Four humanoid turtles experts on martial arts must defeat Shredder, who has kidnapped the reporter and friend April O'Neil.Four humanoid turtles experts on martial arts must defeat Shredder, who has kidnapped the reporter and friend April O'Neil.Four humanoid turtles experts on martial arts must defeat Shredder, who has kidnapped the reporter and friend April O'Neil.
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Turtles has some notoriety these days after being featured on AVGN and being on lists of hardest NES games. The game sold incredibly well and was a huge success for Konami. Other licensed games like the Cowboys of Moo-Mesa not so much.
It's reputation is deserved; it is soul crushing hard and I wouldn't begrudge anyone for using cheats. Respawning enemies, enemies placed blocking ladders, that awful dam/water level with a timer, bosses requiring lots of hits the list goes on.
I can forgive the difficulty to an extent as the music is great. The graphics fairly nice for an earlier NES game. I think later games like Kirby really showed what could be done graphically on the NES. With Turtles all characters are recognisable and there's some good cut scenes. Unfortunately it suffers from flickering common in NES games.
Gameplay wise it reminded me a bit of Ghostbusters in that you travel from various locations and need to collect items. The platforming feels a bit like Goonies II or Popeye in terms of ladder systems. And it can feel a bit like a goose chase as to where you go.
Overall this is a tough, frustrating game, but no doubt a classic game. I would recommend it for nostalgia reasons as well as an example of a grade A licensed title. To be honest I have completed rock hard NES games like Contra and Ninja Gaiden and they are easy compared to Turtles. In terms of Turtles games I prefer the two Konami arcade games (also must plays) and as much as I want to hate this game I can't.
It's reputation is deserved; it is soul crushing hard and I wouldn't begrudge anyone for using cheats. Respawning enemies, enemies placed blocking ladders, that awful dam/water level with a timer, bosses requiring lots of hits the list goes on.
I can forgive the difficulty to an extent as the music is great. The graphics fairly nice for an earlier NES game. I think later games like Kirby really showed what could be done graphically on the NES. With Turtles all characters are recognisable and there's some good cut scenes. Unfortunately it suffers from flickering common in NES games.
Gameplay wise it reminded me a bit of Ghostbusters in that you travel from various locations and need to collect items. The platforming feels a bit like Goonies II or Popeye in terms of ladder systems. And it can feel a bit like a goose chase as to where you go.
Overall this is a tough, frustrating game, but no doubt a classic game. I would recommend it for nostalgia reasons as well as an example of a grade A licensed title. To be honest I have completed rock hard NES games like Contra and Ninja Gaiden and they are easy compared to Turtles. In terms of Turtles games I prefer the two Konami arcade games (also must plays) and as much as I want to hate this game I can't.
Delayed response times on controls, collision detection issues, ridiculous deaths, and other annoyances throughout the whole game. There's a bit of Contra, Metroid, Trojan, and I'm fairly certain that the last stage music is from Castlevania but maybe it's just very similar. Most of the enemies were highly questionable, not looking like foot clan ninjas or the other villains from the original show. Maze maps had dead-ends and areas had you repeat grind a few times.
Some of the cut-scenes were decent enough to keep us die-hard turtle fans interested, and we got to see the cast of the characters we know at the boss fights. I never had the game as a kid but wanted to play it whenever visiting friends. Friends always wanted to do something/anything else, now I know why.
Annoying game, glad I'm through it so I can stick it on a shelf with curiosity satisfied and not look at it again.
Some of the cut-scenes were decent enough to keep us die-hard turtle fans interested, and we got to see the cast of the characters we know at the boss fights. I never had the game as a kid but wanted to play it whenever visiting friends. Friends always wanted to do something/anything else, now I know why.
Annoying game, glad I'm through it so I can stick it on a shelf with curiosity satisfied and not look at it again.
Did you know
- TriviaUltra, the company creator of the game, designed it basing mostly on the original comic books instead the cartoon series Les tortues ninjas (1987). It explains why a lot of the storyline and enemies are not what many fans expected, resulting in a lot of negative reviews due to the confusion. Some late additions and changes where made to colorize the Turtles' headbands based on the toy line idea for giving each Turtle an unique identity, instead that all them use a red bandanna like on the cover art of the game, which is how the Turtles where originally shown in the comics. Only parts of the Les tortues ninjas (1987)'s music where added into the game at a later stage, but the main theme song was not included due to the TV show wasn't being the basis of the game.
- ConnectionsEdited into Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: The Cowabunga Collection (2022)
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