already played it if I’m reviewing it here. Welp, here we are. Welcome to the twelfth review of the marathon, courtesy of the cowabunga collection! And for this review, we have…this monstrosity. I am genuinely not looking forward to it, since I have heard nothing but bad things about it, so let’s just wrap it up quickly.
First Impressions
What the fuck is this? No seriously, what the actual fuck is this? You would think that for a 16-bit system, the game would at the very least be better than the goddamn 8-bit NES version, but no this is actually WORSE than that! How do you even manage to fuck this up?!?! There are some mild praises to be had here and there, but it is genuinely as bad as you’ve heard, with its only salvageable praising mark being “atleast it’s not NES TMNT 1!” …let’s just mention what makes this game stick the landing in a pile of shit head-on. Considering I have way more criticism than words of praise, the dedicated flaws section will be omitted from this review.
Gameplay
I want to start first with what I think are the things this game either does right or better than NES version. The roster is honestly the best of all three games, by actually having most of the recognizable tmnt characters (the usual four turtles, april and casey jones) alongside one less-known cut (Ray Fillet) and a fully original character for this version (Sisyphus)…tho this all comes with the omission of shredder who appears in snes and nes version. The stage selection is also very good, featuring some distinct locales and settings (taking full advantage of the galaxy trip story of this game), albeit not as pretty or unique as snes, but far better than nes selection. I…uhhh…have nothing else to praise about the gameplay here. The actual core fighting is really clunky. Gone is the fast pacing and more natural combo stringing of snes and even nes to a degree, and instead we have this slow and janky combat, where stringing combos together is rather rough to do (as if doing the combo on its own isn’t already bad enough here), even with the speed and power settings turned to max. The controls are also…not much of an improvement over nes. You would think that the addition of one button would at the very least guarantee a better combo system, as there are better opportunities to implement an additional attack or new combos, but instead that’s used for taunting…which basically does nothing….yay. Ok that’s not completely true, you can use taunt in conjunction with the d-pad to perform a powerful special attack that can only be enabled when you’re close to dying…but also couldn’t they just implemented that with a two-button combination NES style and used the third button for other intricate combos? Oh yea, the special attack taunt combo is also never once mentioned to you, neither by the game nor the manual, so you have to find it in a stroke of luck…absolutely brilliant. In a console that’s already known for not being a good platform for fighting games due to its base controller, this is just rubbing salt on the wound. The single-player offering is also underwhelming. The tournament mode is fucking useless, as it omits the character-specific endings entirely from snes, so it’s just a 1 vs CPU mode without any fancy bells or reason to go for it. The actual story mode is also an extra bullshit tier usual than most FGs of the era. The CPUs are peak arcade mentality, spamming their cheapest moves and stringing impossible combos to take you down…and that’s from the very first opponent, who is as difficult as most later-game CPUs in other FGs. This does balance itself in a weird way, as their AI is rather braindead when you decide to cheap yourself through the game with April and spam her Blanka rip-off move. The balancing is simply all over the place. It all combines for a gameplay experience that is simply tolerable at best, unbearable at worst and just “not fun” most of the time.
Story
The actual story this time is a lot more sensible than nes’s “shredder just asks for a raw fist fight” and more in-line with the story in the snes version…despite having its own tweaks. Splinter gets kidnapped by turtle clones sent by Krang, so the turtles and their allies have to fight ACROSS THE GALAXY to defeat them and save Splinter…oh right and Karai is the true mastermind (there is your accuracy cue!). The story concept sounds sick as fuck and the presentation is also given more attention, with an opening cutscenes and intermission cutscenes after the clone fights that progress the story, featuring the usual interactions and fun dialogues that you would expect. If the gameplay was good, i’m sure I would have a lot of fun traversing through this story, cuz it’s clear they put some effort in this one and tried to make the most RADICAL tmnt adventure. Really really cool stuff here.
Presentation
The presentation is fine. The character sprites are good, the backgrounds are very good and distinct, the character animation is decent enough, the artstyle’s more muted colors fits the genesis attitude and still looks good and it all runs at a consistent smooth framerate…but in comparison to tournament fighters snes or even other genesis games of the same period this came out, it feels rather lacking…all except for one area. The music SLAPS! The ost of this game is the one aspect I will absolutely give to the genesis version over any of the other tournament fighters ports, it’s absolutely great work! Even this game follows the genesis badge loyally with its soundtrack being top-tier. Why is it that the ass games have the most slapping songs?
Final Thoughts
So yea, this is as close as you’ll get to another tmnt game being as bad as the infamous first nes game, because even though the fighting is clunky, there is fun to be found in 1v1 against a friend or hearing the music in the game. Otherwise, stay the fuck away from this. Final verdict: 4/10!
Uhhhh do I have to? Do I have to play this? Why am I even asking, I already played it if I’m reviewing it here. Welp, here we are. Welcome to the twelfth review of the marathon, courtesy of the cowabunga collection! And for this review, we have…this monstrosity. I am genuinely not looking forward to it, since I have heard nothing but bad things about it, so let’s just wrap it up quickly.
First Impressions
What the fuck is this? No seriously, what the actual fuck is this? You would think that for a 16-bit system, the game would at the very least be better than the goddamn 8-bit NES version, but no this is actually WORSE than that! How do you even manage to fuck this up?!?! There are some mild praises to be had here and there, but it is genuinely as bad as you’ve heard, with its only salvageable praising mark being “atleast it’s not NES TMNT 1!” …let’s just mention what makes this game stick the landing in a pile of shit head-on. Considering I have way more criticism than words of praise, the dedicated flaws section will be omitted from this review.
Gameplay
I want to start first with what I think are the things this game either does right or better than NES version. The roster is honestly the best of all three games, by actually having most of the recognizable tmnt characters (the usual four turtles, april and casey jones) alongside one less-known cut (Ray Fillet) and a fully original character for this version (Sisyphus)…tho this all comes with the omission of shredder who appears in snes and nes version. The stage selection is also very good, featuring some distinct locales and settings (taking full advantage of the galaxy trip story of this game), albeit not as pretty or unique as snes, but far better than nes selection. I…uhhh…have nothing else to praise about the gameplay here. The actual core fighting is really clunky. Gone is the fast pacing and more natural combo stringing of snes and even nes to a degree, and instead we have this slow and janky combat, where stringing combos together is rather rough to do (as if doing the combo on its own isn’t already bad enough here), even with the speed and power settings turned to max. The controls are also…not much of an improvement over nes. You would think that the addition of one button would at the very least guarantee a better combo system, as there are better opportunities to implement an additional attack or new combos, but instead that’s used for taunting…which basically does nothing….yay. Ok that’s not completely true, you can use taunt in conjunction with the d-pad to perform a powerful special attack that can only be enabled when you’re close to dying…but also couldn’t they just implemented that with a two-button combination NES style and used the third button for other intricate combos? Oh yea, the special attack taunt combo is also never once mentioned to you, neither by the game nor the manual, so you have to find it in a stroke of luck…absolutely brilliant. In a console that’s already known for not being a good platform for fighting games due to its base controller, this is just rubbing salt on the wound. The single-player offering is also underwhelming. The tournament mode is fucking useless, as it omits the character-specific endings entirely from snes, so it’s just a 1 vs CPU mode without any fancy bells or reason to go for it. The actual story mode is also an extra bullshit tier usual than most FGs of the era. The CPUs are peak arcade mentality, spamming their cheapest moves and stringing impossible combos to take you down…and that’s from the very first opponent, who is as difficult as most later-game CPUs in other FGs. This does balance itself in a weird way, as their AI is rather braindead when you decide to cheap yourself through the game with April and spam her Blanka rip-off move. The balancing is simply all over the place. It all combines for a gameplay experience that is simply tolerable at best, unbearable at worst and just “not fun” most of the time.
Story
The actual story this time is a lot more sensible than nes’s “shredder just asks for a raw fist fight” and more in-line with the story in the snes version…despite having its own tweaks. Splinter gets kidnapped by turtle clones sent by Krang, so the turtles and their allies have to fight ACROSS THE GALAXY to defeat them and save Splinter…oh right and Karai is the true mastermind (there is your accuracy cue!). The story concept sounds sick as fuck and the presentation is also given more attention, with an opening cutscenes and intermission cutscenes after the clone fights that progress the story, featuring the usual interactions and fun dialogues that you would expect. If the gameplay was good, i’m sure I would have a lot of fun traversing through this story, cuz it’s clear they put some effort in this one and tried to make the most RADICAL tmnt adventure. Really really cool stuff here.
Presentation
The presentation is fine. The character sprites are good, the backgrounds are very good and distinct, the character animation is decent enough, the artstyle’s more muted colors fits the genesis attitude and still looks good and it all runs at a consistent smooth framerate…but in comparison to tournament fighters snes or even other genesis games of the same period this came out, it feels rather lacking…all except for one area. The music SLAPS! The ost of this game is the one aspect I will absolutely give to the genesis version over any of the other tournament fighters ports, it’s absolutely great work! Even this game follows the genesis badge loyally with its soundtrack being top-tier. Why is it that the ass games have the most slapping songs?
Final Thoughts
So yea, this is as close as you’ll get to another tmnt game being as bad as the infamous first nes game, because even though the fighting is clunky, there is fun to be found in 1v1 against a friend or hearing the music in the game. Otherwise, stay the fuck away from this. Final verdict: 4/10!