Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles

The "heroes in a half-shell" make their video game appearance courtesy of Ultra! In this adaptation of the comic book cult figures, you control the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles on a battle against an evil assortment of nasties. Power-up with pizza and map your progress in the overhead areas. TMNT combines side-scrolling action sequences with adventure overtones and even enables you to control all four of the fearless turtles in different ways.

Yo, dudes and dudettes! Michelangelo here, typing away with all six fingers on my trusty word processor. The radical folks offered me a year's supply of pizza if I would review our latest adventure for the Game Boy. I'm not stoked about typing, but hey, I'll do anything for pizza!! (Cowabunga!!)

April Goes AWOL!

Konami's Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles is an awesome game that lets you take each one of your four favorite turtles on an adventure to rescue our friend April who has been kidnapped by that gnarly Shredder dude. The game has five really rad stages with three levels per stage.. .so that's like 15 different levels in all. (And like I didn't even use a calculator to figure that out!) At the end of each stage is one of Shredder's main goons, who's really tough to squash. (Don't worry, they just look tough!)

At the beginning of each game, you get to choose between us four turtles (pick me! pick me!) and our respective weapons: Leonardo with his swords, Donatello and his bo stick, Raphael with his sais, and yours truly with his nunchuks! In addition to your weapon, you also get an unlimited supply of ninja throwing stars! (Rad!)

You start with eight hit points, but lose a point each time you get zapped by one of Shredder's creepos or their weapons (Bummer!). Not to worry though, you can always recharge by eating pizza slices and whole pizzas pies that randomly pop up along the way! (Yum!)

But, if you lose all your hit points, then that Turtle becomes a prisoner of Shredder and his Foot Clan. Then you have to choose from the remaining Turtles and continue from where you were caught. Now you have to rescue not only April, but all your captured fellow Turtles! (Double Bummer!)

Searching High and Low

This game wings you through the streets of the big city, into the sewers below, out on the freeways, through a piranha-infested river, and ail the way to the heart of the Technodrome itself!

The graphics and animation are the best I've ever seen on the Game Boy! You'll actually feel like you're sloshing through a river or jumping over the roofs of speeding cars on the freeway!

And I bet you'll lose your karma over the totally tubular tunes, including our awesome theme song!

Goons Galore

Fans of our arcade game will freak when they recognize the same ugly boffos on their Game Boy screen. They're all there: Foot Clan stooges, Mousers, Electrodroids, plus intense bosses like that Rhino and Bug-Eyed Dude!

You'll also have to watch out for new nasties like fireballs, attack bugs, and these monstrous boulders trying to turn you into instant pancakes. (But hey, they're no problem for expert martial experts like us!) They come at you pretty fast and there's a lot of them, but pay attention to their patterns and you can wipe them out without breaking a sweat!

The Last Honest Pizza

Trust me on this one you guys, you're gonna love Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles on the Game Boy! Even after you've finished the game, you'll want to play it again and again just for the fun of it. I'd like to rap some more with ya, but the pizza delivery dude is at the door, and I want to get to them before the other guys do! (Sometimes they're more like pigs than turtles you know!)

HEROES IN THE HALF SHELL...!

Our favorite pizza gobblers are back in black and white in an all new adventure! April has been kidnapped by Shredder and you must fight your way through 5 perilous levels of action taking on all of Shredder's famous henchmen including Be Bop, Rock Steady, Krang and Baxter Stockman. Your quest takes you through the streets of New York, down into the sewers and ending in Shredder's hideout inside the Technodrome!

Hot from the comics come Leonardo, Raphael, Michelangelo and Donatello, better known as the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. This time around, their good friend, April, has been abducted by Shredder, described as ".. .a Slice-O-Matic crum, a villain more vicious than an army of mind-altered Bruce Lees".

After rescuing April, the Turtles must continue on their original mission, battling their way through to the Technodrome, where they must emerge victorious with Shredder's life transformer gun in their hands.. .uh.. .paws.. .uh.. .feet.

That's right, folks. The long-awaited Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles video game has arrived. This is your chance to guide these comic-book heroes through five tough levels of karate action. You can choose to play any one of the four Turtles (you can switch between them during play), each of which has his own good and bad points. Raphael's weapon, the sai, is fast but has a short range; Michelangelo's nunchukus work well with smaller enemies; Donatello is a marvelous fighter but is the slowest of the Turtles; and Leonardo balances attack power with good mobility, making him the most well-rounded of the Turtles.

Pizza, the Turtles's main source of nourishment (did I hear somebody's stomach growl?), can be found throughout New York. Sometimes only a single slice is available, sometimes an entire pizza. Each slice of pizza consumed restores a portion of a Turtle's life. In this way, you can bring back into battle any Turtles that have become too weak to fight However, care must be taken not to let a Turtle die. Once his life meter reaches zero, all the pizza in Sicily will do him no good.

Many other items that will help the Turtles along can also be found, including anti-Foot Clan missiles, ropes, boomerangs and shuriken. If you're very lucky, you'll be awarded temporary invincibility, giving you a chance to really wreak some havoc on Shredder and his buddies.

The scenes you must battle through come in a variety of types. Initially you begin on the streets of New York, shown in an overhead view. Open manholes provide access to the city's sewers wherein you will find myriad enemies. The goal here is to find the quickest route to April and defeat her captor. In Scene 2, you leap into the Hudson River, where you must swim past deadly seaweed and electric force fields in order to deactivate eight bombs before the timer runs out. Other scenes include Wall Street, JFK International Airport, Shredder's base and, of course, the Technodrome.

During your mission you'll come across plenty of Shredder's partners in crime: Fire Freak, Roof Leaper, Big Mouser, Mecaturtle, Bebop and Rocksteady. Thanks to the abundance of these enemies, the action in Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles is fast and furious. You'll rarely get a moment's rest as you battle your way toward the life transformer gun and your final showdown with Shredder.

The graphics are crisp and well detailed and provide a good variety of scenes. The game control is smooth and responsive, with only an occasional sluggishness when there are many enemies on the screen at the same time (a problem that seems to crop up in a good many games for the NES).

Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles's many diverse locales will provide hours of entertaining arcade action. From the streets of New York to the sewers below the city to the barricades of Wall Street to the bomb-ridden airfield, you'll find plenty to challenge you and enough variety to keep the game fresh for a long time.

Whether or not you're a fan of these comic sensations, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles belongs in your NES game collection. It's a playable contest that'll keep you enthralled for many an evening.

Oh, by the way, would you please pass the pizza?

Ultragames has lifted the lid on the hottest rock'em, sock'em video game ever to grace the sewers, as the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles track New York's nastiest to the front door of your Nintendo.

With these dynamic dudes at your disposal, rampage from the Bronx to Broadway slashing and smashing carnivorous robots with Katana Blades and Nunchukus. Then go cruisin' for a bruisin' in a pizza powered party wagon loaded with Anti-Foot Clan Missiles, until you capture Shredder's Life Support Gun and turn your rat friend Splinter back into the man he used to be.

So team up with the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles and prepare to shell out some punishment.

Our favorite pizza gobblers are back, and now on the small screen in glorious black and white. April has gotten herself kidnapped again and it's up to the half-shells to dethrone Be Bop, Rock Steady, Krang and all the other forces of evil who are loyal to Shredder! The journey takes you through New York City traffic jams, down into the sewers and into the Technodrome, where Shredder himself awaits our buddies.

Probably everyone in America under age 12 is familiar with the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. In case you're not, they are a quartet of genetically altered turtles, each named after an Italian Renaissance artist. The Turtles live on pizza, love to party, and are martial-arts experts. In the four years since they first appeared in a cheaply printed black-and-white comic book, these heroes in the half-shell have become a major industry. You can buy Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles t-shirts and toy figures, and they've even got their own syndicated cartoon show.

Nintendo spin-offs of other popular TV shows and movies generally haven't ranked among the best Nintendo titles. Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, however, is good news for Nintendo fans: It's a first-class game.

As play begins, the Turtles have just learned that their human friend April has been kidnapped. She's now in the clutches of their worst enemy, Shredder. They must rescue April as soon as possible, before Shredder brainwashes her into joining his evil Ninjitsu Clan. In addition, they must locate Shredder's Life Transformer Gun so they can transform their mentor, Splinter, from a rodent back into a human being.

From this elaborate beginning, Teenage Mutant Ninja T urtles forges ahead with nonstop action. The game progresses through the streets and sewers of New York City, and eventually leads the Turtles to a showdown at John F. Kennedy International Airport.

You have control over all four Turtles, but not all at once. Throughout the game, you must transfer control from Turtle to Turtle, depending on the situation and what special skills are needed to succeed.

Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles is a great game, but a hard one. There is no password feature, so when you run out of lives, you have to start over at the beginning. (Yes, there are a couple of continue options — but selecting them causes you to lose all accumulated powers and bonuses, so you might as well start over.) The crisp, sometimes rather witty graphics add to the game's appeal.

If difficult games don't daunt you, and if you really like the Turtles, you'll probably love Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles.