Old School Game of the Week: Turtles In Time

One game, two different and equally great ways to play. Turtles In Time was the sequel to Konami's killer 4-Player arcade button masher Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. TMNT was so hot then, and this was without a doubt the best game to come out of that craze. Even a novice game player could walk up to the machine and figure out what to do. Your joystick moved you around in 8 directions, and you had a jump and an attack button. Press them together and each Turtle would do some kind of special attack like a spinning slash or kick. This upgrade of the older TMNT game engine also let you do a running dash but pressing forward twice where you could then ram into an enemy or do some kind of forward flip over them. You could also now throw enemies AT the screen for a cheap early 3D mode-7 effect. Enemies included dozens of Foot soldier variations, mousers, dinosaurs, stone warriors, and more goddamn mutants. With and enough skills in jump kicks and nunchucks (or an afternoon to kill and a roll of quarters), you were sure to see the ending. But not all of us were blessed with the ability to roll into the arcade and beat the game in one sitting, so Konami did the cool thing and gave us a near perfect port for the new Super NES system. I call it near perfect because it didn't feature 4-Player support... but they did toss in several new levels and bosses, which more than made up for it. This F.A.Q. excellently documents the changes. I admit to being kinda mad that Cement Man and Shredder were ommited completely, even if replace by better bosses. Why couldn't there be a Shedder fight before Super Shredder? Oh well. At least we got Bebop and Rocksteady. Super NES carts weren't exactly cheap (I remember dropping at least $60 in x-mas money for Turtles In Time), but the replay value was great for a pick-up-and-play-as-a-ninja-turtle game. There were several levels of difficulty, some better control options (like mapping the special attack to a seperate button), a kinda worthless VS game, and a Time trial mode where you had a short time to kill as many Foot Soldiers as possible. This is not one of the great classics that stand the test of time like a Mario or Sonic game. It doesn't even compare to other stuff Konami was releasing at the time like Super Castlevania. But if you want to play a game that perfectly encapsulated where pop-culture and gaming were in 1991, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Turtles In Time is a shining example.