Yeah, that was just your slandered crappy NES licensed game.
There is some fun to be had in some moments, and having 4 characters playable is neat, but MAN, it's just a pain for the eyes, and a mess to play.
There is some fun to be had in some moments, and having 4 characters playable is neat, but MAN, it's just a pain for the eyes, and a mess to play.
As a kid, I managed to free Splinter, I was so happy to finish the game. Wait, what ? There are other levels ?
Nooooooooooo.....
(Cool game but way too hard)
Nooooooooooo.....
(Cool game but way too hard)
This game is good, flatout. Good graphics, controls are fine and the music is good. The levels are decently well designed and the difficulty is pretty fair in reality. People play it for 15 minutes die and call it crap. If you hate this game, then you are just really bad, its that simple. Anyone can beat this if you are an actual NES Head.
I know this game is unfair, I know this game hates me, I know I should not have spent so many hours playing it or replaying it, but what can I say, I guess I love being punished.
If you got the cowabunga collection and are thinking about playing this.
Don't, it's fucking awful and way too unfair.
Don't, it's fucking awful and way too unfair.
Why are we still here?
Just to suffer?
Just to suffer?
Technically played via the Cowabunga Collection on Nintendo Switch.
TMNT on the NES was one of the turtles' first video game outings just around when the franchise was starting to get very popular.
The folks at Konami certainly knew this hence why they made a hell of a lotta TMNT games around the end of the 80's and the 90's starting with this action-platformer.
Thing is though, this hasn't aged like pizza in the slightest.
In fact, it's aged like smelly pizza with shit-droppings that was chucked into the garbage can years ago because fuck me, this game is brutal.
Everybody remembers the infamous underwater level complete with the seaweed (the root of all evil that probably plagued many a happy childhood) but really that level is the least of this game's worries because this has hell written all over it's tiny little turtle shell.
The turtles in their quest to yet again stop Shredder won't just have to deal with enemies that can kill them in a few hits or even instantly when they're just walking to their next destination. Oh no. They also have to deal with stiff as hell controls, cheap traps everywhere and just a general sense that they somehow feel weak as fuck which is not how these fellas should be like.
If you somehow managed to get through this torture exercise masquerading itself as a videogame using the licence of a popular animated cartoon series that in turn was based off of a comic book without having to resort to other measures (which is exactly what I did thanks to the Cowabunga Collection because if the game ain't gonna play fair, I ain't playin' fair too.), you my friend deserve every ounce of respect possible.
As for me, I'm heading off to get a shower so I can wipe this horrid title out of my memory.
TMNT on the NES was one of the turtles' first video game outings just around when the franchise was starting to get very popular.
The folks at Konami certainly knew this hence why they made a hell of a lotta TMNT games around the end of the 80's and the 90's starting with this action-platformer.
Thing is though, this hasn't aged like pizza in the slightest.
In fact, it's aged like smelly pizza with shit-droppings that was chucked into the garbage can years ago because fuck me, this game is brutal.
Everybody remembers the infamous underwater level complete with the seaweed (the root of all evil that probably plagued many a happy childhood) but really that level is the least of this game's worries because this has hell written all over it's tiny little turtle shell.
The turtles in their quest to yet again stop Shredder won't just have to deal with enemies that can kill them in a few hits or even instantly when they're just walking to their next destination. Oh no. They also have to deal with stiff as hell controls, cheap traps everywhere and just a general sense that they somehow feel weak as fuck which is not how these fellas should be like.
If you somehow managed to get through this torture exercise masquerading itself as a videogame using the licence of a popular animated cartoon series that in turn was based off of a comic book without having to resort to other measures (which is exactly what I did thanks to the Cowabunga Collection because if the game ain't gonna play fair, I ain't playin' fair too.), you my friend deserve every ounce of respect possible.
As for me, I'm heading off to get a shower so I can wipe this horrid title out of my memory.
Oyunun dizaynı güzel düşünülmüş ama zorluk anlayışı fazlasıyla dengesiz.
After finally playing it for the first time since I was a kid, I always thought this game was pretty much impossible. Having played it now as an adult, I'll agree it definitely is hard in parts with some very unfair enemy placement and some jumps are waaaaay too tight, but as a kid I didn't know that, because my biggest issue is me not know that pizza respawns after you leave the area...would have helped knowing that.
The music of the game is actually really good now that I've heard the whole thing, but it's Ultra so they do music well, some of the songs had a Metal Gear feel to it.
Not really too much I can say about the game, it's fairly decent and gets hated a bit more than it should, but for a game that I assume was marketed towards kids, I do agree it crossed the line of difficulty by quite a margin.
The music of the game is actually really good now that I've heard the whole thing, but it's Ultra so they do music well, some of the songs had a Metal Gear feel to it.
Not really too much I can say about the game, it's fairly decent and gets hated a bit more than it should, but for a game that I assume was marketed towards kids, I do agree it crossed the line of difficulty by quite a margin.
Buena epoca aunque es re injugable
Surprise surprise. The NES game that is notorious for being difficult and unfair is indeed difficult and unfair. The Internet and the Youtube reviewers are right about this one and any contrarian "oh I'm sure it's not THAT bad!" attitudes instantly evaporate the moment you play that childhood-destroying dam level and realize "oh hell, I have to thread through this tunnel of electric death seaweed like a goddamn sewing needle with these controls".
Then, if you happen to make it past the well-remembered dam level, it begins to dawn on you that the whole bombs in the dam sequence of the game was one of the earlier levels and that the rest of the game gets harder. Everyone remembers the seaweed but that seaweed didn't instantly kill you the way the fire pits and the spike walls do.
I played this on the Cowabunga Collection, which really is the best option since they both give you the option to turn sprite flicker and game slowdown off and they give you a rewind feature and save states just to give you a fighting chance. And let's be real - the rewind feature isn't cheating if the game itself is cheating right back. I suppose if you held me hostage and told me to beat this game on a legitimate piece of NES hardware I could eventually bring myself to do it, but for now, my time on this planet is fleeting and I just have better things to do with my life than to memorize the inner workings of TMNT NES.
Also anyone who says that utters this game in the same breath as Contra and Castlevania is getting a boomerang to the face followed by a crouched bo attack that hits you from across the room and through a stack of crates.
Then, if you happen to make it past the well-remembered dam level, it begins to dawn on you that the whole bombs in the dam sequence of the game was one of the earlier levels and that the rest of the game gets harder. Everyone remembers the seaweed but that seaweed didn't instantly kill you the way the fire pits and the spike walls do.
I played this on the Cowabunga Collection, which really is the best option since they both give you the option to turn sprite flicker and game slowdown off and they give you a rewind feature and save states just to give you a fighting chance. And let's be real - the rewind feature isn't cheating if the game itself is cheating right back. I suppose if you held me hostage and told me to beat this game on a legitimate piece of NES hardware I could eventually bring myself to do it, but for now, my time on this planet is fleeting and I just have better things to do with my life than to memorize the inner workings of TMNT NES.
Also anyone who says that utters this game in the same breath as Contra and Castlevania is getting a boomerang to the face followed by a crouched bo attack that hits you from across the room and through a stack of crates.
Played on the Cowabunga Collection, and 90% of my total playtime was spent rewinding the game to avoid the absolute clusterfuck of enemies that flood each screen from killing me.
I was like, 2-years-old when this game came out, so I can't attest to how popular it was at the time, but I do know The Angry Video Game Nerd did his part to repopularize it, and I think this is one of those times where The Nerd is right (The Nerd is always right!) Indeed, this game is a shitload of fuck. It's a donkey dick diarrhea, fart balls video game fuck piss. I don't like it, and I've beaten it twice because the only thing I dislike more is myself.
In all seriousness, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles is just your typical janky NES platformer. You know the type, I'm sure. The ones where the edges of platforms aren't actually solid so you just drop through despite appearing to have plenty of room to scoot forward another few pixels, where your jumps are floaty and unwieldy, where platforms are placed too close to ceilings, where enemies overcrowd screens and deal absurd amounts of damage, where you have almost zero invincibility frames to recover from, where slowdown and sprite flicker make it borderline impossible to get your bearings amid all the madness... It just goes on and on, no singular part of this game feels particularly good. Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles released in 1989. Castlevania released in 1986. Konami was perfectly capable of making a game that felt better than this, and I know I'm making that point when some might argue Castlevania suffers from similar issues.
For as negative as I am on the NES' library, it stands out to me as one of the worse games I've played for the system. Perhaps I've not played enough, but if there's a vast sea of even worse titles that would make me appreciate Ninja Turtles even more, then god damn do I not want to play them.
What were they thinking.
I was like, 2-years-old when this game came out, so I can't attest to how popular it was at the time, but I do know The Angry Video Game Nerd did his part to repopularize it, and I think this is one of those times where The Nerd is right (The Nerd is always right!) Indeed, this game is a shitload of fuck. It's a donkey dick diarrhea, fart balls video game fuck piss. I don't like it, and I've beaten it twice because the only thing I dislike more is myself.
In all seriousness, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles is just your typical janky NES platformer. You know the type, I'm sure. The ones where the edges of platforms aren't actually solid so you just drop through despite appearing to have plenty of room to scoot forward another few pixels, where your jumps are floaty and unwieldy, where platforms are placed too close to ceilings, where enemies overcrowd screens and deal absurd amounts of damage, where you have almost zero invincibility frames to recover from, where slowdown and sprite flicker make it borderline impossible to get your bearings amid all the madness... It just goes on and on, no singular part of this game feels particularly good. Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles released in 1989. Castlevania released in 1986. Konami was perfectly capable of making a game that felt better than this, and I know I'm making that point when some might argue Castlevania suffers from similar issues.
For as negative as I am on the NES' library, it stands out to me as one of the worse games I've played for the system. Perhaps I've not played enough, but if there's a vast sea of even worse titles that would make me appreciate Ninja Turtles even more, then god damn do I not want to play them.
What were they thinking.
It’s a fun NES game based off the turtles but… it really feels like Ninja Gaiden sometimes with the unfair jumps and enemy placement.
This is a fascinating game, a real product of its time that would never happen now due to corporate control over licensed properties - It's definitely a rare case of the official product feeling like a bootleg. The game itself is pretty rough if ambitious, but as a product of its time, it's pretty wild to look back on and see how this Japanese team made their own spin on the Turtle brand.
Anybody that can beat this without save states, I will gladly give you a pizza myself. Suck it Mike Matei.
Good old NES days.
Òtimo gameplay pra um jogo de NES, Turtles in Time tirou completamente a atenção desse jogo, foi por um bem maior...
While it controls fine enough and decently fun after a playthrough or two, the last few Areas are kind of a pain to get through. Mostly because of annoying enemies and confusing exploration.
Oh, and the underwater bomb stuff just sucks.
Oh, and the underwater bomb stuff just sucks.
Minor Introduction
Welcome yet again to another installment of my little tmnt marathon, courtesy of the cowabunga collection! This time, we’re taking a tour around the mainline nes installments. I am…interested to say the least, as the only one i’m properly aware as being good is tmnt3: the manhattan project, while the first game has been shrouded in infamy and the second one is a bit of a mystery to me. So let’s get started!
First Impressions
Yea this game is dogshit. Cue credits! Seriously though, I was expecting this game to be bad, but I wasn’t expecting just how much of a wasted opportunity it is. This game contains an actually decent formula for a tmnt game, but it is just absolutely squandered by every cheap difficulty trick in the book.
Gameplay
In a change of pace, this game isn’t a beat’em’up, but rather a sidescrolling action-platformer, in a similar vein to the first castlevania game. It’s a welcome change, but one that is completely wasted here. The gameplay is straightforward: you have a series of levels, connected together by an overworld of sorts, that you have to traverse as one of the four turtles of your choice. Each have a short and long jump and can attack in four directions or do a jumpkick. There are 6 overworld levels, split up into shorter sidescrolling levels. Believe it or not, there is a small number of positives to be found here when you ignore literally 80% of the rest of the game. The level design for the most part is actually okay and I like the overworld approach. There is even some nonlinearity present as a result of the overworld, which gives the player a small degree of freedom on how to approach the levels. It’s a decent concept. Of course, there is a ton of other stuff that ultimately makes this concept not fun, but we’ll go through them in the negatives section.
Story
It’s a straightforward story. Shredder does bad stuff, turtles go out to save the day, ending in them taking down the technodrome and shredder himself. It’s fine, each plot development serves as merely an excuse and transition towards the next overworld aesthetic, which aren’t anything mindblowing by tmnt standards. The presence of short cutscenes is honestly impressive and they look good, but overall it’s a NES story: merely there to serve its job as level intermissions.
Presentation
This is the one department where I can give props at. The spritework and animations are good, the music is good, the sound design is good. It’s not the best i’ve seen from the NES (and honestly, future tmnt games on this platform have even better presentation), but it still looks good even now. The cutscenes have the best presentation of the entire game though.
Negatives
Oooooooooh boy, where do I even start? The difficulty is absolutely horrendous and it basically comprises the one thing that completely destroys every facet of this game. Enemy placement is dogshit and overkill FOR THE DIFFICULTY, the bosses are generally badly designed, either being too easy or bullshit FOR THE DIFFICULTY, the controls are janky as shit FOR THE DIFFICULTY, the recovery time is painfully low FOR THE DIFFICULTY and it has the worst water level in a videogame…FOR THE DIFFICULTY!!! Oh and did I mention how the ninja turtles and powerups are poorly balanced, with Donatello and the boomerang powerup being clearly superior to everything else, while the rest is either useless or not as effective in the end. Just aaaaah man, there is so much wrong with this game! But hey, there is atleast unlimited continues right…riiiiight????
Final Thoughts
What we have here is at the very least a 6/10 game concept being reduced to a 3-4/10 with its bad execution. Everything you have heard about this game is absolutely correct. Bad difficulty, bad bosses, bad controls, bad enemy placement, bad recovery time, dogshit water level, unbalanced characters and powerups. I would be curious as to how this game would have turned out if they actually designed the difficulty to be fair, but there is no point in that, since just like how konami and the fanbase have left this behind, I should also leave it behind as just a weird bump in the road for this franchise. Overall: 4/10 (2/5 stars)
Welcome yet again to another installment of my little tmnt marathon, courtesy of the cowabunga collection! This time, we’re taking a tour around the mainline nes installments. I am…interested to say the least, as the only one i’m properly aware as being good is tmnt3: the manhattan project, while the first game has been shrouded in infamy and the second one is a bit of a mystery to me. So let’s get started!
First Impressions
Yea this game is dogshit. Cue credits! Seriously though, I was expecting this game to be bad, but I wasn’t expecting just how much of a wasted opportunity it is. This game contains an actually decent formula for a tmnt game, but it is just absolutely squandered by every cheap difficulty trick in the book.
Gameplay
In a change of pace, this game isn’t a beat’em’up, but rather a sidescrolling action-platformer, in a similar vein to the first castlevania game. It’s a welcome change, but one that is completely wasted here. The gameplay is straightforward: you have a series of levels, connected together by an overworld of sorts, that you have to traverse as one of the four turtles of your choice. Each have a short and long jump and can attack in four directions or do a jumpkick. There are 6 overworld levels, split up into shorter sidescrolling levels. Believe it or not, there is a small number of positives to be found here when you ignore literally 80% of the rest of the game. The level design for the most part is actually okay and I like the overworld approach. There is even some nonlinearity present as a result of the overworld, which gives the player a small degree of freedom on how to approach the levels. It’s a decent concept. Of course, there is a ton of other stuff that ultimately makes this concept not fun, but we’ll go through them in the negatives section.
Story
It’s a straightforward story. Shredder does bad stuff, turtles go out to save the day, ending in them taking down the technodrome and shredder himself. It’s fine, each plot development serves as merely an excuse and transition towards the next overworld aesthetic, which aren’t anything mindblowing by tmnt standards. The presence of short cutscenes is honestly impressive and they look good, but overall it’s a NES story: merely there to serve its job as level intermissions.
Presentation
This is the one department where I can give props at. The spritework and animations are good, the music is good, the sound design is good. It’s not the best i’ve seen from the NES (and honestly, future tmnt games on this platform have even better presentation), but it still looks good even now. The cutscenes have the best presentation of the entire game though.
Negatives
Oooooooooh boy, where do I even start? The difficulty is absolutely horrendous and it basically comprises the one thing that completely destroys every facet of this game. Enemy placement is dogshit and overkill FOR THE DIFFICULTY, the bosses are generally badly designed, either being too easy or bullshit FOR THE DIFFICULTY, the controls are janky as shit FOR THE DIFFICULTY, the recovery time is painfully low FOR THE DIFFICULTY and it has the worst water level in a videogame…FOR THE DIFFICULTY!!! Oh and did I mention how the ninja turtles and powerups are poorly balanced, with Donatello and the boomerang powerup being clearly superior to everything else, while the rest is either useless or not as effective in the end. Just aaaaah man, there is so much wrong with this game! But hey, there is atleast unlimited continues right…riiiiight????
Final Thoughts
What we have here is at the very least a 6/10 game concept being reduced to a 3-4/10 with its bad execution. Everything you have heard about this game is absolutely correct. Bad difficulty, bad bosses, bad controls, bad enemy placement, bad recovery time, dogshit water level, unbalanced characters and powerups. I would be curious as to how this game would have turned out if they actually designed the difficulty to be fair, but there is no point in that, since just like how konami and the fanbase have left this behind, I should also leave it behind as just a weird bump in the road for this franchise. Overall: 4/10 (2/5 stars)
its not... thaaaaaat bad? but its still kinda bad
use rewind if youre gonna play this at all, otherwise dont bother
use rewind if youre gonna play this at all, otherwise dont bother
That god damn water level
why are some sound effects so much louder than others please
I am slightly marking this up, if just for the nostalgia factor. One of the obsessions of my childhood. I was never lucky enough to own a NES. I still pine for that grey box. My cousin's however, had one with a game of the best cartoon in the entire world for a child of a certain age (I was probably around 8 or 9). Oh how I relished every second I got to play it. Even if it was just playing the first few stages or until I got a game over. It didn't matter that I was bad at the game, all that mattered was I got to play as my favourite heroes on my favourite computer game platform. This was most often at Christmas time as we would usually go round for a few hours one evening over that week. And it was always a few hours I held dear and sacred.
Fast forward 30 years (fucking hell, felt a bit of my life force escape writing that), and we have been blessed with the Cowabunga Collection. A compilation of most of my childhood wants and desires (although I had Turtles in Time on the SNES and it remains to this day one of my favourites on the platform), including the coveted NES game. I'm not gonna lie, one of the main reasons I got this collection was so I could finally have the NES game. To actually own something I would have happily traded my own brother for back in the day (although the big grey NES cart would also be welcome, but fuck the prices of those games these days).
I was a happy man, and my inner child was even happier when I got the opportunity to play it again. Only this time I managed to finish the game. That said, it would've been fucking impossible without rewinds and save states. Those last three levels were brutal. But battering Shredder was the easiest part of the game.
A childhood goal finally achieved. With a little help. Next I need to direct a scary film. I seem to remember wanting to do that as a 9 year old...
Fast forward 30 years (fucking hell, felt a bit of my life force escape writing that), and we have been blessed with the Cowabunga Collection. A compilation of most of my childhood wants and desires (although I had Turtles in Time on the SNES and it remains to this day one of my favourites on the platform), including the coveted NES game. I'm not gonna lie, one of the main reasons I got this collection was so I could finally have the NES game. To actually own something I would have happily traded my own brother for back in the day (although the big grey NES cart would also be welcome, but fuck the prices of those games these days).
I was a happy man, and my inner child was even happier when I got the opportunity to play it again. Only this time I managed to finish the game. That said, it would've been fucking impossible without rewinds and save states. Those last three levels were brutal. But battering Shredder was the easiest part of the game.
A childhood goal finally achieved. With a little help. Next I need to direct a scary film. I seem to remember wanting to do that as a 9 year old...
Water level
"Cowabunga... Cow-a-FUCKIN' PIECE OF DOGSHIT! This game is diarrhea coming out of my dick! This game is as appealing as a fucking ooze-infested dirty fucking sewer rat shit! I've had more fun playing with dog turds! Shredder's my ass and Splinter's my balls, this game is an inside-out asshole regurgitated putrid anal fecal matter! I'd rather fucking yank all the hairs out of my scrotum! I'd rather drink diarrhea vomited out of a buffalo's anus! It sucking fucks, it fucking sucks, IT FUCKING BLOWS, IT'S A PIECE OF SHIT...and I don't like it." - James Rolfe
The arcade game is awesome. I have played this so many times. The original beat em up that spawned so many of my favourite games.
The platforming console and handheld games really live in the shadows of the beatemups. But despite all the flaws here, it still holds fun and looks nice. Would rather just play a konami CastleVania though, no exciting game design here.
What a bunch of assburgers, with a side of fries!
A pretty ambitious game that is really let down by the randomly-generated enemies. Not particularly great, and nail-bitingly difficult, but it's pretty interesting. There are definitely worse things to be.
Awkward, unresponsive controls and some really inconsistent hit detection make this feel bloody awful to play. Ditch respawning enemies and give each Turtle a touch of invincibility time after taking a hit and you'd have a serviceable licensed game but a lot of this game feels a bit like you're getting lucky rather than showcasing any level of actual skill, making it really unsatisfying and not much fun at all. Decent soundtrack and some cool ideas scattered throughout give it an extra star but this is a bit of a stinker, all things considered.
Also: the infamously difficult water level is actually piece of piss, just use all your Turtles as one long energy bar and switch one our before they die. Should take the health of no more than two, even if you're playing badly. This game is full of far, far more unfair bullshit than that level.
Also: the infamously difficult water level is actually piece of piss, just use all your Turtles as one long energy bar and switch one our before they die. Should take the health of no more than two, even if you're playing badly. This game is full of far, far more unfair bullshit than that level.