This hazy near-autumn morning brings with it a single new Virtual Console review: TMNT, aka “That cartoon franchise you’re inexplicably fond of despite not actually liking anything it’s created.” Or maybe that’s just me.
It also brings with it a new promo link style as part of my ongoing effort to improve the appearance of the site without actually putting any real effort into it. Oh, and it also brings my landlord and a plumber, knocking at our door way too early on a Saturday morning. Thanks for repairing the hot water pressure, but zzzzzz.
I had to read the post twice to understand which category the landlord comment fit best. Apparently, it’s “Things broughten by this hazy near-autumn morning”.
Was the plumber’s name Mario? Did he wear a red cap? If so, I could care.
No, my upstairs neighbor is Mario. Minus the red hat. The plumber was some Chinese guy, because everyone who owns property in this part of SF is Chinese and they tend to be most comfortable dealing with people who can also speak Chinese.
From ’89 to the end of the NES’ life, Konami was fond of making games with hot swappable character. These include TMNT, Tiny Tunes, and Bucky O Hare. The also added it to existing franchises like Castlevania (3), and Contra (Force). I am most likely missing some other examples. This feature was dropped in future SNES sequels. This was most likely due to a shortage of cart space, or the difficulty of creating additional reasonably balanced characters with the complexity shown in games like Castlevania 4 (huge sprite, 8-way whip with crazy dangling), and Buster Busts Loose (very animated character, increased moveset). I think Contra Force was a fake Contra anyways. Nowadays the closest we get is Donkey Kong 64 and Killer 7. Maybe Brute Force did this? Never played it.
Sweet Lord, man! TWO negative opinions in less than a week? Are you trying to destroy the Internet?
I remember that game. A friend who was slightly older than me had it, or a port of it. But I never saw that much of it because when we fought the first Foot solder we always panicked and were killed in a few seconds. I’m going to believe all the stories I hear about the difficulty.
On TMNT in general I never much cared about the series until TMNT 2003, which is made of win and set the high bar for cartoon revivals.
…the Turtles are obscure?
Great, so I’ve been wrong about what “obscure” means all these years. Damn you, Merriam-Webster!
–LBD “Nytetrayn”
Yeah, I guess it can be hard to convey sarcasm in the written word.
…Or to the thick?
Considering how hard many NES games were, I think we were more prepared to ingest this kind of frustration back in the day. It’s hard to recommend any of the NES TMNT games nowadays, but hey, I still love Turtles in Time :)
That’s because Turtles in Time is still pretty good.
“It’s hard to recommend any of the NES TMNT games nowadays.”
Yeah, I think about the easiest one to recommend nowadays is TMNT II: The Arcade Game (I never played any of the NES ones after that one).
The third NES one is the best, I think, not counting Turtles in Time. The arcade adaptation was fun and all but the complete lack of difference between the Turtles made it kind of a slow, samey drag in the end. As for the original game, everyone rants about the challenge of the swimming level, but with a bit of memorization it’s not that bad. The third level, on the other hand, is completely impossible as far as I can tell.
I could never get past the timed underwater level. Also, yeah, the enemies in this game were pretty weird–we had a theory once that this was originally some unrelated game with a TMNT license thrown on, but apparently not. I don’t think fidelity to the source (or much of anything) was a major concern back then.
I agree that the made up enemies are a little off-putting, but without a little free license, you would have been fighting wave after wave of foot soldiers and mousers. Maybe I’m forgetting something. I don’t revisit these middle-school memories often. Yuck.
Took me awhile to get the “cool but rude” headline. The Raphael in the new 4Kids TMNT cartoons is just rude, though. No more silly jokes.