TBT - It's Turtle Time

I will always have fond memories of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (TMNT), in any format really. But when I think about some of their video games, two come most readily to mind: The original TMNT game for the NES, and Turtles in Time on the SNES—the former being hard as balls, and the latter being an absolutely amazing arcade game.

A Turtle Who Couldn't Swim

When the original TMNT game was out and about on the Nintendo Entertainment System, I was a mere child, easily under 10. Of course like any kid my age growing up in the 90's, the Turtles were all over TV and I loved them to no end (I probably would still be interested if the entertainment industry didn't butcher the series to high hell). I was compelled to play this game, but man, did I need help.

The first zone was never actually that hard: you go through a few sewers, which were all 2D platforming sections with some combat, until you hit the bosses who were Bebop and Rock Steady—such awesome names, if I only got the reference when I was a kid haha.

Now the hard part came immediately after this during an underwater scene. The Turtles had to disarm all these bombs set to go off and destroy...a dam, I think? Who cares, it was soooooo god damn hard. All the walls had these, like, electrical barbs attached to them, and they all did quite a bit of damage. Suffice to say my experience with games at the time was not sufficient enough for me to beat it, so I always passed it off to one of my cousins.

Fortunately after this horrible segment, you got to drive around in the sweet ass Turtle Van and shoot rockets at things. Best part of the game. Shortly after this I would run out of lives and have to restart, never really getting any further than this, but whatever, I was young, I had fun.

Time After Time

That said, Turtles in Time was a king among games, especially at the time. The controls were tight and the game had support for two players, which was the way to play no doubt. As far as the gameplay goes it was a standard arcade beat em' up: you choose a character and traverse the stages one at a time, pounding enemies and destroying a boss at the end of each zone.

I have two solid memories of this game. The first happens to be the very first stage: The location was a construction site, and you were walking along the top of these girders of an unfinished building. The boss was this weird mutant fly-man...it was messed up haha.

The second memory goes right to the ability to throw enemies into the screen! The game never really had any instructions, so you had to figure out how to do this move on your own, but it was paramount that you did. See shortly into the game you go up against Shredder who is safely tucked away inside this massive mech and the only way to get at him was to throw Footmen at him. I think it was a pretty iconic moment in the game, easily a strong memory for all who had the pleasure of trying out Turtles in Time.

It’s Pizza Time

Both games were a lot of fun, even if I never got very far in the NES version. One day the series may return to its former glory; maybe it won’t. In any case I will always have memories of the games as they were. And who knows, maybe someone will do the same for TMNT like what Rocksteady did for Batman?