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Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles by Jorge D. Fuentes
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Release Date: 1989
System: NES
Players: 1
Genre: Platformer
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Ahh, the good ol' NES. TMNT came out from the Konami daughter company "Ultra" and was an instant success. The kickass TMNT are out there trying to destroy Shredder's plans with the help of April and Master Splinter. April and Splinter basically provide hints as to what to do next, while our four Ninja dudes go out there and battle it out. Four turtles means Four Lives, so you only have four chances to finish out a Mission. Whenever a Turtle runs out of energy (shown by the squares at the bottom left representing the LifeBar) they are "Captured" and you won't have a chance to rescue them for a while (usually the third stage, where they are being held hostage in the "Docks" areas).
The game has kickass sidescrolling action, and lots of subweapons that the TMNT can pick up, such as Boomerangs, Ninja Scrolls, and Shuriken. You can pick up a number of a certain item, and use Select to switch to that SubWeapon and attack. You also get to hoard SubWeapons in your Status Screen by collecting different ones for different characters (you want to save those Ninja Scrolls for the harder stages located after Stage 3).
You find PizzaSlice and PizzaBox Icons that restore your Turtle's Lifebar, and you'll need 'em, 'cuz the stages are pretty damn difficult, especially later on. The TMNT will face off against all sorts of weird enemies, ranging from Foot Soldiers, to those weird Mechanical Rat-looking things to People on Fire to Flying Machines... it's very dramatic. Also, the TMNT will face off against Rocksteady and Bebop, Krang, the Technodrome itself, and Shredder at the End. Overall, it's a very intense game when it comes to action, but it's very much on the Difficult side, as the Heroes' weapons come into play when it comes to gameplay (Michaelangelo's Nunchaku are much much faster than Donatello's Bo, but the Bo has the longest range, etc.).
The TMNT first start out in a town, and their main mode of transportation is on Foot... this part is set in an Overhead Zelda-ish look, except there's very little attacking done (though you do get to sometimes drive the Turtle Van and shoot Missiles out of it... and kill FootSoldier Steamroller tanks... and sometimes kill FootSoldiers... which I suppose IS a lot of attacking, nevermind) but it's very fun.
Most of the time, however, you'll be trekking through Sewer holes and working your way through stages in that fashion. Later on you have to disarm some Explosives that the bad guys have put in the town's Dam (very challenging for its time, with Electric Plants and Electric Currents running through most of that Lake's depths) in a certain limited amount of time. Then, you move on to the Docks (and usually get to rescue those Turtles you lost in the first two missions), then there's an Airport Level, a Base Level, and then the Technodrome. All of these stages are very action packed, but very challenging as well. Get ready to do a lot of battling if you intend to finish this game.
The game suffers from things like flickering, because it puts too many enemies on the screen at times. Other times, it can get frustrating because of the way the TMNT do their Jumps (there'll be many times where the player will fall into the Sewer water trying to make that one critical Jump they need to clear an Area). The enemy patterns don't seem to help out the situation, as some enemies have been known to 'reappear' if you just inched off the screen and then returned. Lastly, the overall difficulty level and the length of the stages can cause unskilled players to lose their hair or pull it out in frustration. However, it is a pretty fun game, and was extremely popular when it first came out. The music in the game is also pretty awesome.
TMNT Games - TMNT NES
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