This section of the countdown might seem a little like the department of redundancy department.
The next few titles we’ll be featuring in this space are games in series that I love that already had representation in the countdown, and yet, here I am, saying you should play this other game too.
The onus then falls on me to make the case for why people should play not just the game that falls higher on the list (in this case, “Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles IV: Turtles in Time“), but for them to play that game AND this one.
In the case of the arcade classic beat ‘em up “Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles,” we’re going to be looking at three distinct things, I’d say.
- The importance of the coin-op brawler as a genre within video games.
- The massive cultural relevance of the ninja turtles.
- Why this game, itself, is fun.
So yeah, let’s get to it. Why should someone play that other turtles game … and this turtles game too?
Let’s read on to find out!
Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles at a glance:
Genre: Beat ’em up
Released: 1989
Platform: Arcade
Konami’s highest-grossing arcade game.
To set the scene of when the original TMNT arcade brawler came out in 1989, we can first take a picture of the arcade scene in general, where such stalwarts as “Ms. Pac-Man,” “Donkey Kong,” and “Defender” were still holding strong in terms of grosses, yet those games were by and large nearly a decade old at that point.
Arcade racers such as “Pole Position” and “OutRun” were by this point making significant bank and establishing the racing genre as a long-term staple for cabinet entertainment (this is a phenomenon we are a little overdue in covering, but we’ll get there eventually), so there had been some advancement, but it was the immediate meteoric success of the beat ‘em up “Double Dragon,” in 1987, that inspired a wave of imitators to jump on that particular gravy train over the next half decade or so.
Capcom’s most successful effort in that vein, “Final Fight,” was notable in that it was a successful attempt at making Double Dragon bigger and better, with larger sprites and a more robust moveset. It also inspired itself the copycat “Streets of Rage” franchise that would eventually supplant it entirely, and it indirectly led to Capcom’s eventual (re-)discovery of the goldmine that was the fighting game (“Street Fighter II” of course being the most notable example).
Capcom and Sega (the producers of Streets of Rage and another boss-ass brawler “Golden Axe”) each had notable successes in trying to create original properties to capitalize on gamers’ brawling appetites during this time period.
But what you also saw a lot of during the late 80s and early 90s was pre-existing licensed properties being adapted into video games. And for whatever reason, what everyone seemed to gravitate toward for these licenses was the beat ‘em up genre.
Not that it didn’t make sense a lot of the time, mind you. Look at something like all of the various superheroes and their inevitable journey into arcades, and you can see why companies would think, “Say, maybe we should have these characters beat up a bunch of bad guys and maybe rescue someone.”
You’re telling me Spider-Man and Wolverine make sense in this realm?
Weird.
Still, I stand by my “for whatever reason” quip because you also had really weird examples like “The Simpsons,” where noted pacifists like Marge and Lisa were out there mixing it up and beating up not only hooligans, but also bears and other wildlife.*
* I actually LOVE “The Simpsons” arcade game partly for how much of a fever dream it resembles. So much weird shit happens which is completely incongruous with the television series, it makes you wonder just how much Matt Groening and co. wish the thing would go away forever (kind of like George Lucas and the “Holiday Special”). It’s a wild-ass ride. I’m not thinking “The Simpsons” is going to make my Top 100, but that isn’t an indictment per se, more of an acknowledgement that there are a LOT of good games vying for the Top 100.
Konami, the developers of that particular oddity, were at the forefront of doing the beat ‘em up with recognizable characters, and they made a huge impact on the industry when they dropped the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles on arcades in 1989.
For the uninitiated (how?), the name really describes what you got here. The story of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (TMNT) followed four teenagers – named Leonardo, Raphael, Donatello and Michaelango after the Renaissance artists – who had been turtles mutated into humanoids, who were trained as ninjas in the sewers of New York.
If all of this sounds repulsive, well, that wasn’t really the vibe it was going for. It was supposed to be cool.
Each turtle had his own personality, had different combat/weaponry proficiency, and they were each adorned (eventually) with different-colored masks. Oh yeah, and they all loved pizza, making them instantly relatable.
The property of those pizza-loving reptiles had by 1989 gained significant traction among the younger set, thanks to a comic book that had been adapted into a popular animated television series, accompanied by a set of brightly colored and detailed action figures I’d go so far as to call downright beautiful in their design.
Appropriately, Konami’s game matched those aesthetics, with big, gorgeously designed sprites and backgrounds, which coupled with a wonderful soundtrack of catchy tunes (including the REALLY catchy TV theme song) and actual digitized character voicework (a standout inclusion for its time), really made the cabinet stand out among the crowd when encountered out in the wild.
The other thing that leaped out at a person right away about this game was that it could accommodate four players, still a relative rarity at the time. I mean, of course it was four players – there were, after all, four turtle characters on the show – but that was a big deal and a big selling point when other games really weren’t doing that yet.*
* I think the largest looming counter-example here would be Gauntlet, a fantasy-themed dungeon crawler that hit arcades a couple of years earlier, though I would say to that: A.) That’s just one other game, dudes, and; B.) Gauntlet had barriers to access, seeming a little ugly by comparison with its smaller sprites and drab backgrounds, and it had a huge dork factor going for/against it as well.
Thinking about this 4-player element from the perspective of a kid, you didn’t have to be particularly good at the game or even rich to have access to TMNT and feel like a part of something bigger than yourself. You could hop in and out of the game as you were able and contribute to the effort of vanquishing the machine, even if you only had a few quarters available.
With this game in particular, I can recall several sessions in which I had to tap out at some point within the first three or four stages due to a lack of funds or even time (“Why did you have to finish your shopping so quickly, Mom?”), but I can also remember at least a couple of occasions in which I was able to jump in late in the game during the Technodrome stage and help other gamers achieve victory against the dreaded Krang and Shredder.
Was this stolen valor? I don’t really think so, especially because it was so tantalizing a prospect (“I don’t have to be here for the whole expensive run?”). And I did recognize the difference between playing the thing all the way through and not, which was something I never actually achieved until adulthood … but you can be sure that I certainly made it my mission to do so until I could finally check it off the bucket list.
So yes, this game was big and bright and beautiful, it delighted aurally, and it was accessible, but the game itself had to play well to inspire repeat plays.
Fortunately, it got that right too.
Acknowledging upfront that “Turtles in Time” would improve on the formula and in the process become itself one of the greatest brawlers of all time (or at least the home version did those things), the original Turtles arcade game wasn’t shabby itself in the gameplay department.
Yes, there was a little of a quarter-sucker element going on here, where your turtle would seemingly take a lot more damage than you might think that they should. But the cooperative play was a key component of getting through the stickier bits, particularly the boss battles, where your enemy could inflict massive damage on you in a short period of time. Having their attention fixed elsewhere was key to chipping away at their health bar without hemorrhaging quarters in the process.
Each turtle provided a different fighting experience, giving the player variety and more reason to return to the fray, though the basics – attack, jump, jump attack, and special attack – were simple to understand and fairly easy to execute as well, providing easy access to newbies and veterans alike.
The heft of the attacks was solid (or at least an improvement over Double Dragon), and the environment was often something you could affect … or it could affect you. Examples included you hitting things like signposts and fire hydrants and utilizing them as projectile attacks. But you could also get clobbered by falling billboards or cars pulling out of parking spots. All of this added to the immersion of the game, which as we mentioned before was chock-full of gorgeous sprite work and characters yelling at one another.
In effect, you felt like you were playing IN the cartoon.
“Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles” was a monster hit for Konami, becoming their most successful arcade title ever, and the most popular arcade game for any developer since Double Dragon.
This game earned significant coin on the strength of its own merits, but also because of its license, which grew even more popular the following year when a feature film full of martial arts experts running around in foam suits debuted.
More games, cartoons, movies, and toys continued to come out until eventually, of course, the quality declined some and kids lost interest (this is always a bit of a chicken-and-egg situation, trying to figure out whether the quality or the interest declined first).
Sadly, the turtles became less of a major cultural phenomenon and something for the history books.
On that end, we don’t have to weep TOO hard though, since they’re still around. They’ve been reinvented too many times to count at this point, and some of the more recent material, such as the movie “Mutant Mayhem” and the video game brawler – inspired by this game in particular! – “Shredder’s Revenge,” is honestly quite good. If you’re a turtles fan or grew up being one, you should probably check them both out. They carry the legacy on well.
I would also be remiss if I didn’t acknowledge at least a little bit about how this game made a significant impact on me personally, as I was borderline obsessed with this game upon becoming aware of its existence at the time.
There was just something about the game and the way that it captured the cartoon-like sensibilities of the animated television show.
And to be sure, the format of the beat ‘em up and the turtles themselves were an almost perfect fit.
To wit, you start with it being a four-player affair (Leonardo, Raphael, Donatello, and Michaelangelo!), creating more potential for teamwork AND chaos, the mark of any good brawler. They were also designed around hand-to-hand combat (brandishing the likes of swords and nunchucks), which conveniently lent itself well to the concept of the brawler.
Many of the big, bright colorful enemy characters of the show (such as Rocksteady, Bebop, and Baxter Stockman) were perfect candidates for bosses at the end of levels.
The turtles, each distinctive in their personalities and fighting weaponry, offered the proper variety for player choice in the game, each offering slightly different fighting styles/range/speed/etc.
Even the Foot Clan, the faceless robotic ninja army serving big bad Shredder, were an enviable fit for a game of this type – you needed a relatively faceless army of endless combatant drones to serve as fodder for the gamer’s violent tendencies. (And it wasn’t just limited to them, either. The Mausers and Roadkill Rodneys offered a horde-like sensibility too.)
Every game of chess needs its pawns.
When the original Nintendo Entertainment System (NES) game came out in the same year, it was wildly derided, and somewhat fairly, because by comparison, it was ugly, glitchy, and less action-oriented than its arcade counterpart. Millions of people bought that game and were greeted with a brutally difficult, more cerebral experience than they were expecting, and thus it was okay for them to be disappointed.
History has been somewhat kinder to that game, which has been embraced more over the years for what it does do well – namely its sense of strategy and exploration. (The soundtrack ain’t bad either!)
I gave very little consideration toward that game back then, partly because I hadn’t by that point even acquired an NES yet. So, I wasn’t running around screaming about dying on the water level like other kids my age.
It was the following year, 1990, when I finally got the system I had been lusting after for so long, and hey what do you know, one of the games released (just in time for Christmas!) that year was a port of the arcade game (the game everyone wanted anyway).
That port, “Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles II: The Arcade Game,” much like the original NES game, is a decidedly mixed bag. It offers a greater sense of precision than the arcade classic and additional stages, setting itself apart as a different experience. But it also sacrificed the 4-player element (the poor little NES could only handle 2-player), and it’s very much not as pretty a game with smaller, flickering sprites … and let’s be honest, those things mattered.*
* I should mention that a third numbered NES game, “The Manhattan Project” came along later on, and it, like the second game, was styled as an arcade-style brawler. It’s considered by many to be the best game of the three, and I think I agree with that, but it’s also not a runaway blowout victory or anything. All three games are fun nostalgia bombs that probably don’t hold up super great for modern gamers, but so what? They’re definitely still a good time for the older crowd, and that can be enough, methinks.
“TMNT II” was a good enough approximation that I, along with many others, was mollified. It was a special experience to get to play an all-time favorite arcade game at home, even with the changes and even with the graphical sacrifices. Over time, many people have gotten stuck on the game’s limitations (including how repetitive it can feel), and once again, that’s fair, but I still have a great deal of appreciation for it even today. Taken as an example of programmers and artists wringing every ounce of capability out of the NES that they possibly could, it’s brilliant.
So yes, the NES game was great, and I still appreciate it. I love all three of the NES games, honestly (we don’t talk about the NES tournament fighter game though … nope, that doesn’t need to exist here).
Compared to the NES games, I like the arcade game the best of those experiences (no surprise there), but it’s also a convenient excuse for me to talk about all of them, really, and it’s in that way that it becomes an even more important part of the countdown for me. I mean, those NES games were way too flawed to be included in a Top 100 … but I don’t want them forgotten about either.
“Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles” really checks all the boxes then of being culturally significant as a license, of being representative of that era’s prevalence and importance of the arcade brawler, of offering a taste of the turtles’ enormous impact on gaming in general, and most importantly of all … of just being a dang fun time.
Cowabunga.
So what makes it worth playing today?
Why should a person play two ninja turtles games? Ultimately, I think it’s the distinction between the two that one (this one) is an incredible arcade co-op experience, while the other one (Turtles in Time) is the best possible incarnation of playing beat ’em up games at home.
Let’s say you’re of the opinion that any number of other licensed arcade brawlers is the better choice for this slot.
I’m cool with that.
I mean, it’s valid to have a preference for “X-Men,”* “Punisher,” or take your pick of the other gagillion superhero options out there.
* X-Men is worth shouting out for being released in several different formats, including a monstrosity of a cabinet you might have encountered yourself out in the wild (if you were lucky). It allowed for SIX players and featured two wide-screen displays next to one another, and it took up roughly the same amount of space in an arcade as a Volkswagen Beetle, a rare achievement generally reserved for fiberglass infused arcade racers meant to look like actual sports cars or those really big “Space Invaders” setups you see nowadays in Dave & Buster’s. X-Men definitely had even more of the “wow” factor that the turtles also enjoyed.
It’s also defensible to say you adore instead a slightly more eclectic choice like “Cadillacs and Dinosaurs,” “Alien vs. Predator,” or the aforementioned Simpsons game which turns Marge into a bloodthirsty psychopath.
More power to you. Those are all great licensed arcade brawlers. Where I come down on this is I think in any countdown of retro games people should experience, that’s a genre – the licensed brawler – that should be there. So, if you have one of those other games in your own personal list instead of this one, you’re still doing the lord’s work in my view.
I’m going with the turtles because:
- They were hugely, absurdly popular.
- Their game was fun as hell.
- It gives me an excuse to acknowledge the other important games in their catalogue that don’t themselves merit inclusion in a Top 100.
- Honestly, it’s just my personal favorite licensed brawler of the bunch.
The arcade game has been a staple among retro-style arcades for a significant period of time now, and Arcade1Up released a miniature version of the game (as they are wont to do) a half decade or so back, but the game was still a little tough to track down for home play until somewhat recently, when “The Cowabunga Collection” was released in 2022.
That collection was like manna from heaven for turtles fans, featuring the first two arcade games, the NES games, and even all of the titles that were released for the GameBoy, Genesis, and Super Nintendo, all in one tidy, affordable package. That set, which also features online play and art galleries and tons of other goodies and was released for most major platforms, gets a rousing endorsement from me.
But however you choose to play this game, I say play it. It’s a wonderful example of the sort of thing that was hugely influential and popular circa 1990 or so.
As I said before, Cowabunga.
Dave’s Score: 9/10
Check out the whole Retro Gaming Essentials list here!
How to play
- Original hardware (arcade)
- Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles II: The Arcade Game (NES — not the same, but whatever)
- Computer ports that were by and large awful and sorta defunct nowadays anyway
- Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles 2: Battle Nexus (PS2, Xbox, GameCube — an unlockable, but you have to play a ton of a bad game to get it)
- TMNT 1989 Classic Arcade (Xbox Live — Xbox 360)
- Arcade1Up
- Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: The Cowabunga Collection (Nintendo Switch, PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5, Windows, Xbox One and Xbox Series X/S)