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By Leroux Like every other child ages three through ten at the time, I too was involved in the notorious Ninja Turtles mania of the late eighties and early nineties. It wasn't that I wanted to be; I just didn't have a choice. It was either sacrifice my popularity amongst the other school children at the time, or go along with the crowd and blabber away in meaningless Ninja Turtle jargon about Donatello not being nearly as cool as Michaelangelo because he didn't like pizza as much and was too smart. Thankfully this phase has past, as I would dread still engaging in such meaningless blabber with comrades once more. Looking back at all the cheap plastic crud I owned with Ninja Turtles plastered on it, I wonder if any of it was even meant to be good. The only instance that comes to mind in which the Ninja Turtles and quality product could be used in the same sentence was when regarding their video games. At the time, my rookie mind couldn't even comprehend simple tasks like when I had to go to the bathroom and when I was hungry, much less how I should approach these enemies that can FREAKIN' FLY! Now that I play the game more though, I realize what an under appreciated game this really is, no matter whether it captures the famous "turtle feel" or not. The cleverly titled Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles is remarkably better than one would believe at first, and has a lot of unique ideas to top it off. Ninja Turtles is one of the first games to use an overhead map, much less use an overhead map that has a challenge to it. Basically, the overhead map is a big part of the game, and in order to proceed to the typical action levels, you have to learn how to maneuver around it. You basically walk around until you find an entrance. Walk you character over the entrance, and you'll begin the typical action. While this is obviously a simple task, the overhead map is scattered with enemies that can appear from almost nowhere to make things more difficult for our fearsome foursome of tortoise. It can be slightly intimidating at first, but operating your turtle on the overhead view is no big deal. Once you enter, how shall I call it, a level, the real action begins. You can choose any one of the four ninja turtles. The default turtle is Leo, but by pressing start at ANY time, you can switch turtles. This is extremely helpful, as if one turtle's life bar is low, you can switch to a different turtles and fight with him. As you slash through linear levels with your turtles though, you'll soon realize that there's one noticeable problem. In this game, the turtle's powers are off balance. Leo is by far and wide the best of the turtles. Don is second best, because he is both the strongest and has a far reach (great for bosses), but cannot attach in all angles like Leo can. Rafael and Mike are practically useless throughout the game, other than to use as moving targets, because they not only have practically no range to their attacks, but their attacks are also weak. So basically, make sure Leo is always healthy, or game over. The enemies who come barreling in your direction are of a typical bunch. The majority of them are simple enemies that can be struck down with a single blow, even from Mike. After this though, it gets a bit more complicated. Different enemies have different patterns that you'll grow accustom to. Some enemies will stand back and fire away while others won't attack unless you're not facing them. Other constantly jump and attack and some release smaller enemies for you to deal with. The bosses could have been a lot tougher, but the everyday travel through the levels is difficult enough, combining constant attacks with some very difficult jumps that may seem impossible at first. Also in most every level's middle or end is a minor boss character, which is typically not that difficult. Just make sure you have a somewhat fresh turtles and there shouldn't be a problem. Graphically, things aren't very detailed and backgrounds are somewhat grungy, but there's not a whole lot to complain about as none of this affects the game play. There is some flickering when multiple enemies enter onto the scene, and the enemies have a lot of lines on them to add detail, but you'll be hard-pressed to distinguish what those lines are. The music can get repetitive as there are few tracks in the game to hear, and those that there are, while memorable, don't captivate you as you play. The sound effects are entertaining and help you indicate that you hit an enemy and such - just the way they should be. Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles wasn't anything special back in its day, and it really isn't now either. It had a lot of good ideas that it could have capitalized on, but couldn't because of some less than perfect visuals, and most of all, the unbalanced characters. You can't expect a person to enjoy a game that has four characters if only two of them are of any help, now can you? Still, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles holds a special place in my heart, if only because of its license, and the game isn't too bad once you get over the shortcoming of the ill-balanced characters. My Score: 8/10 |
© 2001-2003 Stephen Maiorana (RoyalRanger)
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