Welcome to another edition of Playing With Power. The review article that looks at all things Nintendo Entertainment System. Back in March, I reviewed the first Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles video game on the NES. And despite some major issues, I found it to be okay at best, giving it a thumbs in the middle review. With a few months passed now, I’d say this week is perfect time to look at the 2nd instalment of the NES Ninja Turtle games. Does this arcade classic hold up on the great grey box, or does it stink like rotten pizza? Let’s find out with Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles II: The Arcade Game.
YEAR OF RELEASE: 1990
PUBLISHER: Ultra
GENRE: Beat-Em-Up
By 1990, the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles franchise was at its highest peak. The cartoon was still a ratings success, the merchandise was flying off the shelves (it was the point where damn near anything you could imagine had the turtles’ mugs slapped on it), and the Turtles would conquer the big screen with their first movie. Naturally, everything the turtles touched turned into solid gold. At the time, they were successful in the gaming world. Both in console and arcade markets.
The first Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles NES game was a best seller on the conosle, and the arcade game that came out first was still a massive quarter muncher. However, most fans weren’t too fond of how the NES game came about. With annoying difficulty, and of course that legendary Dam stage. The general consensus was that fans were hungry for a home console port of the arcade game. And Konami would deliver one year later.
Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: The Arcade Game was released in 1990, one year after the first NES game was released, once again under Konami’s Ultra banner. The game was once again another massive success, though not as big a seller as the previous Turtle title on the NES, it would still prove a popular title. But was the game as good as its bigger arcade brother? Let’s delve deeper.
COVER STORY
The box uses art that was on the official arcade cabinets, and it works really well. The cover is a classic, and personally one I enjoy more than the first game’s cover. As much as I respect the original art, I’m just far more nostalgic for the cartoon designs of the turtles. You may notice that the cover also mentions that you can (or could) get a free personal pan pizza with a coupon inside the box. That’s awesome (or was), however the downside was…
The coupon was the back page of the instruction booklet. Meaning that if you wanted the pizza, you had to mutilate your book to do so. If you’re a collector like me, that’s just something you can’t do. Hell, I still haven’t touched the note I got with StarTropics, no way in hell would I tamper with this book either.
STORY
During a night of patrolling New York, the Ninja Turtles discover that April O’Neil’s apartment building is on fire. When they go inside and try to rescue her, The Shredder kidnaps her. It’s up to the Turtles to follow the nefarious shred-head throughout New York to stop him once and for all. Do they have enough turtle power to embark on this quest?
GAMEPLAY
Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles II: The Arcade Game is a two player beat-em-up game. You control one of the four of the Ninja Turtles, Leonardo, Donatello, Raphael and Michaelangelo, as you have to go from level to level to rescue April (and later Splinter) from The Shredder and his many minions. You control your Turtle with the D-Pad, can jump with the A button, and can attack with the B button.
The turtles have 3 basic attacks, a straightforward strike with the B button, a jump kick after doing a high jump. But the most useful move of the game is a jump slash by rolling your thumb over the A+B buttons. This will do a powerful slash that will do double the damage of an average strike attack. This will become your go to move to get further in the game.
That’s definitely enough moves for a basic arcade NES game, but the downside is that so many of the combos and moves of the arcade version are missing. And each Turtle does the same moves, with the same length and damage, so there’s no variety in what turtle you pick. It’s a mild annoyance, but it honestly doesn’t kill the fun of the title.
The game is broken into 10 levels. You start in the burning apartment building of April O’Neil. From there, you’ll hit the streets of New York, the sewers, have to save the city from being frozen, battle through warehouses, parking lots, and so many other areas until you finally make it to the Technodrome. There’s plenty of variety in the levels provided. Plus, two stages weren’t even in the arcade version, that being the snowy park, and the house of Shogun.
For the most part the levels are basic left to right stages, beat all the enemies, and make it to the boss. The only real variety level is one where you will control your turtle on a rocket skateboard, as you have to take on enemies, and make it to the turtle van in time before it crashes through the bridge. It’s once again pretty straightforward, and rather short, but it’s fun despite that.
The majority of the enemies in the game are the Foot Soldiers, the Shredder’s evil robot army. They will appear in every level, and often have different attacks and abilities depending on their color. some will attack straightforward, some will have swords, or ninja stars, or even sledgehammers. Other enemies to deal with are the Roadkill Rodneys, wheeled robots with electric whips and blasters. There are mousers, robot snowmen, robotic scorpions, giant wrecking balls, and plenty of hazards from level to level.
The game also features tons of bosses from the classic cartoon. You’ll face Bebop, Rocksteady, Baxter Stockman in both his human and fly forms, General Trag and his stone warriors, and of course Krang and The Shredder. Added to the NES game are two new bosses. First is Tora, a mutant polar bear who is guarding the weather machine that is freezing New York. The other is Shogun, a robot warrior with a detachable floating head that guards the last level before the Technodrome.
There are no attack items in this game to help you further your progress this time. There are pizza that will heal you full, but that’s pretty much it. You start with three lives, and can earn more by defeating 200 enemies. You get a couple continues, but there is no save feature, nor are there passwords. The game is moderately difficult. If you don’t master the jump slash attack, you may have a harder time beating it, but with the move it becomes far easier. At least for me it did.
GRAPHICS
The game has decent graphics, despite being a massive downgrade from the console port. All the turtles have the same sprite only with a different color headband as expected. All the enemies are well designed, though mostly just being palette swaps of the foot soldiers. Levels all look great, and the few cutscenes the game has all look as close as possible to the arcade versions. One thing though you’ll easily notice is that the game slaps the Pizza Hut logo everywhere in the game. I know it was the major sponsor for the port, but hell even Domino’s showed restraint with Yo! Noid.
MUSIC
The game features great music, as expected from Konami. All the songs are ports of the arcade version downgraded to 8-bit. However, despite the downgrade, they still each have their own unique quality to them that make them sound even better on the NES. The game uses the Ninja Turtles theme far more than the previous game did, and even uses other show themes, including Krang’s theme music. This is definitely an enjoyable, and somewhat underlooked soundtrack. It’s not as good as the previous game, but still classic.
OVERALL THOUGHTS
Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles II: The Arcade Game is an okay port of the arcade classic. It manages to make do with what was physically possible with the NES hardware. But for what they could do, they managed to pull out a success. The game has solid control, good graphics, and solid sound. There are massive things missing like the ability to play four players as opposed to the port’s two. But considering that the game does sometime have that legendary graphics flash with several enemies on screen, having all four playable turtles would be overkill on the game’s hardware.
Some may be turned off with its rather slow and basic gameplay, but if you overlook it, you have a gem of a title, that gives warm feelings to any later 80’s/90’s kid that lived and breathed anything the Turtles involved themselves with. And considering I prefer it over the original NES game as well, I’d say give this game a go. It’s certainly not the best TMNT beat-em-up, but for the first one on NES, it’s still a good one. So, go get some Pizza Hut, and display some turtle power on the NES. Cowabunga!
RATING: Thumbs Up