Alex's Cowabunga Collection Marathon, Pt. 4 of 13

WHY DOES EVERY LETTER "H" LOOK LIKE A "K"

ARE WE FIGHTING IN THE STREETS OF "MANKATTAN"???

From what I've been able to tell, the NES version of Tournament Fighters is considered the worst one, so I figured I'd start here and then see how things improve on the 16-bit systems.

For an NES fighting game, this is surprisingly competent! But compared to any fighter that's not on an 8-bit system, it's pretty rough. The roster isn't huge (4 turtles, Shredder, Casey Jones, and a boss character invented for this game), but each character does have their own unique combo moves, which is more than I expected. Hitboxes are solid, but the CPU will block most attacks, making it a bit difficult to actually get a punch in.

Raph's bite is OP. If you get up close to your opponent, you can chomp right through their defenses and do a serious amount of damage. I bit right through Shredder's helmet over and over again to secure my victory.

Minor Introduction
And we are close to the finish line! After wrapping up the GB trilogy, it’s time to rewind back to our beloved main consoles with a trilogy of strangely different ports of the same game. Curious how that will go. Welcome to the eleventh review of this marathon, courtesy of the cowabunga collection! Next for the list, the NES port of the franchise’s stint into fighting games: Tournament Fighters. How did they execute this on an 8-bit console with only a d-pad and two buttons on its controller? Let’s find out!

First Impressions
It’s a fighting game on an 8-bit system with only a d-pad and two buttons…I feel you know where i’m going with this one. Despite the shortcomings this game has due to the limitations of the platform and its controller, it still manages to be an okay experience…I dare say the gameplay is even enjoyable too.

Gameplay
It sure is a fighting game alright. The core gameplay of a fighting game is exactly that…the fighting. And with the devs being limited to a dpad and two buttons, the mechanics and combos are understandably basic and simple enough that even a baby can learn them. Nevertheless, they still managed to atleast make the fighters somewhat unique, by essentially going the tmnt 3 route of giving each of them one special move of their own, while their combos are also tweaked to match their fighting styles in the cartoons with their own advantages and disadvantages, which leads to the roster still being distinct, rather than just sprite changes and nothing more. The gameplay and movement is also fast-paced, which masks some of the clunkiness present within it. Combined together, it leads to the general gameplay still being enjoyable and surprisingly okay. The content present is also small, whether it be the roster, stages and gamemodes, which is understandable, considering the storage within an NES cartridge. It does make its small selection count where necessary though, with the roster of seven characters, six of which are a must (the turtles, shredder and casey jones) and the other…sure exists (hothead). While April or Splinter not being in this roster is rather odd, the other selections do make it a very decent overall roster. As for stages, it’s the environments the turtles have gone to, so they get the job done. For gameplay modes, we have only three modes: a story mode, a versus mode and a tournament mode. The story mode is exactly that: you pick a turtle, go through a wave of vs cpu fights, fight shredder as final boss and then cue credits. The actual fights are meh, with the CPU’s difficulty being rather inconsistent (ranging from a joke to fuck you), but it’s still an enjoyable mode. The versus mode exists there solely to fight with your friends or against cpu…if I guess you really enjoyed one particular stage or character. Tournament mode is the same as story mode, except you have the full roster and the story isn’t there. Soooo yea, very straightforward gamemodes with not much differences between them. Despite the limitations and flaws in the overall gameplay package, it’s still a genuinely tolerable and okay experience and I dare say it’s probably amongst the better offerings of the fighting game genre from the NES (which there are like 7 FGs).

Story
The story definitely exists alright. Shredder challenges the turtles to a brawl…literally no world domination plot or anything, just a raw fist fight, and the turtles fight…amongst themselves and their allies to decide who is worthy of fighting shredder…I never knew such a simple request could be an effective way of breaking the alliance from inside. But uhhh yea that’s it. It’s cool that there is an opening cutscenes, but it feels rather half-assed and just there to fill the quota. Then there is one cutscene at the end of the story and that’s it, no funny dialogue exchange before fights or intermission cutscenes and over-the-top quips. It just exists…moving on.

Presentation
The game actually looks pretty decent. Very solid spritework and animation (which is kinda a necessity to get right in a FG and they got it right here, with each fighter having their own animations for their attacks and combos that fit them), good background work and good music too. The artstyle is also solid and about on-par with tmnt 3, except the colors are just a bit more muted than that game. The most impressive part to me is how it runs at a consistently smooth framerate, which when paired with the fast pacing of the gameplay, manages to hide (for the most part) the basic and clunky nature of the gameplay. Overall, the game’s presentation is just a little below tmnt 3’s, which I’ll take it, since that game is the best looking NES TMNT game, and the fact it manages favorably against that is a mark on this game’s side.

Negatives
Obviously there are flaws here, some of which I’ve already mentioned above and are justified for the most part. The combos are very basic, the fighting has some clunkiness to it (despite the game’s best and mostly successful efforts at masking it with fast pacing and smooth framerate), the gameplay, roster and stage select is small, the cpu difficulty can be inconsistent. What I did not mention is how unbalanced the roster is as well. You may want to go the Casey Jones or Shredder route if they’re your favourite characters, but then all those preferable options go immediately out the window once you enter the ring with Raph and spam his bite or use the classic “slide kick+throw” spam combo with Leo and easily cheese through all the CPU bosses…which means you can fire back at their difficulty with your own share of cheese.

Final Thoughts
Nevertheless, it is a very competent and okay experience for a fighting game on NES and I didn’t regret going through it. Most of its flaws stem from the platform it’s present on, but this game manages to do well enough with those flaws present. And it certainly is better than the fucking sega genesis version (ooooh I am gonna get to that review). Final verdict: 5.5-6/10 review, give it a shot if you are reaaaally curious about it.

So, it's really odd to me that this game came after the other two Tournament fighters and I'm super curious why. That said, this feels like a very basic fighter, kinda reminds me of playing Battle Arena Toshinden or Primal Rage on the Game Boy.

Is it odd to say the sprite art is very cute? It's a cute almost chibi style to the game and it's really odd and cute to see each of the Turtles fighting without their weapons and going hand-to-hand with each Turtle having a least one or two different moves from their brother, but ultimately they are just color swaps of each other.

The music is actually really good for the NES, kinda wish there were more backgrounds, but I swear I only saw like 3 or 4 different ones. There's like a KO and winning voice sample for each character with the Turtles sharing the same one.

The difficulty really isn't that high, the AI seems pretty fair and does try to fight you without reading inputs or crowding over you since they don't have to follow the same moveset restrictions of holding directions and such.

I really liked the game, but wasn't sure what I was getting into when it's a NES fighting game on top of having played the other two first.

Played on The Cowabunga Collection.

I'm not good at fighting games. Never have been, probably never will be, yet I find myself drawn to them despite my total lack of skill. Perhaps they're just too technical for me; after all I can barely pull off a proper quarter-circle to save my life, even something as simple as a Hadoken requires a level of dexterity and quick thinking that I am physiologically ill-equipped for. And yet, I'm good at TMNT: Tournament Fighters... for the NES.

See, that last bit is the most important. Tournament Fighters comes in three very distinct flavors. On the Super Nintendo, it's a competent Street Fighter 2 clone. On the Sega Genesis, it's a graphically hideous and mechanically nightmarish torture device. On the NES, it's a two button button-masher that strips all the nuance out of combat, resulting in an extremely novice friendly fighting game. Of course, Tournament Fighters is this way as a requirement. The fighting genre had largely adopted a standardized approach by the time it came out, and much of that design philosophy had to be cast aside because the NES simply couldn't handle it. For me, personally, this highly compromised and scaled down approach to a fighting game also makes it the most accessible one I've played in a very long time. As I flung Raphael through the air at Casey Jones, administering a full-force blow square to the center of his forehead, no doubt causing a traumatic brain injury that will take weeks if not months to recover from, I thought "you know, I'm feeling pretty good about this. I'm feeling good about myself."

It's also just bewildering that this game even exists. It was released in 1994, and though my memory of the early-to-mid 90s is at times hazy, I don't think there was much reason to put something like this out when two other 16-bit versions were also hitting the market. For chrissake, the Nintendo 64 was just two years away, the NES wasn't so much long-in-the-tooth as it was being carried towards its final resting place. I am nevertheless glad that they made it, however, because I think it's a great showcase for what kind of games the NES was capable of supporting, albeit with compromises. Even if you can't appreciate the game on a mechanical level, you should at least be able to respect the ingenuity behind it.

As I threw a fireball directly into Shredder's cock and balls, effectively ending his bloodline, I thought "Tournament Fighters is kind of impressive. Unnecessary, but impressive."