What a hoot! For me, a child of the 80s, the Turtles were a symbol of budding maturity, poking through the eggshell of more childish fare and squinting into the bright light of “young adult” programming. Before Turtles I was into Belle and Sebastian and David the Gnome. After, it was all Captain Power and You Can't Do That on Television. The Turtles felt subversive at the time; they used weird slang, they had an attitude and they were gross teenagers who lived in the sewer.
It was a big tonal contrast with the Filmation and Hanna-Barbara tripe that was all over Saturday mornings at the time… and of course the rest is history. The Turtles were everywhere, and even as a kid who was generally clueless about pop culture, it penetrated my bubble and was a big part of my childhood. I wasn’t nearly cool enough to have been ahead of the curve with the comics, but I watched the show, played with the action figures the show was a commercial for, and eventually even saw the movie in the theater (I was really taken aback by the cuss words). It probably had a bigger cultural impact than anything else that I’ve been super into when it was current.
But until picking this game up, I never thought about the Turtles as an adult. So it’s like my nostalgia has been perfectly preserved, NIB, just waiting for something to crack it open. And this game sure did that! Like a laser guided nostalgia bomb right to the heart… Hmm a violence metaphor doesn’t feel right. It’s more like a custom-tailored multi-headed nostalgia dildo that perfectly tickles all the right memories.
Every new villain that popped up had me going “oh yeah THAT guy!” The colors were great, the characters are all nice and distinct, and best of all it was just a robust, great-feeling beat-em-up moveset. Pun intended: It just feels punchy. Dodge roll, yes please; sprint, must have; double jump!? Is it my birthday? My ninth birthday?!
Obviously I’m completely incapable of rendering a verdict on this game on account of how it has won my heart with its gift of precious forgotten memories. I will say I didn’t care for some of the voices, but what they lacked in gravitas they made up for in enthusiasm, and honestly that’s really about all the criticism I can muster. This was clearly made by masters of their craft with a strong love for the source material.
They say the act of remembering is actually a creative process; that each time you recall a memory you change it a bit. That the most intact memories are the ones that have been least frequently accessed. This is a game I’ll definitely be coming back to. But, maybe, not too often.
It was a big tonal contrast with the Filmation and Hanna-Barbara tripe that was all over Saturday mornings at the time… and of course the rest is history. The Turtles were everywhere, and even as a kid who was generally clueless about pop culture, it penetrated my bubble and was a big part of my childhood. I wasn’t nearly cool enough to have been ahead of the curve with the comics, but I watched the show, played with the action figures the show was a commercial for, and eventually even saw the movie in the theater (I was really taken aback by the cuss words). It probably had a bigger cultural impact than anything else that I’ve been super into when it was current.
But until picking this game up, I never thought about the Turtles as an adult. So it’s like my nostalgia has been perfectly preserved, NIB, just waiting for something to crack it open. And this game sure did that! Like a laser guided nostalgia bomb right to the heart… Hmm a violence metaphor doesn’t feel right. It’s more like a custom-tailored multi-headed nostalgia dildo that perfectly tickles all the right memories.
Every new villain that popped up had me going “oh yeah THAT guy!” The colors were great, the characters are all nice and distinct, and best of all it was just a robust, great-feeling beat-em-up moveset. Pun intended: It just feels punchy. Dodge roll, yes please; sprint, must have; double jump!? Is it my birthday? My ninth birthday?!
Obviously I’m completely incapable of rendering a verdict on this game on account of how it has won my heart with its gift of precious forgotten memories. I will say I didn’t care for some of the voices, but what they lacked in gravitas they made up for in enthusiasm, and honestly that’s really about all the criticism I can muster. This was clearly made by masters of their craft with a strong love for the source material.
They say the act of remembering is actually a creative process; that each time you recall a memory you change it a bit. That the most intact memories are the ones that have been least frequently accessed. This is a game I’ll definitely be coming back to. But, maybe, not too often.
thealexmott
10 months ago