Replayed on the Cowabunga Collection.
TMNT 3: The Manhattan Project is a mostly okay beat-em-up for the NES that still suffers from a lot of the problems TMNT 2: The Arcade Game did. Except it has a banger soundtrack and it looks a lot less ugly.
My main issue with The Arcade Game was the inability to pull off satisfying combos given how quickly enemies recovered, as well as the abysmal reach and slow speed of each of the turtles. Manhattan Project mildly improves on these problems. Combos are more fluid and the Turtles have a much more varied moveset (at least by NES beat-em-up standards), but they still move about the screen at a glacial pace, allowing more wily members of the Foot to maintain distance and make screens more annoying to clear than they ought to be.
Any time you lose a life you're now given the option to change what Turtle you're playing as, which is another welcome change, as each Turtle is more well defined than before, making some more suitable for certain bosses and levels than others. You're also able to initiate a special move unique to each Turtle at the cost of a few pips of life, which is a carryover from the arcade games. In general, Manhattan Project feels like a much more faithful realization of the arcade Turtles than TMNT 2, even if it may still be a marked downgrade.
I want to touch on the visual design of the game as well. Graphically, this looks about as good as you'd expect from a late NES title. Sprites are much more readable, the animation quality has been vastly improved, and there's more varied scenery in each level, which is especially appreciated as they still drag on as long as they did in the previous game. I wish they toned it down with how many enemies you have to beat to clear a screen and reduce the amount of times you're only able to walk five feet before the screen locks again. That said, each level is much more engaging than any one in TMNT 2.
Manhattan Project is as good as it gets for the Ninja Turtles on the NES, which is to say it's very middling game that makes large improvements while also leaving too much of the previous game intact.
TMNT 3: The Manhattan Project is a mostly okay beat-em-up for the NES that still suffers from a lot of the problems TMNT 2: The Arcade Game did. Except it has a banger soundtrack and it looks a lot less ugly.
My main issue with The Arcade Game was the inability to pull off satisfying combos given how quickly enemies recovered, as well as the abysmal reach and slow speed of each of the turtles. Manhattan Project mildly improves on these problems. Combos are more fluid and the Turtles have a much more varied moveset (at least by NES beat-em-up standards), but they still move about the screen at a glacial pace, allowing more wily members of the Foot to maintain distance and make screens more annoying to clear than they ought to be.
Any time you lose a life you're now given the option to change what Turtle you're playing as, which is another welcome change, as each Turtle is more well defined than before, making some more suitable for certain bosses and levels than others. You're also able to initiate a special move unique to each Turtle at the cost of a few pips of life, which is a carryover from the arcade games. In general, Manhattan Project feels like a much more faithful realization of the arcade Turtles than TMNT 2, even if it may still be a marked downgrade.
I want to touch on the visual design of the game as well. Graphically, this looks about as good as you'd expect from a late NES title. Sprites are much more readable, the animation quality has been vastly improved, and there's more varied scenery in each level, which is especially appreciated as they still drag on as long as they did in the previous game. I wish they toned it down with how many enemies you have to beat to clear a screen and reduce the amount of times you're only able to walk five feet before the screen locks again. That said, each level is much more engaging than any one in TMNT 2.
Manhattan Project is as good as it gets for the Ninja Turtles on the NES, which is to say it's very middling game that makes large improvements while also leaving too much of the previous game intact.