Another one I have a love/hate relationship with. I can definitely praise the awesome music, some of the visuals (the ones that don't glitch out), and the fact that you have all 4 turtles at your disposal at all times, each with their own abilities and health bars, assuming you don't lose any of them, which is near impossible.

That leads into the big problem, the relentless difficulty, with some stages throwing an absurd amount of enemies and stage hazards at you, which just screams trouble when you have this huge of a hitbox. Not to mention, the infamously unfair moments like the underwater countdown or the huge gaps in the sewer. I refuse to believe that half of the people who played this have even made it to the Technodrome.

The programming is also quite messy, with frequent collision hiccups, slowdown and sprite flickering, which only makes me hope the game isn't going to crash at any given second, thus only worsening my experience.

This game will probably be best enjoyed only by hardcore TMNT fans (I'm not) willing to put up with these insane challenges.

Porco, desbalanceado, confuso, injusto e mais um monte de coisa que só vai te deixar careca mais rápido por estresse.
Por anos vi esse jogo como apenas uma perola da dificuldade retardada do NES e que mesmo gostando muito de tartarugas ninja eu só passava longe.
Mas que agora com a coletânea não só eu peguei pra jogar como zerei, e é estranho pensar que tudo que acabou me instigando eu poderia conseguir igual ou semelhante em um emulador.
Correção no slow down e sprites piscando, rewind, save e um mapa com detonado no menu.
É tudo coisa que vc tem em emulador ou na internet, mas ainda assim aqui eu me vi mais instigado até que... eu zerei...
Pode não ter sido uma vitoria limpa, já que abusei muito do Rewind, não vi muitas áreas pq usei o mapa pra me guiar pela área certa logo de cara, mas ei, esse jogo é injusto.
O melhor modo de me divertir em cima dele foi trapaceando, a ponto de míseros 10 segundos de Rewind muitas vezes já me salvava, pq as vezes conseguia evitar um combo baseado em n momentos desses 10 segundos que eu não conseguiria em um Save State.
Essas coletâneas podem ser muito criticadas por facilitar muito os jogos antigos e trivializar algumas partes, mas é inegável que desse modo fica muito mais acessível pra qualquer um conhecer e se divertir

Disappointingly inept for a Konami platformer. The side-scrolling gameplay is absurdly difficult, with a punitive design that mostly boils down to flooding the small levels with endless waves of aggressive enemies and expecting you to keep up with your sluggish turtle, all while the performance buckles under the weight of the chaos. In short, it's not very fun. The open-ish levels with overworld maps are cool in concept, but don't add much besides general confusion and a lot of optional areas. It is nice that the four turtles have somewhat distinct uses, though, and switching between them at will feels good. Aside from that it's just a really frustrating platformer with very few interesting moments.

I know people hate this game but honestly I think it's objectively great. Yes it's hard. Yes there is bullshit in it. And yes even I haven't beaten it. Furthest I got was to the techodrome. However it's a decent platformer with an open world, multiple playable characters, varied enemy types (even if most are completely made up) and different types of stages. It's pretty ambitious but problematic. It's fun and frustrating to play at the same time. Why donny so good and raph so bad? Why is this underwater level so hard (it's not that bad), why do enemies respawn so fast, why are some pizza's impossible to get, why can't I make this jump?, why is this room useless AHAHAH. This was an early NES game for me and I get it. But I kept coming back to it despite it all and I have many memories good and bad it at the very least is an infamous NES game and for that I think a 8/10 fits for me.

8/9/22 I finally beat this game after like 25 years of playing. Feels good bros!

(1.5 stars for NES, 1 star for DOS)

As memorably bad as the NES game is, the DOS version is even worse. You would think passable TMNT games could essentially make themselves. It's honestly almost impressive to take that license and make a platformer this lame and busted.

I had this when I was a kid and I'm glad I remembered to try it again so that I could add it to this list.

With the new collection coming out I've been successfully Turtle pilled and started going back to a few games I've played from back in the day.

The first NES game is really fucking infamous among NES kids such as myself growing up during the popularity of the 80s cartoon with Uncle Phil Shredder and I feel it's kinda gotten a shit deal and mostly remembered as a bad game. I disagree with the notion, this game is still pretty fun to play even today and I fucking love the hit sound effects.

It's absolutely not perfect though of course, tons of people remember the dam stage but that stage is fucking easy compared to literally every stage afterwards just like the turbo tunnel from Battletoads(hilarious comparison). The enemy respawn rate is unforgiving and a lot of them take way too many hits before dying consider the sheer amount of them that could spawn on screen. The balance of the Turtles is completely biased towards Donnie and poor Raph has such shit range that you'll find enemies bashing into you at the same time as you hitting them.

When did the Foot Clan get so many steamrollers? Did they steal them all from the local road crew? Did they build them from their bottomless money pockets from shady underground business dealings? Why didn't they just build one super steamroller then? Why steamrollers?! Shredder craves turtle soup with a side of asphalt.

Favorite music: Overworld 1, pretty much out of sheer nostalgia. There's a comment in that youtube link that says "theme of cleaning your room on a Saturday in the 1980s" and it's spot on.

Alex's Cowabunga Collection Marathon, Pt. 1 of 13

When I finally got an NES of my own in 2005, this was one of the first games I picked up for it. I had played around with it a decade earlier and figured that since I was now a teenager I'd be able to breeze right through it.

WRONG

Thanks to the Cowabunga Collection, I was finally able to defuse all those underwater bombs for the first time! That electric algae may be as evil as ever, but with a little bit of rewinding, I was able to cheese my way through it.

I had played those first few areas so many times, it was kind of exhilarating to see anything beyond the dam! This game is definitely old-school "Nintendo hard" through and through, but I tried to rely on saving before entering an area more than just spamming the rewind feature.

That lasted until the Technodrome fight. I went into that with a total of 5 squares of health between all four of my turtles, and you'd better believe I abused that L button!

Anyhow, it was cathartic to finally beat this game after all these years, and I really appreciated the ability to use my NSO NES controller the whole way through. The airport area ended up being my favorite section, though driving over Foot Clan members in the Party Wagon was a clear highlight of the whole game.

The one thing I was NOT prepared for was how easy that final boss fight was. I thought things would only get harder after the Technodrome, but nope! Just used the boomerang on poor ol' Shredhead and he didn't land a single hit. What a weird way to end it!

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.