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Cowabunga! Let's talk about Konami's TMNT games GAF dudes and dudettes!

Are there any good matches on YouTube of either of the 16bit fighting games? Always wanted to play them as a kid but never had my own SNES and its kinda too late now. :/

I had the TMNT game on DOS which I think is the same as the 1st NES game. Played it a lot but the main memory I have was that it was damn hard and I doubt it's playable in 2015.
 

papo

Member
The original NES game rocks! How dare you think otherwise!

It holds a special place in my heart and I recently finished it for the first time thanks to cheats!

The others I love are the beat 'em ups arcade game and I also remember liking Tournament Fighter a lot when younger. Everything after that seemed mediocre at best.
 

sörine

Banned
I still love the classic Konami brawlers. Never played the GB games but I've heard the 3rd one a pretty decent Metroidvania? I only played Tournament Fighters on Genesis but it was trash, is the SNES version much better? Also curious about the PS2/GC brawlers, if I liked AC/MP/TIT/HH are they worth tracking down too?

Also it seems GameArts (of Lunar/Grandia fame) actually developed Smash Up for Ubisoft. They were also the core team working with Sakurai on Brawl it turns out.
 

Klart

Member
I hope the new one is a classic brawler.

It'll probably be another typical (though good) Platinum TP fighter...
 

correojon

Member
TMNT: Turtles in Time is one of my all-time favorite beat´em ups (and I used to play a lot of them back in the day). It had amazing enemy variety; even if most enemies were Foot Soldiers they would bring new weapons which made them behave differently (swords, axes, bows, bombs, hooks...). They also integrated with the background in cool ways, so they would appear running on horses to jump on the train on the Western stage, teleport to the fight in the Space Base stage, or come out of the sewers in the city.
But what I liked most was the awesome moveset of the player: usually beat ´em ups only allowed you to do a simple combo, a jumping attack, a grab attack and a special attack. TMNT allowed you to dash, make shoulder charges, kicks, sweeps, flying kicks, slow air attacks, horizontal flying kicks, rising kicks, 2 grab attacks (each one with it´s unique uses) and more. What´s best, is that all attacks were useful in some situations, even the ones who looked like were there just for show could be great against a certain boss or enemy. You could also repel some things like the ninja stars or sewer covers some Foot Soldiers threw at you or use background elements against the enemy (the water hydrant, the big metal ball in the Space Base...). Everything really elegantly done with just 2 buttons and with very responsive characters. Each character was also very distinct to play as: Leo was good all-around and the safest choice for single player, Raph was fast but his hits had less impact, Donnatello was slower but had great reach and Michaelangelo was somewhere between Leo and Donnatello.

Another great thing about the game was the thousand ways to get hit or die: you could get electrocuted, smashed, held by a FS while another punched you, frozen, burned, turned back to an infant...all of them with their own animations. You would also fly in different directions after receiving enough hits, so sometimes you would fall face first to the floor, or roll, or just be sent flying in different ways.

Every time I played the game I discovered one new effect, attack or way to interact with the enemies or the background. And everything was polished to the extreme.
 

Ban Puncher

Member
tmnt-nes-water.jpg

There is no god.

Maybe I is just well 'ard but never had a problem with the Dam Level. Seaweed ain't shit.

It'd be the next level where I'd get bored and check out.


Turtles in Time on SNES is godlike. Someone hack some 4 player into that and make it the best version bar none.
 

sajj316

Member
More games like Turtles in Time and Arcade please! I didn't like the reshelled version because it lost that original pixel look. Brawlers worked well for this franchise and someone would be smart to capitalize on that for future releases! Preferably with pixels!
 
Thinking back on it, Turtles in Time on SNES was probably the only one that is any good today (I assume Hyperstone Heist is more or less the same thing), but I have fond memories of the first NES game's shenanigans.

The original 1989 arcade game still holds up today. Hyperstone Heist is a mishmash of the 1989 arcade game and the SNES version of Turtles in Time, it is basically a remix of those two games. It steals 95% of its sprites and background art from both those games and adds very little originality of its own.

But, it does play really well, has really responsive controls and looks decent for a Genesis beat em up. The music is generally just Genesis renditions of the SNES games', but all of the tracks sound really good in FM synth. The voice effects are a little scratchy though. But the fighting is tight.

Hyperstone Heist does come off as a lesser effort than Turtles in Time, as it feels like the development team had less time to make this game and recycled everything from the two other 16bit titles. But for what it is worth, they did make the best of it and the game is still good.
 

jett

D-Member
The original 1989 arcade game still holds up today. Hyperstone Heist is a mishmash of the 1989 arcade game and the SNES version of Turtles in Time, it is basically a remix of those two games. It steals 95% of its sprites and background art from both those games and adds very little originality of its own.

But, it does play really well, has really responsive controls and looks decent for a Genesis beat em up. The music is generally just Genesis renditions of the SNES game, but all of the tracks sound really good in FM synth. The voice effects are a little scratchy though. But the fighting is tight.

Hyperstone Heist does come off as a lesser effort than Turtles in Time, as it feels like the development team had less time to make this game and had to recycle everything from the two other 16bit titles. But for what it is worth, they did make the best of it and the game is still good.

Regarding the arcade games, I'm of the opinion that Konami's arcade brawlers are just cheap quarter-munchers. The console games are better balanced.

Maybe I'll try HH one day, for kicks. I've played through TiT on SNES way too many times.
 
Turtles in Time is one of my all-time favourites. Such a great game.

I never owned an NES, but played the other Turtles games for it at my cousins' and loved them. I really want to play the 3rd one again.
 

brokentrain

Junior Member
At first the dam level in tmnt1 was way way hard, but after a handful of times you eventually memorize all the positions of the bombs, and then you can usually clear it with at least 5 seconds left lol. I think the rest of the game is way harder honestly, getting lost forever rescuing splinter really wears you down, and keeping Donatello alive for the whole game is so hard because he's too good and you want to use him all the time.

I really liked the Manhattan project a lot, it looked quite nice for the nes imo, and some nice moves you could do.

+1 for the hyperstone heist boss music being the best
 

Huggers

Member
Oddly this arrived for me in the post this morning;

6xF4jgc.jpg


Very underrated game. Got a lot of hate for years. People are slowly coming round to it now
 

Savitar

Member
Played a lot of TMNT games when I was young, the first two on the NES and of course Turtles in Time which I got for Christmas. My brother and I actually played it together all throughout Christmas morning (being around two or so when we got up HA) and actually beat it on our first play through. I remember being disappointed there wasn't more!

It was kinda easy.

To speak more on the NES version, I had zero issue with it. The challenge was straight up Nintendo stuff for the time. The only problem was those too young may have found it beyond them. Even the water section once you mastered it could be done without hitting a single piece of seaweed or whatever that was. I should I know, I became that damn good at it. Practice makes perfect.
 
The first one isn't terrible, but that's not exactly high praise. I certainly wouldn't recommend it to people. It's got good music and a nice color palette, but it's not worth playing, especially for players who started with (and love) the sequels.
 
The games for the original Game Boy were pretty good. The second one's a bit meatier but the first one had some really terrific graphics and is right up there with some of the best on the system.

I think the GBA ones might have been decent too but I'm not a huge fan of the Fox Turtles so I didn't go out of my way to try them.
 
Regarding the arcade games, I'm of the opinion that Konami's arcade brawlers are just cheap quarter-munchers. The console games are better balanced.

Yeah they are quarter munchers. But I still like both of the Turtles arcade games. They were fun with a group of people.

Hyperstone Heist doesn't do anything wrong as a beat em up, but it does feel a little uninspired compared to the other games in the series.
 
TMNT 3 still my fav of all time. I feel like people liked snes/sega games more because of the hugely upgraded visuals.

In terms of enemy variety and bosses I thought 3 was superior. Also I preferred the music, and stages of 3 overall. I remember thinking I was reaching the end at the technodrome lol..... it kept on going long after that.

TMNT 1 has a special place in my heart, despite it's "glitchy" visuals, lag, and lack of enemies from the TV show/comics. I actually consider the water level easy lol. I can get through without being hit these days.

Does anyone here consider TMNT2(The arcade game) their favorite?
 

TreIII

Member
I loved Manhattan Project and always feel sad that it gets overlooked due to being such a late NES release and getting overshadowed by Turtles in Time.

You and me both.

TIT and Hyperstone Heist may get all the shine, but I actually preferred MP. Good length, more and fun boss battles and the final fight with Super Shredder was actually much of a challenge than TIT/HH's ever was.

SNES Tournament Fighters/Mutant Warriors is still my pick for GOAT, though.
 
For everyone, TMNT is a comic/tv series and a franchise.
For me, TMNT is and always be, a Konami game.

Never liked the TV series, i was a turtles fan 100% thanks to Konami, nothing else.
 
My childhood in the OP lol, spent so much time playing a lot of the multiplayer TMNT games and had a lot of good memories of them. Sucks that we never got a Tournament Fighters sequel though, game was pretty legit.....talking about the SNES version btw, never played the Genesis version. Also most of the cover art for the majority of TMNT games were pretty dope.
 
Turtles Tournament Fighters on the SNES was excellent. Very underrated VS fighting game on the system. The NES version was one of the few 1 on 1 fighters for the console. Pretty decent too. I LOVE the art for the SNES game.

4X7y9I1.jpg
 
My best friend and I would play Turtles in Time on SNES all the goddamn time. So. Fucking. Good. The music is great, the controls are excellent, and the gameplay is fun as hell.

Too bad the remake fucking sucked on the 360. What a waste of time.
 
Turtles 1 on NES is my favorite in the series. I just don't like beat-em-up games (or, as I used to call them, "stop-and-go fighters"). But I legitimately like the first game a lot.

Turtles 3 I also own. AMAZING music. I mean, almost all Konami games have great music, including Turtles 1, but this is probably the best soundtrack in the entire NES library. To be honest, that's the only reason why I played the game when I was younger, lol.
 

NolbertoS

Member
I finished the original NES TMNT. I took a lot of trial and error, but became a breeze after awhile. I had more fun with that game then the beat me' up renditions of the TMNT. I remember when I beat Shredder, man what a sense of accomplishment. I demand a "GAF plays TMNT NES" thread now. If you can finish that game then Dark Souls should be a zinch.
 
My brothers and I played a ton of Turtles in Time growing up. Over time we developed an understanding about which player would get which pizza/spinner/bonus monster. But someone always decided to steal a kill on a pizza monster, and the result was thrown controllers, bruised shoulders, and bad feelings. Great, great game.
 

@MUWANdo

Banned
I want to give props to a recent TMNT game, not because it's fantastic (none of them are, really) but because it's a damn sight better than all the other garbage TMNT games currently kicking around:

TMNT: Danger of the Ooze, developed by Wayforward and published by Activision. It's a metroidvania with simple juggle-based combat and like all licensed WF games, it's pitched as a homage to older games but is way too easy and short to ever hang with any of the games it's aping, but the map layout is fun to traverse (and more genuinely metroidvania-like than their other games like Alien, Shantae, etc) and some of the bosses are neat.

It routinely goes for around $15 on all platforms; the 3DS was the lead platform so the console ports look mega-simple even by licensed game standards, but if you have to get a TMNT game for your kids this xmas, this is the least terrible option.

TMNT_DotO_box_art-906x1024.jpg
 
curious... what was so bad about Turtles in Time Re-Shelled? I missed it

The music was completely removed except for a couple of seconds of the title screen music. The lightning was bad. The controls were off. It's difficult to describe but it didn't felt like the same game in a very bad way.

But for me the worst offense of them all was that it wasn't based on the superior SNES port but the inferior Arcade original. That meant no Technodrome level (also no fight with Shredder in a machine), no fight with Rat King in the sewers, no fight with Slash (instead we get a lame mud monster), no fight with Bebop and Rocksteady, no awesome Mode 7 version of Neon Night Riders and no Super Shredder at the end (just regular Shredder).

TMNT Turtles in Time Re-Shelled sucks.
 

entremet

Member
I enjoyed the first NES game.

I never had problems with the infamous second level.

My issue with it was the 3rd level on the Turtle Van. I went into many buildings, rooms, and sewers, and just didn't know where to go, so I never got any further.

Another issue is that many of the normal enemies felt out of place completely. I was scratching my head at all these strange enemies.

I later learned that many of the enemies were reused sprites from another Konami game.

I wish it was still on the Virtual Console, it was on it for a bit, but was delisted due to licensing.
 

Tizoc

Member
I want to give props to a recent TMNT game, not because it's fantastic (none of them are, really) but because it's a damn sight better than all the other garbage TMNT games currently kicking around:

TMNT: Danger of the Ooze, developed by Wayforward and published by Activision. It's a metroidvania with simple juggle-based combat and like all licensed WF games, it's pitched as a homage to older games but is way too easy and short to ever hang with any of the games it's aping, but the map layout is fun to traverse (and more genuinely metroidvania-like than their other games like Alien, Shantae, etc) and some of the bosses are neat.

It routinely goes for around $15 on all platforms; the 3DS was the lead platform so the console ports look mega-simple even by licensed game standards, but if you have to get a TMNT game for your kids this xmas, this is the least terrible option.

TMNT_DotO_box_art-906x1024.jpg

Thanks for the impressions, I'll grab the 3DS ver. in due time.
 
Played the OG TMNT on NES back in the 80's. That game was hard as shit...fuck that water level. My childhood was awesome :)
 
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