Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles IV – Turtles in Time on SNES Review

OK, hands up here those of us that can remember 1992? It might be a bit hard for some of us bearing in mind it’s heading back 17 years, so let me paint a picture of what my life was like back then, in a gaming sense of course.
To do that I have to bring in another big factor of my life at the time, which was the cell shaded awesomeness of cartoons. I’d sit on tenterhooks waiting for Batman: The Animated Series (re-run or fresh show), the Simpsons (when they were still genuinely funny) and those heroes in a half shell themselves, the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, unless of course you were British and they were downgraded to hero so as not to warp our fragile little minds.

These animations all have something in common, in that they spawned video games soon after becoming worldwide phenomena. When I read about the Turtles heading to the SNES after reading the shiny new copies of EGM and Gamepro (magazines from a time when the Internet sounded like a pop group, rather than what is it today folks. A long time ago indeed.)

TMNT: Turtles in Time was a part of one of my favorite genres, the side scrolling action game, made famous by such classics as Double Dragon and Final Fight. The bar until that point had only really been set to two players playing at the same time (although Konami had tried before with their title Crime Fighters, but it didn't have as much success). In this type of game, the object was simple, select a character and take on the world, as well as a few rough types… and their friends… and his dog. It was different to brawlers such as Street Fighter II because of a more simplistic control interface and the number of opponents faced at any one time.

Leonardo, Raphael, Michaelangelo and Donatello’s adventures were done over two arcade releases, with both staying in this brawling genre. The first home machine to get any shellshock action was the NES with 3 titles, which were the standard 2 arcade ports as well as a third that felt a little more like the generic tie-ins of the day (sadly the home computers got the bad one too.). By the time it had come to give us the delights of game number four, the Super Nintendo/Famicom was on our doorstep, so the graphics would certainly be an improvement, but what else would we get thrown in?
Before we go on, it’s worth saying that the Mega Drive was not left out of all this ninja action, as it received a rather strange hybrid in the form of TMNT: Hyperstone Heist. This was a mixture of levels from both the SNES and arcade games, but they were held together by a completely different storyline, not to mention they took away the ability to throw your enemies towards you, hitting the screen (bummer, dude).

For their day, the graphics were great and really accented the cartoon very well. Konami knew how to push the SNES hard, with games like Contra III, Probotector and of course Castlevania, so it was a department that the public expected a high level in the first place. They still look good today, considering this is a kick in the teeth off of two decades old.

Visually the console version remained faithful to both arcade game and TV show, but the audio was another matter altogether. The music was strongly linked to the series and held up well, but the voices were just never at the races. They were credited as being done by the cast of the animation itself, but I was never convinced (although it’s amazing what a few years and a new version of TMNT can do to your nostalgia… damn you 4Kids Network!!)

Turtles in Time (can’t abbreviate that) was known for being relentless in the unfair department. Not one enemy would wait their turn to leather into you like some games of the genre were programmed to. It was cheap shot after cheap shot as you were sitting there wondering why you asked generic enemy X to get that kink out of your shell because it was uneven. It might have infuriated a lot of us, but it in no way stopped TMNT 4 from being that one beautiful thing that stands above all others in what a game should be…. fun. At that age, it brought smiles to faces around the world and kids everywhere would desperately try and be the first to finish it.

Due to the power of the SNES it was never going to be an arcade perfect conversion, but it stayed close to it very well. The quality of the game shone through and the proof of that is that it still plays well today. It might have some little niggles, but what games don’t these days? We all got to relive these moments again with Ubisoft’s remake a while back, which brought the green group to the then current HD generation of power, but then when you do have a bit of retro pumping through your veins, sometimes the original is still the best and although I might personally prefer the more laid back, but perfectly balanced feel of Capcom’s Final Fight, it still doesn’t stop me from wanting kick some shell. COWABUNGA!!!!