nintendo revisited: teenage mutant ninja turtles
written by daroff on 04/08/08

despite all the negative press this game gets, i kind of enjoyed it. in fact, i discovered the problem most of those amateur reviewers have is they just weren’t good at it. at least one of them simply wasn’t aware of the game’s coolest feature. it’s a single player games, but you can switch to any turtle at any time. that’s a sweet feature. if i want to do a lot of damage, i go with donatello. if i want to take out a lot of bad guys in no time, i go with leonardo. if i want to go on a suicide mission through a bad guy filled room, i go with michelangelo and raphael.

my only problem with this game is actually one jump. there is literally one jump i just couldn’t do. the overhang is too low for the distance needed to travel. i would do so well then hit this one jump and fail over and over and over again. check out the speed run above and you’ll see that despite the liberties the game takes with turtles villains, it’s a pretty darned good game.

17 comments


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17 comments

  1. Alex Apr 8

    Good point. You’re right, the game isn’t nearly as bad as people have made it out to be recently. I will agree with the AVGN, however, that the game is too damn hard for children. I was five when this game came out, and I played it to death, but rarely did I make it past the “defuse the underwater bombs” level. I’m not saying it should be easy enough for a five year old to beat, but man, it was too hard for a lot of people.

  2. geoffrey Apr 8

    i first played this in earnest as an adult, and I couldn’t make it past the underwater level. i blame the game!

  3. daroff Apr 8

    a good strategy for the underwater level is to kill raphael. don’t use raphael before this level, so his health is 100%. then when you go through the killer weeds, let them kill off his health, and just when he’s about to die, switch to michelangelo, and if he’s about to die, switch to leonardo. that way it’s like you have 4 turtles worth of health to burn to get through the level.

    the coolest thing is in the third level, after the water, there’s a building where to can get dead turtles back.

  4. Alex Apr 8

    Good idea!

  5. geoffrey Apr 8

    i wish there was a building in real life where i could get my dead turtles back. :-(

  6. HexenDarkside Apr 9

    Well… theres this Indian burial ground which they used for that kind of thing… but the soil went bitter… They came back diffrent… more aggressive… Remember Geoffrey, sometimes… dead is better.

  7. daroff Apr 9

    remember guys, this was a kids game. when you find the dead turtles, they’re tied up, as though the foot dove into the water to kidnap the near-to-death turtles and hid them in some building.

    in kids games, people don’t die, they just get captured.

  8. HexenDarkside Apr 9

    You and your friends are dead.

    Game Over.

  9. Uncle Muscles Apr 18

    You guys played the Nintendo TMNT arcade version? It is vastly superior to this game.

  10. daroff Apr 19

    everyone says that, but i always enjoyed this one more. it was more about mazes and strategy and exploring. it also has the added bonus of being the one i owned.

    to tell you the truth, when i bought it, i thought it was the arcade version. looking back, i’m glad i fucked up.

  11. geoffrey Apr 19

    i’ll back you up uncle muscles. i love the ninja turtle scrollers, especially turtles in time. (great screen name, btw)

  12. ParagonLoki Apr 24

    I used to love that game! you are right about picking the turtles, i used donatello for the whole thing EXCEPT the boss battle with the robo turtle. c’mon, he was a robotic Leonardo, so i always fought him as Leo

  13. daroff Apr 24

    i used leonardo and saved donatello for the bosses. i liked that leo’s sword swept instead of jabbed. but we can all agree that michelangelo is only for strategically killing off.

  14. Ares Apr 29

    I always wondered if the turtles ever pulled a train on April.

  15. geoffrey Apr 29

    then this video is for you (NSFW). it’s not exactly what you want, but it’s still pretty fucking crazy.

  16. uncle muscles May 2

    On second thought daroff, the first TMNT game is better. There weren’t any annoying Pizza Hut advertisements in that game.

  17. daroff May 2

    and it had that dude whose head flew around on its own when you killed him. where was he on the cartoon? and what about guy who was perpetually on fire?

    imagine a tmnt cartoon based on the world of this game? i think it may be too intense for television.

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