Gameplay - ★
Roster - ★★
Graphics - ★★
Sound - ★★

Honestly, there is nothing great to say about EITHER versions of this game. I played both the super Famicom and Sega Genesis versions through and yet still I cannot fathom how absolutely abhorrent this game truly is.

I can give a few things a pass on this - graphics is probably the high point of this game on both versions, but better on the genesis. The controls are, weird to say the least on the SNES, with light and heavy punches and kicks respectively. No command list, but it seems they have taken a leaf out of street fighter's book for this one.

The SNES version of the game plays weirdly. Almost as if every special outside of projectiles are very Bison esque, with ways to travel across the screen, and even less ways to punish it, with Raphael's AI continually doing his version of a Psycho crusher, leaving you open to a grab, something which isn't too dissimilar to SF2 Bison, where there is no way to tech grabs in this. Annoying, but not completely out of options.

The roster is a bit of a strange one, with War swapping out for Ray, and Casey replacing Shredder, as well as some random other character being swapped with April.

Overall, the aesthetic, roster, and feel go to the Genesis version, but neither perform well, and both feel painful to play. No way of training or labbing without going against an AI that can read your inputs as was common for the day, no way of knowing what characters have charge inputs and what ones follow Shoto rules, and no real feedback when attacking either. The only thing that the game had going for it was that if you closed your eyes, you could sort of imagine that you were playing street fighter. Well, that would be if the god awful sound design didn't destroy your immersion.

The sound on this game is terrible. The game in general is terrible. There are very few redeeming factors to this game, and I spent way too long trying to come up with arguments for it. The only thing I can possibly let it off for was sprite work and stages as honestly, the gritty look of the Genesis version really does look decent for the time. Other than that, I don't think I'll be picking this one up again any time soon. I think one or two arcade runs are good enough for this to leave it well alone.

Not gonna lie, was kinda disappointed in this one. I had heard over the years that this was the best of the 3 Tournament Fighters games, and after playing it, I really hope that's not the case or I'm REALLY gonna hate the other ones...this one did have some good.

I really like the art style of the sprites for both the characters and background characters, a lot of references to the cartoons, movies, and toy line I also like how every character including the turtles have a very distinct fighting style to match their weapons, and the super attacks are kinda neat.

The part that goes downhill is how slow this game goes to me. All the characters feel REALLY big, so the hotboxes seem a bit off. I'm not an expert in fighting games and the series I dislike the most is Street Fighter and this felt something like that. The difficulty has no medium, either the CPU is brain dead or just counters every little thing.

The music was pretty good as well, nothing seemed recycled, only a few tracks were remixed, but most everything was brand new.

Honestly, I didn't have fun with this game, it's a good idea but wasn't fond of the execution.

A fighting game that's worth looking into if you like SNES fighters. Story mode has you play through the game as one of the four turtles while tournament mode lets you use any character besides the bosses. Has better balancing than the Genesis version, but there's a certain shark that can be extremely broken if used in a specific manner. Despite this knowledge, I'm primarily a Shredder main. My only criticism is damage output can be random despite using a heavy attack or not. So that heavy punch you landed could just deal small damage. Tournament and Story isn't as punishing as the genesis version, as beating Karai in either mode will get you the expected ending on the default difficulty. The game can be hard regardless due to the AI being able to spam moves faster than a human player (Armagon would fire 2 projectiles without any visible input because AI) This game also predates Super Turbo in terms of having super moves. Overall, its a good SNES fighting game when you want more variety on the system. Just be sharp when facing the AI cause they're almost as bad as Mortal Kombat II's.

I’ll be completely honest here, I’m not a big fan of traditional fighting games. When playing with them with other people I get the appeal a lot more but as someone who usually plays video games by himself a lot of these classic ones especially are not a fun experience playing alone. The AI in this game is absolute balls and it’s pretty much the one reason why I don’t really wanna touch this one again but compared to the other versions I’d be down for potentially picking this one up again, who knows. It’s got some cool fighters, some neat and simple enough mechanics and Karai is a super welcome edition. Are there other things here that make me give it a lower score for now? Well even though I can praise some of the gameplay aspects, I feel like this game is way too janky for its own good. Even on the lowest difficulty setting and speed it feels like this game is constantly on the fritz and… yeah it’s hard to describe here but still. Really though it’s the AI that screws everything over, I feel like I’m playing Street Fighter 2 Turbo with how rigged the difficulty is.