Let’s celebrate San Diego Comic-Con with a property that embodies all aspects of media — comic books, television, movies, video games, toys — and how that can be a really bad thing.
Some people love Konami’s 1989 Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles for the NES, played here via original Ultra Games cartridge in Hyperkin’s Retron 5. The didn’t mind the harsh difficulty or buggy controls that led to as many deaths as the thoughtless design. They were fine with a Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle game that only let you play one turtle at a time, completely ignoring a major theme of the property.
I am not one of those people. I remember anger and frustration and disappointment. But it was anger, frustration and disappointment at a time when you couldn’t just hop on Steam or pick up your phone for something else to play, so I played it. I hated it, but I wouldn’t let it break me.
At least not until the underwater bit. Damn this game.
The First Five is the first five minutes of a game with light commentary. Once the five minutes are up, so are we, and we mean it. No exceptions at all. That means you, Fahey.
Contact the author at fahey@kotaku.com or follow him on Twitter at @bunnyspatial
Comments
27 responses to “The First Five Minutes Of The Worst Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles Game”
The First Five Minutes Of The Worst Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles Game
Uh, I think somebody is forgeting the ‘Re-Shelled’ game.
I loved this game!
Same here, it happens to be my favourite of all the tmnt games.
Me too!
Dude I clocked this game, twice!
This is also my favorite TMNT game!
I played the hell out of this on PC back in the day.
Never got very far (don’t think I made it to the underwater level) but still loved it.
The underwater bit was still very near the beginning i seem to recall. I remember getting electrocuted over and over by those damn currents.
But once you manage to get past that and you get to drive around in the turtle van again, it all became fun.
Until…. that moment you were down at the local mall and you saw Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles the arcade game(also made by Konami) which was a 4 player beat em up that made me drool with amazement.
There really was no contest. Especially since your friends could jump in and play other turtles at the same time.
This is the game that made me and my brother save every bit of pocket/birthday/Christmas money for an entire year to buy our first console (NES). Loved and hated the game in equal measure, one of the hardest most unforgiving games I have played, We only ever got up to the fourth level To this day I have never seen the technodrome level. This is some next level frustration shit.
I played this a lot when it was first around on the NES. I played it enough to get to Shredder at the end of the game but never beat him. If you died (lost all 4 turtles), it was back to the beginning of the game, if you die enough you lose motivation to play the entire game again. Then of course the Arcade game came out and I never really played the original TMNT game much after that.
I also loved this game, played it all the time, until one day my younger brother put the cartridge behind a wheel of our mother’s car… I still to this day have no idea why.
I’m too lazy to Google or YouTube it…but wasn’t there a bad glitch on the PC version where it was impossible to jump across a certain ledge in the sewers?
I had the c64 version and there was a luck based jump in a building just before the underwater section. Always took multiple attempts and regularly caused deaths. Maybe this is what your talking about? Angry Video Game Nerd made the jump famous.
I’m not to sure, mate, as I never knew about the C64 version until now. I think we might have to cheat by using Google or The Tube hehe
I’ve been playing this using a Power Glove.
It doesn’t make it any better.
Control system 12 if anyone is curious, it lets you flick to jump and curl your fingers to attack.
Yes! It was the same with the Amiga version which I played. I was too young to understand that it was impossible so just kept on persisting.
LOL im pretty sure the Power Glove made everything worse but kudos for trying.
You only dislike it because you are terrible at it, you should git gud
I seem to remember you can switch between turtles at any stage, so when you are low health on a level you can switch to a different turtle.
I still love this game
This game majorly sucked. The reason being – it came out at the same time as the 4 player arcade game. That game allowed 4 players and the characters actually used their correct weapons AND you fought enemies relevant to the TMNT universe. This hunk of junk had one piece of relevance to TMNT – the character was a turtle. Everything else was from another universe. Crap upon crap.
What? That’s not even close to being true. The turtles did use their own weapons… and plenty of the characters were in it. You sure you are thinking of the correct game?
I beat the underwater level on C-64, needed cheats to beat the game on PC much later.
Fun game, having one turtle at a time made it at least feel as there was a tactical element to it, still my favourite TMNT game and better than any of the recent movie tie ins.
That game was freaking awesome I loved it. Tbh though you could of put a ninja turtle headband on a turd and I would of loved it.
I still have this for NES. Was a great game, hard as crap though and I don’t think I got real far as a kid.
Worst game?! Give it some credit, being able switch turtles on the fly was awesome, use Don for damage switch to Raph or Mikey when you’re going to take damage. Also this game has a stellar sound track!
wow the only hard part I remember in this game was the tunnel leading up to shredder with the flying troopers that shot out crescent shaped moons and sapped an awful lot of your energy.
The only way through them I found was to creep along until they turned around and left the screen rather than coming straight for you, otherwise they just killed all the energy in your turtles before you even got to fight shredder.
I also liked that the technodrome was pseudo random in its placement.
would play again B——-
Played the SHIT out of this as a kid. Loved it because it was the turtles, hated it because it was brutal. I still remember my mum buying this for me and me studying the boxart whilst waiting in line to pay. Also remember it was $100 back then which is insane.
Ah this old thing. I was heavily into the 4 player arcade cabinet at the time so this game kind of disappointed me when it was ported to the pc. Like so many people I also had trouble with the underwater level. I lost interest in it very quickly and resumed my Commander Keen games