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.