Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles & TMNT – Game Boy Advance
Where are all the 32-bit Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle games?
This review started with a really simple question… Where are all the 32-bit Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle games? I was hoping to uncover something terrible on the Nintendo 64 or Sony Playstation, what I found instead were some of my (now) favourite Ninja Turtle games for the Game Boy Advance.
For the review, I checked out two games. Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles made by Konami in 2003 and then, Ubisoft’s TMNT game made to tie-into the 2007 movie. It was interesting to compare how the franchise was handled on the Game Boy Advance across two developers, a cartoon series and a feature-length movie.
It was also pretty exciting watching the Ninja Turtles come out of their ‘live-action’ phase in the late 90’s to get an animated series again in 2003. Even though most of the kids who grew up with the original Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles cartoons weren’t the audience anymore, it felt like a great come back for the Ninja Turtles and opened them for a whole new generation… And man they look slick.
Konami tackled the Ninja Turtles 2003 cartoon series for consoles and handhelds, the first Ninja Turtles game since Tournament Fighters on the Sega Mega Drive and Super Nintendo. The Gamecube got the Turtles as a 3D beat ’em up but in all honesty, I saw a chance on the Game Boy Advance to play and focus on an awesome side-scrolling action-platformer that looks like it belongs on the Super Nintendo. It’s got a great, bright, animated style to it, plenty of thugs, ninjas and eventually monsters and a giant mouser.
Broken into four chapters, each Turtle completes one part of the story. Each chapter is broken down further into four stages with three stages being the classic side-scrolling action-platforming, beating up thugs and moving to the right side of the screen. For one stage in each chapter, you find yourself boarding down a sewer pipe, racing on a motorbike or flying a glider
It’s not all good news for Konami’s Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles game. My two main issues with the game are;
- Cliff-hanger ending to make you watch Season Two of the show
- Prize for winning is a password for Gamecube game
Overall, I really enjoyed the game, I can’t help but feel it started to fall apart towards the end. I have attempted to play the second Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles game by Konami on the Game Boy Advance, Battle Nexus, but the first few stages felt slower and overall, I wasn’t hooked like the first one, so I’ve omitted it from this review… Maybe Battle Nexus answers some questions from the first games cliff-hanger? Maybe it just gets better halfway through? Maybe it didn’t matter because I wanted to check out what Ubisoft were doing with TMNT more? Hardcore Gaming 101 is a great source for all the information I don’t provide.
Even though I really enjoyed Konami’s take on the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles and I feel they had a better cartoon series to draw inspiration from, Ubisoft blew me away with a really slick beat ’em up for the Game Boy Advance that was just a blast to play.
Not exactly breaking new ground with a Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle beat ’em up video game, but considering how often games felt ‘scaled back’ for a handheld, TMNT didn’t feel like a shallow beat ’em up. Incorporating weapons, power-ups, an upgrade system and the ability to level up, this didn’t feel like a lazy movie tie-in and one of my bigger issues is this had to be tied into a movie at all. I’d love to see the Ninja Turtles get this kind of treatment with an original plot and some more memorable villains.
It’s difficult to recommend a beat ’em up that’s strictly solo play due to the fact it’s a handheld but the ability to call on other turtles certainly helps. TMNT also offers a small handful of mini-games (throw boxes at Shredder, deflect ninja stars) as well as a shopping area where you can purchase upgrades. These are all great additions but they start to highlight how short the game really is. If you don’t stick to one Ninja Turtle, you won’t get enough time playing as them to level them up far. Raphael also gets too many of his own stages which again means, less opportunities to level up other characters. I’m only noticing these problems because it’s a fun game, but it’s a shame we never got to see a follow-up to this game specifically.
After TMNT on the Game Boy Advance, it’s interesting to note that Ubisoft tackled the beat ’em up formula again with Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Arcade Attack on the Nintendo DS. I had really high hopes, considering the hardware and the fact this game wasn’t constrained by the movie license but I feel that because TMNT on the Game Boy Advance wasn’t in the spotlight, considering the Nintendo DS was already out for 3 years, there was a larger opportunity for some creative freedom.
There was a time I was a little excited to check out what the Nintendo Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles game was going to bring to the 3DS. I envisioned a gritty beat ’em up and I guess that’s what Activision delivered for the most part but like Arcade Attack before it, the 3D beat ’em up had a hard time delivering a good, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle experience (Disclaimer: Haven’t played it yet, this is according to reviews and watching the game play).
Coming out of a long slump in the 90’s, it’s great to see the Turtles back. Even though I don’t feel like there’s the same kind of excitement after the original animated series, there wasn’t the high expectations either. It was great to find some classic-feeling, turtle action hiding on the humble Game Boy Advance.
