Retro Profile: Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (NES)
Friday, September 30th, 2005 at 4:18pm by StaffIf you were anything like me as a kid, you spent hours of your childhood contemplating the benefits versus the drawbacks of being mutantly transformed into a giant turtle. I was a huge Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle fan. I watched the cartoon, I loved the movie, and the arcade 
game was superb. Needless to say, when they released TMNT for the NES, I bought it up faster than a group of hungry kids could put away pizza.
With a combination of an overworld map mode and a side-scrolling action mode, the first thing you will notice about TMNT is that it is nothing like the arcade game. They released that game for the NES later and aptly named it Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles II: Arcade Game. This TMNT game, unlike the sequel, follows a long line of taking good franchises and turning them into bad games. The graphics are shoddy, and the gameplay is tedious.
I can recall playing the game over and over again in hopes that it would become more like the 
arcade. It never did, and this TMNT fails to draw you in. In stark difference to the rest of the franchise, this game simply isn’t fun.
Stay or Play? Bad game tranformations of popular franchises is unfortunately one of the lesser remembered aspects of retro gaming. I don’t care to relive the mistakes of the past, nor do I expect you too. Unless you have an unusual TMNT fetish, stay away for sure.
September 30th, 2005 at 5:38 pm
haha- so true. and yet, didn’t Nintendo Power hand this game its Nester for Game of the Year way back then….?
(And how in the world do I remember that?!?)
September 30th, 2005 at 6:15 pm
Haha - Weird, because I was obsesed with this game. I would sooo play the crap out of it if I still had it.
Ah well, everyone has different opinions
September 30th, 2005 at 7:38 pm
I never liked the first one, and the second one was way too scaled back to contend with the arcade game. By far the best NES Turtles game was TMNT3, since it had the gameplay of the arcade game, but it was designed specifically for the NES.
September 30th, 2005 at 8:05 pm
I remeber renting TMNT several times over a few years. I know I didn’t finish it, but I think I made it pretty far. I seam to remeber very shoddy play control. Don’t think it is a game I would ever play again.
Anyone remember Solar Jetman? That game kicked ass.
September 30th, 2005 at 8:48 pm
oh my god i hated this game
September 30th, 2005 at 8:57 pm
This game was way too hard, given the target audience included a lot of young kids (of which I was one). Especially that stinkin’ underwater level, diffusing the bombs…
I remember getting a decent way through, and there was a spot where I had to jump some gap, and the stupid turtle would hit his head, not clear the gap, and then died. Uggg, I don’t think I’ll be playing that game again.
TMNT II and 3 were definitely fun, though.
Speaking of NES games, Power Blade was a pretty sweet one. And then there’s Journey to Silius, which I also found quite difficult…
September 30th, 2005 at 9:00 pm
Powerblade was sweet. I liked getting that thing seriously upgraded. Felt like you had lots of power. They should do a remake of that one.
September 30th, 2005 at 9:13 pm
I loved this game. My best friend at the time and I would spend hours on end trying to beat Shredder but never could. Could hardly get past the Technodrome!
September 30th, 2005 at 9:41 pm
i hated this game too, i love tmnt 2: the arcade game. Best turtles game ever. Does anyone rememnber tournament fighters?
September 30th, 2005 at 9:49 pm
Wow, I hated that stupid underwater level. I think I might have gotten past it once as a kid. Problem was I had used up all of my concentration and would just die at the next needlessly impossible juncture.
And yes, TMNT2 is one of my all time favorite games. Oh, the memories….
September 30th, 2005 at 10:04 pm
I remember playing that game. That sum beotch was hard as hell to play.
September 30th, 2005 at 11:16 pm
It was a love-hate relationship with this game. I guess a mix of love for the series and the fact that we could play as the turtles from home was cool enough to make the game more fun than it actually was. The love wore off though, never played past the airport (or warehouse, who knows)
And what the HELL were those things that looked like 3 human-legs inverted? Ahhh 8bit gaming, home to completely random looking enemy sprites.
James
October 1st, 2005 at 2:45 am
I hated this game when I was a younger mainly because it was way too hard. However, coming back to it in the past few years has made me realize how fun this game truly was due to its difficulty.
I didn’t find the gameplay that tedious until the end, but overall I actually enjoyed this game quite a bit.
Granted the gameplay was horrible when it came to controlling your character. Jump lower damn it.
October 3rd, 2005 at 3:40 pm
one of my all time favorites
October 3rd, 2005 at 5:12 pm
I thought this game was phat. Gratned it only took me forever to beat hte defuse the bombs level, but this game was awesome.
October 4th, 2005 at 9:20 am
That game was sooo frustrating. My roommate and I both played it when we were kids (and never finished it), so one night we decided to get the nes emulator and the TMNT rom, use cheatcodes and beat the crap out of it. We finished it under 2 hours…It wasn’t as satisfying as a ‘legit’ game run-through, but I felt like I accomplished something.
Damn Turtles.
November 18th, 2005 at 11:21 pm
I got this game for my 5th birthday and played it hardcore off an on.
I beat it at age ninteen, and took pictures and everything. 14 years of that game. I love it.