TEENAGE MUTANT NINJA TURTLES
By: James StevensonDate: Tuesday, August 12, 2003
I still remember being a kid and having my TEENAGE MUTANT NINJA TURTLES toys. I remember watching the TV show with my friends, and eventually buying and getting severely frustrated by the harder than hell NES videogame of the time. Eventually the movie came along and every one of my friends had to go. The arcade game came along and the NES adaptations after that were some of my favorite games to play with friends. Somewhere in the age of the Super Nintendo, the Turtles got lost, but now with a new TV show, a new theme song, a new videogame was definitely in the works.
Konami snatched up the rights to the game, and immediately went about making something that would appeal to all us older folks who remember dropping hundreds of quarters into a TURTLES IN TIME arcade machine. The resulting game is based directly off the new animated series, and the game opens with cut scenes that appear to have been animated from that series. The game uses a cel-shaded look that is very reminiscent of the cut scenes and is very close to perfect.
I don't know that I could envision a TEENAGE MUTANT NINJA TURTLES game as anything other than an arcade action beat 'em up, and that's exactly what Konami has made. The game plays very similarly to those that you that you remember. Jump, and use your weapons. I was disappointed to find that there is no jump kick move, a staple of the original games, but a fine double jump has replaced it. Pizza is still the health item of choice, and the game still flashes "GO!!!" with an arrow when you need to move to the next set of enemies. The game also features plenty of fire hydrants to bash and the water stream is very effective in taking enemies out.
While it's a bit early, the game doesn't seem to be extremely difficult. I haven't gotten too far into the later levels though, and I'm sure the most entertaining aspect of the game will be with two players working cooperatively (which is true of any game). Regardless, the gameplay is pretty simple and isn't too complex, hopefully it'll be a bit deeper before the final release.
One final note, the new cartoon and theme song don't particularly appeal to me. I was singing the original theme song (shows you how good the marketing was that I still remember all these years later) and I realized how stupid it actually was. Now hearing this one, I finally know how my parents, or teenagers of the day, must have felt about it. It's so bad I almost didn't want to play the game. The cartoon doesn't look to be anything worth writing home about.
