Do you remember the villain from Wayne’s World? The rich businessman that tried to buy the show out? He had a dream idea for a video game where the players would face a blob that they could not beat, but would put quarter after quarter into the machine looking for the key to success against this unstoppable pixilated menace. That more or less sums up arcade gaming in the late 80s/early 90s. Games were massively difficult and required players to inject quarter after quarter after quarter to make any kind of progress.
Amongst these vile ranks was Konami’s 1989 Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles arcade beat-em-up. Granted, it had the allure of being a game based a popular intellectual property that at least looked like the developers had respect for the franchise, for a change of pace. But me saying that reflects the standards of 1989. In 2009, I defy you to find a player that enjoys watching half their health wither away over a one-foot-tall robot dinosaur thingy’s mouse-trap bite.
So the story of the game follows this train of thought; April, the human mascot of the Ninja Turtles, gets kidnapped by Shredder. Turtles rescue her, only for Master Splinter to get kidnapped. Turtles rescue him, Turtles go to the Shredder’s lair because they find kidnapping a tired theme in video games. The technical merits of the game were considered radical if you asked a turtle of a California surfer. Back then, arcade machines were the only format allowed to push these kinds of graphics. In 2009, the sparse voice-clips, while fitting of the show (when was the last time someone threatened to make soup out of you?) are muffled. The still images between levels look like some hilariously bad MS Paint art, complete with considerably deformed Turtle heads.
So the gameplay goes like this; you hop in to a stage filled with foot clan soldiers. One button punches, the other jumps. You beat up some soldiers, soldiers beat up you, you run out of health and die a lot. The game is courteous enough to grant you unlimited continues; fortunate since I’ve spent about 5 times this game’s worth in virtual quarters as I did buying this on Xbox Live Arcade. If there’s any depth, it’s in trying to stick and move, pick your shots and then running. But these turtles live up to their ancestry in how slow and sluggish they can be in evading.
So this game is a sufferer of the Bioshock Syndrome; on virtue of having infinite lives, beating the game becomes less a test of skill than a grind. The game keeps tracks of your foot soldier kill-count, and I walked out of the experience having grinded through about 330 enemies. Some bosses have cheap attacks that interrupt your combo and chip your health away, causing you to die, continue again, hear a turtle scream “Cowabunga!” to celebrate their return, and die again. Repeat the voice clip playing again and again.
“Cowabunga!”
“Cowabunga!”
“Cowabunga!”
“Cowabunga!”
“Cowabunga!”
“Cowabunga!”
“Cowabunga!”
“Cowabunga!”
“Cowabunga!”
“Cowabunga!”
“Cowabunga!”
“Cowabunga!”
“Cowabunga!”
“Cowabunga!”
“Cowabunga!”
“Cowabunga!”
“Cowabunga!”
“Cowabunga!”
“Cowabunga!”
“Cowabunga!”
“Cowabunga!”
“Cowabunga!”
“Cowabunga!”
“Cowabunga!”
“Cowabunga!”
“Cowabunga!”
Over and over again the muffled Cowabungancity!
The proverbial turd in the turtle soup came for me at the end. I was applying the strategy of “give a few punches, die, “Cowabunga!”, repeat) against the Shredder whence I found that we had managed to land a double-down punch that defeated the both of us. The game should’ve been finished but the Continue screen appeared, and I was but unable to press start and get back into the action, left to count down as the “Continue?” bar counted down to oblivion. I was hence robbed an ending after the some 45 minutes of effort I had put into this repetitive mess.
It’s four players, it’s a meager 400 points on the Xbox Live Arcade, and it’s a chance for Turtles fans to feel acceptable again. But as a beat-em-up, other alternatives like the recent Watchmen game crack the shell and devour the insides of TMNT 1989. ‘tis another example of a game that has not aged well, a relic of a time when games were less about presenting an experience than about lightening the player’s wallet. Though I guess not too much has changed in that regard, am I right Wii Music?
2 1/2 stars
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