You have to give Konami credit for one thing about these games. Ninja Turtles: Tournament Fighter had a different version for every system it was released on. As such, it was hard to pick one version and one version alone to mess with. So, I typed the game's title into a search engine and used the first version it pulled up, which was somehow the NES adaption. I don't know why, as most people who even knew there was yet another Turtles game out, and the fewer still that cared, didn't know there was an NES version. But I did. Painfully well. I remember being honestly excited over this game when it first game out. In my naive youth, I probably would have paid $50 for it, despite it being one of the last games for a dying platform, and it having roughly 700 better, cheaper games easily available.

The game starts off innocently enough with the Turtles receiving a mysterious letter. Surprise, surprise, it's the Shredder. He challenges the incredibly non ninja like reptiles to fight on the streets of Manhattan to see who is the most powerful. He of course adds, "Of course, you have no chance!" I don't remember it being directly stated, but he probably also kidnapped April O'Neal, too. She spent more time in the enemy's clutches than she does at her own apartment, which is probably a good thing since it caught fire in the arcade game. I feel sorry for her. She's forced to wear the kind of clothes usually used to identify and track community service workers, has four apparently sexless reptiles for boyfriends, and had to have her skin lightened to appear on TV.

So anyway, since Shredder well, exists, the Turtles have to beat him up and break his stuff. They accomplish this by beating each other to death, then two random characters who don't really fit into the storyline, then finally, the Tin Man himself. Even an inexperienced player's mucus can tell the four main characters are the same sprite with different colors. The whole team has two victory poses for the four of them, so you get two who triumphantly raise their fist, and two who do this weird little jig. The extra characters that the Konami crew plucked out of the action figure bin are Casey Jones, that mysterious sports-equipment-wielding stranger in the hockey mask, and Hot Head, some kind of a stupid dragon. His mysterious powers are basically limited to a programming glitch that won't let both players to choose him at once. The instruction manual explains it away as "the dragon spirit won't allow such a match to occur!" What that really means is they were too lazy to come up with an alternate color scheme. Shredder himself seems to be the bulked up version from that Vanilla Ice movie. I can't remember anything else about the film, except chanting "Go ninja go ninja, go! Go ninja go ninja, go!"

The game itself is as pleasant as that toxic-smelling bendy plastic the action figures were made of. Everything seems to happen in slow motion, and there's not a heck of a lot of balance. Casey Jones' projectile can take up most of the screen, and Raph's flying E. Honda Rip-off headbutt can be pulled off while blocking. Sometimes Splinter's head floats by and drops an item into the ring, letting you throw a wildly-bouncing projectile that seems as likely to kill you as the enemy. There are also only four backgrounds, not that it matters. It's just I never knew Manhattan was divided into four equally-sized districts, including a twenty-mile square open sewer and a pirate ship.

The most bizarre thing about thing game is the ability to make the computer fight against itself. You can set up a tournament mode of nothing but CPU characters, and you'll have to sit back and watch for a few hours as they fight each other. I can only assume the feature is there for gambling purposes.

A story of star crossed lovers, set against a backdrop of gang war... can be found in another game. Sorry.

No matter what the original black and white artists' goals may have been starting out, in the end, TMNT was about selling out. Completely and thoroughly. In fact, I think the only thing with more merchandising than that was Batman. They've released at least a hundred variants on the same molded-rubber wearing playboy. Which, when you think about it, makes Bruce Wayne a great match for Barbie and her seemingly bottomless purse. The Turtles' spending habits made even less sense. For users of the 'arts of invisibility,' they were very fond of neon clothing and custom turtle-shaped vehicles with their own dang LOGO painted on them. The bright yellow van was once thing, but these guys has a gigantic blimp they'd float over the city in. And where exactly were they keeping their vehicles anyway? You'd figure that even deflated, the blimp would cut the sewers off to half of Manhattan. Their arch nemesis Shredder wasn't exactly a smart spender either. He has an army of throwaway Foot androids, apparently several large laboratories for synthesizing the green slime he used as pet food, and best of all, an enormous, burrowing mobile fortress armed to the teeth. Wouldn't it have been easier to use his unlimited funding to buy the stupid city? It would save him a few beatings and he wouldn't have to be room mates with a talking brain from another dimension. I have a feeling the sight of a moronic looking robot in briefs and suspenders with a brain in its stomach morning after morning probably led to his REALLY insane days where he was trying to conquer the world by turning his human enemies into superpowered mutants. Maybe he just liked getting pummeled. These million-dollar failures at the heart of the series begin to make a baseball bat-swinging justice freak in a Jason mask look cool.

So, that's the last NES Ninja Turtle game. If only they'd chosen to leave gracefully with TMNT III: The Manhattan Project.

RATINGS ON THE HALF SHELL
Graphics: 2 Excusing the fact half of the cast were repaints, there wasn't much attractive about this game. And the Pirate Ship stage confused me even more.
Sound: 2 It kind of sounds like a lot of Konami games, but the music isn't enjoyable at all and it's just plain weird to hear the Contra death noise when you defeat someone.
Gameplay: 1 The NES just can't seem to handle fighting games. Sure, they can do a platform game with a dozen onscreen enemies, but when it's one on one, it feels like slow motion.
Overall: 2 Rent it if you find it, and it's the only thing there, and even then you might want to consider renting one of the movies instead.
Bonus: +1 I have to give them some credit after TMNT II for not sticking Pizza Hut signs all over the background.

"I'll get you next time! But of course, you don't really stand a chance!! Ha ha ha ha ha."

...SHREDDER.