If I were a turtle in time I would simply kill baby Shredder.
I replayed this on The Cowabunga Collection and will be rolling the SNES version into this review because ultimately I'd give them the same score, and it's a little difficult to talk about one without the other.
I think there's an argument to be made that Turtles in Time is not all it's cracked up to be. Indeed, the 3.5 average it holds on Backloggd (at the time of this writing) is maybe proof that the game is more middling than I'd think, but for me this is the quintessential brawler, if not the game I think of when I reflect on my time growing up in the arcade. Sure, I spent a lot of time on Cruisin' USA and Virtual-On, and I never had to go far to find a Mortal Kombat II cabinet, but my most vivid memories of those games are punctuated by the theme of Turtles in Time cutting through all the noise of the arcade like a knife.
I stayed with my father for much of my teenage years in a small town outside of Chicago. Unfortunately, I was never able to find a proper arcade there, at least not within walking distance, but the bar my dad liked to frequent did have a few games in the back. Turtles in Time was among them, so every weekend I'd tag along, eat some chicken wings and kick shell while my dad pickled his liver. It's easy to squeeze your old man for quarters when he's already about five drinks deep, and - totally coincidentally - the first time I ever beat this game was on one of his especially long benders with a couple other teens who were in a similar boat. One summer the claw machine they kept near the cabinet was filled with Space Jam plushes, and I got ridiculously good at it just so I could snatch up all the Monstars... Good times.
Okay, so I'm wistful for this one. But what do I think about it mechanically? What do I think about the game?
It's not without its faults. Hits don't quite impact in a way that feels good, it's almost like you're punching through an enemy rather than connecting with them, which results in combos feeling ineffectual even against the most basic of Foot soldier grunts. This is something that's fixed in the SNES version of the game, where enemies become more visibly stunned and "caught" in your combos. The SNES version also makes some changes to bosses, most of which I think are for the better, including the introduction of The Rat King to Sewer Surfin', which is more of a bonus level in the arcade version of the game.
Still, it's hard for me to settle on which version I prefer. The SNES Turtles in Time has better feedback, but it's of course lacking in presentation. There's a lot fewer frames of character animation, along with some missing enemies and the absence of sound bites for the boss battles. It's still a damn good looking SNES game, though, and playing these back-to-back it's hard to feel like they compromised in any way that would make the console version feel truly inferior. Like, if I sat down and really tried to dig through their guts and come to a conclusion on which one is superior, and happened to have whatever lobe controls nostalgia removed from my brain in order to accomplish such a task, I'd probably say the SNES version nudges out the arcade, but being a fully-lobed Turtles centrist, I just can't make such a determination.
If I could travel to any point in time and just spend one day in the past, I'd probably be back in that bar, hitting my dad up for more money, fingers slick with hot sauce, mind racing as I calculate how I'm going to snag Nawt out of the claw machine. Stop 9/11? Warn people about COVID? Bah! I must kick shell...
I replayed this on The Cowabunga Collection and will be rolling the SNES version into this review because ultimately I'd give them the same score, and it's a little difficult to talk about one without the other.
I think there's an argument to be made that Turtles in Time is not all it's cracked up to be. Indeed, the 3.5 average it holds on Backloggd (at the time of this writing) is maybe proof that the game is more middling than I'd think, but for me this is the quintessential brawler, if not the game I think of when I reflect on my time growing up in the arcade. Sure, I spent a lot of time on Cruisin' USA and Virtual-On, and I never had to go far to find a Mortal Kombat II cabinet, but my most vivid memories of those games are punctuated by the theme of Turtles in Time cutting through all the noise of the arcade like a knife.
I stayed with my father for much of my teenage years in a small town outside of Chicago. Unfortunately, I was never able to find a proper arcade there, at least not within walking distance, but the bar my dad liked to frequent did have a few games in the back. Turtles in Time was among them, so every weekend I'd tag along, eat some chicken wings and kick shell while my dad pickled his liver. It's easy to squeeze your old man for quarters when he's already about five drinks deep, and - totally coincidentally - the first time I ever beat this game was on one of his especially long benders with a couple other teens who were in a similar boat. One summer the claw machine they kept near the cabinet was filled with Space Jam plushes, and I got ridiculously good at it just so I could snatch up all the Monstars... Good times.
Okay, so I'm wistful for this one. But what do I think about it mechanically? What do I think about the game?
It's not without its faults. Hits don't quite impact in a way that feels good, it's almost like you're punching through an enemy rather than connecting with them, which results in combos feeling ineffectual even against the most basic of Foot soldier grunts. This is something that's fixed in the SNES version of the game, where enemies become more visibly stunned and "caught" in your combos. The SNES version also makes some changes to bosses, most of which I think are for the better, including the introduction of The Rat King to Sewer Surfin', which is more of a bonus level in the arcade version of the game.
Still, it's hard for me to settle on which version I prefer. The SNES Turtles in Time has better feedback, but it's of course lacking in presentation. There's a lot fewer frames of character animation, along with some missing enemies and the absence of sound bites for the boss battles. It's still a damn good looking SNES game, though, and playing these back-to-back it's hard to feel like they compromised in any way that would make the console version feel truly inferior. Like, if I sat down and really tried to dig through their guts and come to a conclusion on which one is superior, and happened to have whatever lobe controls nostalgia removed from my brain in order to accomplish such a task, I'd probably say the SNES version nudges out the arcade, but being a fully-lobed Turtles centrist, I just can't make such a determination.
If I could travel to any point in time and just spend one day in the past, I'd probably be back in that bar, hitting my dad up for more money, fingers slick with hot sauce, mind racing as I calculate how I'm going to snag Nawt out of the claw machine. Stop 9/11? Warn people about COVID? Bah! I must kick shell...