In the old days of the arcade, brawlers were a dime a dozen. Every company had a few under their belt, and they were all pretty much the same with a few variances between them. Among the crowded pack of games in the genre, the brawlers from Konami stood out above all the rest. Some brawlers looked nicer with more detailed sprites, and others had more complex attacks and available moves. Still, it didn’t matter. Konami’s games had two things on their side that nobody else bothered to include: 4-Player support, and brand recognition. Though they made several games based off the series, there is probably no brawler more beloved in Konami’s library (and arguably any other) than the original arcade Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. Based on the global-phenomenon of an animated series that was running in syndication, this game became 1989’s highest selling cabinet. There were few arcades (or Pizza Huts) around the nation that didn’t have one of these babies in their lineup, and for good reason. When you got four people together on one machine, you were bound to have a good time. And spend a lot of money.
In promotion of the new Turtles flick about to hit theatres, Ubisoft (current holders of the video game license) decided to partner with Konami (developers of the original arcade and console TMNT games) and put their egos aside in order to bring the beloved Arcade classic to the Xbox Live Arcade. It’s also smart thinking because this title has been one of, if not the most requested Xbox Live Arcade Title by fans across the web. The question is: is this a faithful port, and does the game stand the test of time? The answers are “yes”, and “maybe”.
Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles has been ported to home consoles twice before; once for the NES, and again as an unlockable extra in a last-gen console game from Konami TMNT: Battle Nexus. The NES port from eons ago was good for the ancient hardware, but now looks and sounds absolutely nothing like the arcade original in retrospect. The Battle Nexus port drew a lot of heat from fans thanks to licensing issues. The game’s soundtrack (written by Mutsuhiko Izumi) was primarily a collection of remixes based on the classic TV series’ theme song (which is also included on the title screen). Since Konami didn’t see the game to have any long-term value, they only arranged for a temporary license to have access to that soundtrack owned by series’ producer MWS/Fred Wolf Films. Seeing as the game was merely an unlockable in Battle Nexux, Konami decided it would be best to save cash and replace the classic licensed theme music and voice samples from the old series with generic “retro-ish” stand in fillers. This caused a dramatic backlash from the fanbase (the same treatment was later given to the game’s beloved sequel Turtles in Time). Ubisoft fortunately realized that the game’s late-80’s style Ninja Turtle soundtrack is a big part of what gives the game that nostalgic feel, and forked up the cash to release the game intact.
Old arcade brawlers offer countless cheap deaths, but when they come home, they loose a lot of their luster. In the arcade, the difficulty stems from having to insert a quarter every time a boss cheaply kills off your character after two hits. If you choose to go it alone in this version, the game nets you an unlimited amount of continues to play the game. Every time you die, just hit continue. This takes away the sense of impending doom as you see that stack of quarters you have reserved dwindle away as you progress into the game. Fortunately, if you play on Xbox Live the sense of pressure is preserved as you are only allowed 20 continues ($5 in quarters). You can die online, and wind up leaving your fellow co-op players to fend for themselves. That helps to preserve the old feeling of wanting to play more conservatively and retains some of the difficulty value by placing you on a virtual budget, but $5 is still a hell of a lot less than you would have likely spent to beat the game by yourself in 1989.
Let there be no doubt. This sucker is running pretty high of the nostalgia train. Anyone who isn’t a child of the 80’s (or early 90’s) may not quite understand what all the fuss is about. Those who are likely wet their pants the announcement (or when the news leaked). There is no middle ground here. Either you have fond memories of the game and love it to death, or you missed the boat and don’t have the nostalgic factor to back up the shallow gameplay. Gameplay is extremely simple. You’ve got a jump buttons, and an attack button. Mash both together to do a special attack. Use those two buttons to beat up endless hordes of foot ninjas and a few cheesy/cool bosses. That’s all there is. The game was never any fun alone, but when you get 4-players in a room or online, it’s almost impossible not to have fun, even if it only lasts for a short while (about an hour). Fortunately, that’s why the game is priced just right. At $5, you shouldn’t feel any hesitation to get online with a few friends to relive the glory days a few times while you laugh with, and perhaps even at the game cheesy style, goofy characters, and classic lines (“Duuh, who put the lights out?”). You might even earn some of the rather difficult achievements along the way.
Visually and audibly, this is as arcade perfect as ports come, but there are a couple of issues worth noting. When you boot the game up, you see an overlay on top of the game that shows you which of the four turtles correlates to each button on the 360 controller. That overlay is a necessity because the actual cabinet had no character select screen. There were four coin slots that correlated to each turtle.
Inserting a coin into your desired turtle’s slot was the equivalent of pressing start. Oddly though, the overlay never goes away until you start playing; obscuring the game’s attract mode. It would be nice if that faded after an allotted time. Also, when you see the intro screen where the Turtles leap off the rooftop to the burning building, the game almost always automatically cuts off the rest of the sequence right after Splinter speaks the muffled phrase Hang on April! for apparently no reason. Neither issue is a major deal, but they should be tended to with a patch in the future.
Lag plays an issue during online co-op. As long as your fellow players have at least over a 2/4 quality green bar connection, your co-op experience should be relatively lag free, but if you get stuck with some laggy players, you’re going to have some problems. The game’s sound is a direct (and completely faithful) emulation of the original Yahama FM arcade sound hardware, but it was not optimized for online play. That means every time your opponent lags out, the music and sound effects will be dragged down in speed with the rest of the game. This can cause the music to occasionally get jammed on one note, resulting in a horrific metallic screeching sound. As long as your opponents have relatively solid connections, this should pose little problem to you since the game’s simplicity isn’t likely to cause any strain on most people’s internet connections.
There is little strategy to the game. Attack in groups and try not to die before reaching Shredder. Even so, this has been one of the most requested and highly anticipated additions to the Xbox Live Arcade since the service’s inception. Just hearing the old TMNT theme song ought to bring a tear to the eye of any nostalgic gamer, and especially those who still have a Turtle Blimp in their closet. If you’re an old-school Turtles fan, pick this game up. $5 isn’t much to ask for a trip down memory lane. If you’ve never played the game before, you might still have some fun getting online to play the 4-player co-op for a quick brawl. You just won’t have as much fun as someone who remembers the game from the old days.
Knock a point off the score if you’re not a fan. This brawler exemplifies what arcade games used to be about: getting four smelly guys together to ninja flip generic grunts out the window of a burning building to rescue a news reporter with highly exaggerated breasts. Everything is still there but the body odor and the fresh pizza smell hanging in the air. At $5, this baby is definitely worth a purchase for fans, and even worth it for non-fans just to see what all the fuss was about.
