Minor Introduction
And there we are, the finish line! The final game i’m playing from the collection, with only the collection itself and shredder’s revenge remaining for this marathon. Welcome to the thirteenth review of the marathon, courtesy of the cowabunga collection! And now for the list, it’s the supposed best version of the ninja turtles’s fighting game stint: tournament fighters! Is it gonna be good or underwhelming? Let’s find out!
First Impressions
Finally, after playing two ports of varying degrees of quality, i’m now playing the actual GOOD one! This is such an underrated fighting game. Tournament Fighters doesn’t do anything new, nor does it carve its own path from the competition, but it absolutely works as a spin-off from the usual beat’em’up TMNT games of before and it is really fun on its own! Is it a street fighter 2 clone with a tmnt skin on top? Well yea, but it does more than just be a shameless no-effort street fighter clone.
Gameplay
The actual fighting portion is really good. This is the one part where it might feel a bit more basic than street fighter 2, but that’s not bad by any means. There are still plenty of unique, if a bit tough to execute moves for each of the characters of the roster to go through (whoever came up with the “charging” part for some of the moves, I hope you choked on cereal for breakfast one day…and then recovered of course!) and it is fun to try and string these moves together in a combo, which is also far less clunkier to do. It also helps that the combat is more fast-paced than genesis or nes. The game takes advantage of the snes controller, since this game has more combos and moves present than other ports, allowing for more gameplay variety. The roster is also pretty good. I wouldn’t put it above genesis for the characters (the lack of april and casey jones is very noticeable), but it gets bonus points over the genesis version for a higher character count and a more balanced roster overall…not to say all the characters are fully balanced, some characters are definitely better than others in many regards, but it’s definitely not as broken as genesis or nes which had 1-2 characters that worked stupidly well against everyone. The stage selection also is great, thanks to all the locales being really pretty and distinct from one another (it also does the sf2 thing of adding some background activity and energy, which helps in making the locales feel even more alive). The single player offerings are far better than genesis and nes. There is a story mode, with the usual fights against CPUs as you progress through the story. The CPU during the fights is also much easier than genesis..it will still kick your ass as you go on and it very much is still that 16-bit FG difficulty progression, but it’s more tolerable than the bullshit garbage of genesis. There is also the tournament mode, which has specific character endings for everyone in the roster, as well as a fun little side-story with april narrating the tournament and more over-the-top quips after winning a fight with the character of your choice. It encourages replayability and it is a great mode. Then there are the 1v1s with your friends, which is very fun to play…against your friend of course. And there is also a watch mode, which is basically customized cpu vs cpu fights that you can make (your very own powerscaling simulator!). Great single-player variety all things considered.
Story
The story is less cooler than the genesis’s galaxy trip story, but it is still fun and has the best story presentation of all three ports. Karai kidnaps april and splinter, so the turtles have to fight across the entire US in their turtle blimp, to collect information to finally track them down, save them and defeat Karai. The strongest point of the story is the cutscenes and character exchanges before each fight in the story, which are both very fun to watch, due to the turtles’s RADICAL personalities, and gives instantly quick information about why is the fight even happening. The fact the tournament mode also has its own sidestory and endfight text boxes with over-the-top quips from the character of your choosing is a big plus towards the story side of this game as well. It all combines for a very fun traversal through this straightforward story and I just simply loved it!
Presentation
The presentation is top-notch. The sprites are great, both for the characters and especially the background work (with all their details and background interactions, taken from sf2), the animation is energetic and snappy for all the movement options, the colorful artstyle is pretty and vibrant, and the music is great. It just checks all the boxes and doesn’t skip a beat, it is honestly amongst the prettiest TMNT games up to that point and it still looks great today!
Negatives
My main flaw rather stem with how it compares to other fighting games…in that it really doesn’t. Its mechanics are not as fleshed out as the flagship FGs of the era, so it doesn’t make for a proper substitution or competition to an actual FG. You aren’t playing this game for its mechanics, you’re playing it cuz it’s an FG with the ninja turtles and that’s a big distinction. The feeling of it copying many aspects of street fighter 2 as a foundation are also still present. It manages to get away from that, cuz it goes beyond just a tmnt coat of paint, but its fleshing out of the mechanics never goes above just the vibe of the devs working with it being a spin-off first and foremost, rather than its own amazing game, which is somewhat of a shame, but understandable.
Final thoughts
Don’t let that distract you from the fact that this game is still worthy of your time and an overall great spinoff in this series. It’s easily the best of the three ports and it’s not even close. I wouldn’t play or prefer it over something like a mortal kombat or street fighter of its time, but I also wouldn’t mind and even have a lot of fun if I was playing this game instead. Comes highly recommended for any tmnt fan and I will even suggest it to FG fans! Final verdict: 8/10!
And there we are, the finish line! The final game i’m playing from the collection, with only the collection itself and shredder’s revenge remaining for this marathon. Welcome to the thirteenth review of the marathon, courtesy of the cowabunga collection! And now for the list, it’s the supposed best version of the ninja turtles’s fighting game stint: tournament fighters! Is it gonna be good or underwhelming? Let’s find out!
First Impressions
Finally, after playing two ports of varying degrees of quality, i’m now playing the actual GOOD one! This is such an underrated fighting game. Tournament Fighters doesn’t do anything new, nor does it carve its own path from the competition, but it absolutely works as a spin-off from the usual beat’em’up TMNT games of before and it is really fun on its own! Is it a street fighter 2 clone with a tmnt skin on top? Well yea, but it does more than just be a shameless no-effort street fighter clone.
Gameplay
The actual fighting portion is really good. This is the one part where it might feel a bit more basic than street fighter 2, but that’s not bad by any means. There are still plenty of unique, if a bit tough to execute moves for each of the characters of the roster to go through (whoever came up with the “charging” part for some of the moves, I hope you choked on cereal for breakfast one day…and then recovered of course!) and it is fun to try and string these moves together in a combo, which is also far less clunkier to do. It also helps that the combat is more fast-paced than genesis or nes. The game takes advantage of the snes controller, since this game has more combos and moves present than other ports, allowing for more gameplay variety. The roster is also pretty good. I wouldn’t put it above genesis for the characters (the lack of april and casey jones is very noticeable), but it gets bonus points over the genesis version for a higher character count and a more balanced roster overall…not to say all the characters are fully balanced, some characters are definitely better than others in many regards, but it’s definitely not as broken as genesis or nes which had 1-2 characters that worked stupidly well against everyone. The stage selection also is great, thanks to all the locales being really pretty and distinct from one another (it also does the sf2 thing of adding some background activity and energy, which helps in making the locales feel even more alive). The single player offerings are far better than genesis and nes. There is a story mode, with the usual fights against CPUs as you progress through the story. The CPU during the fights is also much easier than genesis..it will still kick your ass as you go on and it very much is still that 16-bit FG difficulty progression, but it’s more tolerable than the bullshit garbage of genesis. There is also the tournament mode, which has specific character endings for everyone in the roster, as well as a fun little side-story with april narrating the tournament and more over-the-top quips after winning a fight with the character of your choice. It encourages replayability and it is a great mode. Then there are the 1v1s with your friends, which is very fun to play…against your friend of course. And there is also a watch mode, which is basically customized cpu vs cpu fights that you can make (your very own powerscaling simulator!). Great single-player variety all things considered.
Story
The story is less cooler than the genesis’s galaxy trip story, but it is still fun and has the best story presentation of all three ports. Karai kidnaps april and splinter, so the turtles have to fight across the entire US in their turtle blimp, to collect information to finally track them down, save them and defeat Karai. The strongest point of the story is the cutscenes and character exchanges before each fight in the story, which are both very fun to watch, due to the turtles’s RADICAL personalities, and gives instantly quick information about why is the fight even happening. The fact the tournament mode also has its own sidestory and endfight text boxes with over-the-top quips from the character of your choosing is a big plus towards the story side of this game as well. It all combines for a very fun traversal through this straightforward story and I just simply loved it!
Presentation
The presentation is top-notch. The sprites are great, both for the characters and especially the background work (with all their details and background interactions, taken from sf2), the animation is energetic and snappy for all the movement options, the colorful artstyle is pretty and vibrant, and the music is great. It just checks all the boxes and doesn’t skip a beat, it is honestly amongst the prettiest TMNT games up to that point and it still looks great today!
Negatives
My main flaw rather stem with how it compares to other fighting games…in that it really doesn’t. Its mechanics are not as fleshed out as the flagship FGs of the era, so it doesn’t make for a proper substitution or competition to an actual FG. You aren’t playing this game for its mechanics, you’re playing it cuz it’s an FG with the ninja turtles and that’s a big distinction. The feeling of it copying many aspects of street fighter 2 as a foundation are also still present. It manages to get away from that, cuz it goes beyond just a tmnt coat of paint, but its fleshing out of the mechanics never goes above just the vibe of the devs working with it being a spin-off first and foremost, rather than its own amazing game, which is somewhat of a shame, but understandable.
Final thoughts
Don’t let that distract you from the fact that this game is still worthy of your time and an overall great spinoff in this series. It’s easily the best of the three ports and it’s not even close. I wouldn’t play or prefer it over something like a mortal kombat or street fighter of its time, but I also wouldn’t mind and even have a lot of fun if I was playing this game instead. Comes highly recommended for any tmnt fan and I will even suggest it to FG fans! Final verdict: 8/10!