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Be prepared to spend some time on this one.

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 0 / 0
Date: January 24, 2008
Author: Amazon User

Let me start by saying that I grew up in the age of the NES. I got my Nintendo when I was 9 years old, and my brother and I would play all the time. Anybody who was growing up with me knows that games were hella expensive back then. It was easily $60 to buy a new game, and $6 to rent one for two nights. There was no more sickening feeling than saving all your allowance for months, finally bugging your parents into driving you to Child World, shelling out approximately 120 Fun Dip's worth of cash, and then beating your new game that same night. You felt cheated.

TMNT never cheated anybody. I don't think I had cleared the seaweed in the second stage by the end of my first week. It was a game that got more challenging as you progressed. It was a game that required that you develop strategies and skills. It was a game that was difficult as hell, but winable in one sitting, unlike some other saveless cartridges (Blaster Master, I'm looking in your direction.)

I was obsessed with this game for about 6 months as a kid, and I still dust it off from time to time. If you're the type of person who likes to buy a game, look up the walkthrough and cheat codes on GameFAQs, beat it in an hour and then shuffle your diminished attention span to the next distraction, never play this game. Ever. It will only make you cry. If you're the type of person who focuses on one game at a time and doesn't expect everything to be easy, give it a shot. There aren't any fancy 3D spinning, flashing graphics, you won't be able to tell what more than 5% of the enemies actually are, and there will be multiple points that you will feel aren't remotely fair at first, but all in all it is the most engrossing and enjoyable platform game I have ever played.

Difficult, but fun!!!

3 Rating: 3, Useful: 0 / 0
Date: December 01, 2007
Author: Amazon User

I first played this game in 1990, when I was 6 years old (ok, I was one year late, but we rented games and tried them out before we go out and spend $50+ on them). I was a big Turtles fan, so I did'nt care. It was fun selecting different Turtles (who varied in speed, damage in Turtle weapons, and range in Turtle weapons), and picking up and using different ninja weapons such as boomerangs, shierikens, and TNT (best weapon), other than your main weapons. Graphics (for its time) were awesome and so was the music score and the controls. I love that. I only gave this game three stars because I do have 3 major complaints about the game.

-1. It was way too difficult. Even with your Nintendo Power Strategy Guide, you had to play this game 50 times to master beating it. I think this game went beyond the levels of difficulty such as how easy it was for the Turtle to die and the random changing groups of enemies throughout the game (making it hard for you to strategize your attack or moves). Even though it had some of the dark elements from the comics, the game was suppose to be for kids so there was no reason for the high levels of difficulty.
-2 Choice of characters was my main problem with this game. The cartoon series was already on their second seaon when they were designing this game. I sense that they were trying to mix in the cartoon series (Bebop, Rocksteady, and The Technodrome) with adding more elements of the darker comics, but when the hell were flying missle balloons, flying robot heads, chainsaw guy, frog man, fireman, butterflies, MechaTurtle and flying astronauts appear in the ninja turtles universe?!? How uncreative!There were alot of Ninja Turtle enemies to choose from, but omitting Krang really took the cake. It was great fighting the moving Techonodrome, but there would be NO TECHNODROME without Krang! I don't think they did the proper marketing research before making and releasing this game.
-3 You don't hear the Ninja Turtles theme music anywhere in the game. What copyright contraints were the developers under!? As a child, I was confused.

Other than the three complaints, the game was playable and it would be much better to use game genie to beat it. I know its cheating, but its more fun that way and it was the only way I was able to beat the game. Although this game was a hit, Ultra/Konami knew they messed up a bit and responded by improving the game play and character selection on the future TMNT titles plus targeting them more for kids because kids were the large fanbase of TMNT.

I Think I've Given Up

3 Rating: 3, Useful: 0 / 0
Date: July 11, 2007
Author: Amazon User

When I played this game as a kid, I was able to pass level 2, the water level, two times at the most. I figured trying the game again 15 years later with more improved game skills and a walkthrough just MIGHT enable me to beat it. Now I'm thinking there's just no way. I've beaten the original Super Mario Brothers, Pilotwings, Zelda 2, Mike Tyson's Punch-Out, Jurassic Park on SNES, and other extremely challenging games, but this one is just too much.

Still, I'm not all that disappointed. I mean, I'm able to get through level 2 at almost any time now, and I actually made it all the way to level 4. So at least I can do better now than I did 15 years ago, and that's why I bought the game. To see how far I've come.

But I'm not going to make it all the way to finishing the game. It's too difficult. There is NO room for error. None. I've never seen a game where you had to be so accurate with your jumps. I mean you have to actually watch how hard you press the button. If you just barely tap it too hard or too soft, you'll miss your jump. Also, you can't be too far on or off the platform you're jumping from. You've got to press the button at JUST the right second and with JUST the right amount of force as you walk off the platform. And when you miss a jump, you have to fight a whole swarm of enemies you just killed yet another time before you get a chance to try the jump again. This wouldn't be so bad if there were a way to actually master jumping in this game. But there's not. You could try the same jump 3,000 times, and after all that, you'd still be very likely to miss your next attempt, even after all that practice.

For the past few days, I kept getting further and further along in the game every time I played, but I think I've finally had enough. I reached this part where spiked walls come at me, and all I have to do is drop down holes to avoid them. But I lost ALL FOUR of my turtles to those spikes. If the spikes touch you once you're dead. And the holes to drop down are way too easy to walk over because you have to be so darn accurate with how much force you use to tap the control pad. Of course, the spikes move fast enough so that if your timing isn't freakin perfect, you're dead. If you walk over a hole by accident, forget it, the spikes are going to get you. And if you try to be careful so you don't walk over the holes, you won't move fast enough to drop down in time, and you'll die anyway. The lack of room for error is just so frustrating, and its present at so many points in the game. You just get sick of trying to beat it.

And just because I can beat the water level now doesn't mean I can't complain about it. I mean shoot, even when you're WAY far away from the instant death seaweed, the stuff pulls you down like a magnet. And if you try to swim off the top of the screen to deactivate a bomb above, you're pulled down before you reach the top. This drains a whole lot of the miniscule time you have to complete the level. If you waste even 10 seconds fighting this kind of magnetic effect, you've lost so much time that you'll have to just swim through all the dangerous stuff in the level and take loads of damage in order to beat the time limit. Again, the slightest error is completely devestating.

It's easier to get a PHD in quantum physics than it is to beat this game. Gosh, it's depressing. But it has some great graphics and sound at least.

(Update - 7/14/07 Okay, I actually, by some miracle, got all the way to the inside of the technodrome; after getting through all the random BS where you have to hunt for it. Unfortunately all that hunting drained the heck out of my life, and I died shortly after entering the final level.)

Bad!!

1 Rating: 1, Useful: 1 / 1
Date: June 27, 2007
Author: Amazon User

I had this game as a kid and I rarely played it, now that I'm older I realize why.

Not only is the game insanely ugly, it's also redicolously hard!
Take Raphael, he can't hit his weapon anywhere, it has a range of a millimeter.
The only turtle that was somewhat usuable was the Leonardo, because his sword actually could reach certain things.
The turtles also jumps insanely high, it's hard to stay out of flying monsters reach.

I remember last time I played it, I had very little health left, so I went into a place to pick up pizza that refilled the health points fully.
When I got back out, I had less than what I went in with.
The game is so hard and annoying.

A Horribly Designed Game

1 Rating: 1, Useful: 1 / 1
Date: April 13, 2007
Author: Amazon User

As a kid, I actually somewhat enjoyed this game. It came to Nintendo's virtual console, so I decided why not download it for a change? After all, in the late 80's early 90's I really enjoyed this game. It was really something to have. Years later it's apparent of two things: The game was horribly designed, and it CAN'T stand the test of time. The fact that on Nintendo's VC it's also a dollar more than the other NES games is also questioning. It's hard to make a game this bad.

If you were a fan of the Turtles a long time ago back in the early 90's the first thing you'll notice about the game is that it hardly has anything to do with the show at all outside of some of the major characters. Outside of that there are no foot soldiers, and most of the enemies you encounter you never saw in the show in the first place. You will come across Bebop and Rocksteady but none of the other enemies were actually ever in the show in the first place. Kind of daunting.

What really makes the game horrible, however, lies within the gameplay. Firstly, the turtles themselves are unbalanced and put to unfair use. You can switch between any of the turtles at a time, but for the most part, only one of them is of any use to getting you through the adventure. Michaelangelo and Raphael are completely useless, as their weapons lack to the range to actually do anything. Leonardo is alright, but Donatello is the only real useful one here, as he's the only one who can attack downward and at a range. More than likely you'll only want to use the other three to sacrifice so that Donatello can do some beating up on enemies.

The way the levels are designed is also horrendous. You basically walk around an overworld map and go into sewers, warehouses and whatnot. The problem is that you never know where to go next. This non-linear style wouldn't be so bad if there weren't so many blasted dead ends. To make the experience even more grueling, the game is just FULL of enemies that will respawn almost the second you turn around. You could go through a tough warehouse fighting tons of tough enemies, only to find you can't go any further. So now you'll have to backtrack and you may have to fight all those enemies again. So if you don't lose a turtle getting to a dead end, you'll probably lose him getting from it.

The game isn't really difficult, it's just unfair and frustrating. The fact that two of your four players are completely useless tells you something. The later turtles games were far better than this. Skip the first Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles game. It's so unfair that the experience is frustrating. Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles II and III were far better, and there's still no turtles game that beats the all time best: Turtles IV: Turtles in Time. If you need a classic Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles fix, the first Turtles game on the NES isn't going to do it.

One of those games impossible to beat without a game-genie

3 Rating: 3, Useful: 2 / 4
Date: July 10, 2006
Author: Amazon User

This game was one of the 2 very first games I got when I first got my NES back in the 17th century. I was never able to get past the 3rd level. I tried for years to advance, but when you lose all your lives you have to restart all over again and I don't think anyone had the patience to do it again... once the SNES came into play this game became a forgotten classic.

Now, 2 million light years since then, I recently found myself playing it again on the PC (emulator + rom) and decided it was a part of my past that was left opened that I had to complete to regain feeling in my left nut again.

I played it for about 5 mins and thought "#### this" so I looked for some Game Genie codes to stay invincible and stuff and I have actually managed to beat this game! So it is possible, and it's even still hard to beat when you are invincible... if you have ever beaten this game without cheating, then my hats off to you and a quick flip off and congratulations.

Looking at it now, It makes me wonder if the game was actually meant to be a TMNT game or if the developers where just keen to cash in on the name and just added the TMNT to a game already being developed. I wonder that because the game really has nothing at all to do with the TMNT's unless it was based off the comics, which I highly doubt. There are some familiar faces like the four turtles, April and Splinter, and the villains, Bebop, Rock steady, Mousers and about a million Rat Kings who wasn't even really a villain in the series. But then there is about 1000 different enemies that are not related to anything ever seen in the series, such as bulldozers, men of fire, walking eyeballs, balloons that drop bombs, weird pink spiders... I guess they could say the forces of Dimension X where at play, but there is no mention of it in the game. Krangs not in it, but there are bad guys that sort of look like that small Chicken walker thing he had.

It just makes me wonder if this game was being developed as something else and then they decided, "hey, lets put the TMNT into this thing" Once you defeat the Techno drome that is one 8th the size of the cartoon one, you can fight off shredder and then reach one of those quick endings that basically say, "well, all that hard work was a waste of time, thanks for playing" in fact the end is a joke, I wont spoil it, give an emulator with game genie codes active a go and see for yourself if you're curious... it was lame, lame, lame... probably lasted 8 seconds.

This might've been where it started, but I prefer the Arcade version over any of them.

Strange

3 Rating: 3, Useful: 0 / 3
Date: August 02, 2005
Author: Amazon User

I bought this game back when it was new many, many years ago. My brother and I loved it- the action, the work, everything. But we never beat it. Fast forward to modern day, I played it using NESticle the nintendo emulator, and finally managed to figure out how to get past level 3. But even then, a few levels later, even manipulating the emulator- I still can't beat it! Now look. I'm a good gamer. I like hard games, games that made you really learn how to properly play the game and properly use the characters. I appreciate that in a game. I like it when a game is difficult not just by making more badguys and having them stronger and you weaker, but by making the effort to be genuinly challenging. But this game was just too danged hard. Sorry but there it is. Graphics were amazingly good back in the day. Storyline? Weak at best. Actually, I still am not 100% sure about it. It doesn't folow either the comics or the cartoon, and I have no idea where they pulled most these enemies from. Seriously there are some freaky acid-induced badguys in this game. And there are no hints about where to go or what to do (the "hint" on the pause screen usually consists of April saying "You can do it!" which is useless). Don't just buy it because you like the turtles. Is it worth a dollar? Yea. But I wish I hadn't paid full price for it even back in the day. And in 15 years or whenever it came out, I have not heard of a single perosn beating it, and it's been mostly forgotten by now.

Classic

4 Rating: 4, Useful: 9 / 9
Date: May 25, 2003
Author: Amazon User

The original Ninja Turtles was a lot different from its sequels; instead of the arcade action, this was a platform sidescrolling adventure which occassionally transitioned to overhead map views and cruising around in the turtle van.

THE GOOD
It was fun, of course. You got to change your turtle within a mission and select different weapons that you collect along the way. The music was good, especially when considering the time period of this game. Some might this as a burden, but I enjoyed its difficulty. As I've said in my other reviews, this game was made back in the day when NES games kicked your [...] and forced you to defeat it on its own terms. When comparing this to the much easier 2,3, and 4, I enjoyed this much better (but I still like the others for their multiplayer ability, don't get me wrong).

THE BAD
While this was difficult and I enjoyed it, there were some things that do place a detriment to the game. The turtles are uneven in their abilities. Leonardo has a long reach, but is the weakest of the four (why do that to my favorite turtle?!). Mikey is not much better than Leo in terms of weapon power. Raphael is good for his fast attacks despite his up-close range. Donatello pretty much defeats all of them because he is the strongest AND has the farthest reach. You could beat this game on him alone.

If you're a fan of the Old School NES, you will no doubt enjoy this game (or perhaps just a fan of the Ninja Turtles in general). It's a good platform game that is unique in comparison to the sequels that followed. Today's gamers will no doubt turn away from it because of its dated graphics (which aren't bad, especially considering the time period) and its more difficult levels.

"It's too hard!"
Well, I suggest you try harder. This game doesn't spoonfeed you; it's a difficult adventure. So strap on some turtle shells (and even a game genie if you want it) and some weaponry and engage yourself in a classic game.

Sorta fun but really difficult

4 Rating: 4, Useful: 1 / 4
Date: November 20, 2002
Author: Amazon User

This game seems like a fun normal game.Until you get the turtle van.Then it just pumps it up like crazy.I have never beati'n this game and have never known anyone who has beat'n this game.Note this is a ok buy if its 40 cents through 1.00 dolar

Sorta fun but really difficult

4 Rating: 4, Useful: 1 / 3
Date: November 20, 2002
Author: Amazon User

This game seems like a fun normal game.Until you get the turtle van.Then it just pumps it up like crazy.I have never beati'n this game and have never known anyone who has beat'n this game.Note this is a ok buy....

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