Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles Is The Next NES Classic To Get A Native SNES Port

I never managed to disarm the bombs and progress any further but I did enjoy this game.

You know, it would be nice if there were external links for stuff like this. Every URL in the article is an internal link within Time Extension, other than the Twitter post. Not even a link to https://archive.org/details/@infidelity.

Unless the graphics are improved, why?

Cool - love this game. A classic example of a game I could beat as a kid but now find hard! Although I did manage to beat it again on the collection.

I never understood the drama around the water stage - sure it's fiddly but very doable (well it was for 11 year old me - now, I'm not so sure!) Probably over sensationalised by the AVGN...

Where I had problems was at the end of level 3 where you're down in a sewer and there's a tiny gap over some water. Took me ages to work out all you have to do is walk over it and not jump (which makes you hit your head and fall into water), as I'd been doing and losing all my lives!

Also - this was a Christmas present for me, and I knew where my parents stashed Santa's goodies, so every time they went out, I covertly took the game for a little test spin ahead of schedule. Which ofc meant come Christmas morning my Dad was a little surprised to see me blast through the first level barely taking a hit! 😂🤫

Gotta be honest with this one. For me, it's by far the least interesting port that he has worked on. I have never liked this game, and no amount of quality of life stuff will fix the issues I have with it.

I'll always have a soft spot for this game. Sure, it's stupid difficult and barely on brand. But it looked and sounded fantastic, I appreciate that it's the only TMNT game that offers legitimately meaningful differences between the four characters, and I like how lean and mean they look compared to their more cartoon-inspired selves.

It also came out in an era when kids would happily bang their heads against these ludicrously challenging games for months on end, perfecting the earlier stages and gradually getting better at the later ones. I'm not going to pretend this is good game design, but there's still something cool about that.

I was in grad school when I finally buckled down and beat the game and it felt like a very hard-earned victory after nearly a decade of training.

@Damo Sorry, I should have said there is no link to the authors work in general. Many articles have little to no external links.

@BausRifle I think the question these devs usually ask is "why not"!
But even besides that, this makes it a lot easier to add enhancements, like improved audio. In this specific case, I'm also hoping all that extra CPU headroom allows for 60fps, as this was one of the relative few NES games that only ran at 30.

@bring_on_branstons Ugh, AVGN again. Nothing against the guy himself, but I wish people would form their own opinions. It seems like whenever there's an over-hated game, I find out that AVGN had done a popular episode ripping it apart.

Now, the dam in itself is a bit of a wake-up call, I guess. Sort of like the Turbo Tunnel in Battletoads, it's nowhere near the hardest part of the game, yet it is the part where I imagine a lot of players met their match after breezing through the first bit of the game.

I didn't really struggle with the dam when I played it (I was also 11 or 12), and those single-square gaps in stage 3 weren't an issue either, as I had discovered the correct way in that first building where you get the missiles. But the Technodrome- how did you beat that as a kid???
It just goes on and on, and then that final corridor is downright hellish, with those astronaut-looking guys that can destroy your run if RNG (or a slight mistake in your positioning?) puts them in the wrong spot.

@Razieluigi Got to agree with you.
I liked the NES game for what it was, and I especially appreciate what it was trying to do, even if the execution was rough.
If this SNES port adds 60fps and unlimited continues, that'll go a long way. But I'd also love to see a game that expands on the concept, with larger maps, more exploration, and less difficulty.

Apparently, TMNT3 on Game Boy does some of the same things, with a Metroidvania-style structure, as well as turtles all having their own unique abilities? Just recently picked up the Cowabunga Collection, so I'm planning to dig into this one soon.

@smoreon Whatever framerate the game ran at, it still had trouble. I don't think it really matters if the game is 60 FPS or 30 when it still has graphical jitters like crazy.
I understand this is a game that doesn't even properly manage the parts of the screen that were outside of the expecting viewing area on NTSC CRT TVs.
I know I've read some suggestion the game itself could be recycled from a Japanese game called Getsufuumaden. It could explain some wonkiness.

But I know from a fan translation of another Konami Famicom game called Dragon Scroll that Konami didn't have the most optimized code. For that patch, the routine to load tile data to the PPU had to optimized to fix the issue that literally extending the text window two text characters broke the image stability like a house of cards.

@smoreon Lol those gaps man... you could walk over them and I just didn't realise. 😜

I can't really remember how I beat it ha! But I do recall getting past the final bosses on my second or third attempt. Plus I'd farmed (before I even knew what farming in games was!) the really powerful sub weapon (on all 4 characters) going in and out of buildings etc. and used them sparingly which would have helped near the end.

I guess I was pretty determined playing games as a kid, and v methodical. Plus I had time! I beat a slew of 8-bit games (Castlevanias, Megamans, Cobra Triangle, Snake Rattle n Roll to name a few) which frankly befuddles me now! Thank God for modern checkpoints and saves! 🤣

Waste of time, emulators already fix NES games.

@KingMike agreed and the clip on Twitter showed some of this where the life meter or whatever flickers.

The funny thing about that scene in The Wizard where Beau Bridges is playing the game is that he says he’s on level 3 and has the scroll weapon but on the TV it’s level 1! However, he is on the third sewer of level 1, which makes me wonder if someone on the production team thought that actually was level 3?

Anyway, I never finished this game back in the day but I did finally finish it recently. I cheated though and used the “Pizza Party” hack which makes pizza pickups apply to all the Turtles.

Same exact experiences for me too! I think I only got to the base area a handful of times as a kid—that gap above the water shouldn’t be there! The dam stage was not difficult for me. I didn’t ever beat it until the collection a few years ago, though. If you don’t know where to go and which manholes to enter, forget about it! @bring_on_branstons

@BulkSlash lol, the game definitely has some cryptic stuff and it’s a tough as nails adventure. There’s a really excellent “U Can Beat Video Games “ episode on it.

@Mrakey "Waste of time, emulators already fix NES games."

If you had taken the time to read the replies to the dev's twitter post above he said: "I like the challenge, and I hope that in the future others will take my ports and make them look/sound 16-bit."

Home sick as a kid = watch The Karate Kid 1984 on the VHS you taped from TV, attempt to beat TMNT, Bob Ross The Joy of Painting, reading comics, Cracked or Mad, and Nintendo Power, drawing my favorite comic and cartoon characters. Incredible healing abilities.

@KingMike Yeah, it still struggles (flicker and slowdown), so it's not even totally stable at 30fps.
The weird thing is that Konami's other games were 60fps, like Contra, Castlevania, and Getsufuumaden itself! TMNT does sometimes throw more stuff on screen than any of those, but I'd say it wasn't worth the jank, if that's why.

I always thought of Konami as technically skilled (on top of simply making fun games), but going by your Dragon Scroll anecdote, they may have used a lot of duct tape to hold things together!

@bring_on_branstons Ah, I never did make proper use of those weapons. Now that you mention it, I bet the three-way shuriken thing would be really helpful.

Cobra Triangle! That's a good one, but brutal- not that it comes as a surprise, being from Rare's Battletoads era! Even with a Game Genie for unlimited health, the final boss is still hard to finish off in the time limit. Snake Rattle 'n Roll isn't exactly a cake walk, either, though I haven't spent much time with that one.

@KingMike It's interesting looking back and realizing that a lot of games are poorly optimized. I saw a video on this game that did a deep dive into this one and how the coding for the water stage is likely messed up. Capcom was also guilty of that. The NES version of Strider is likely unfinished, in my opinion, and also has clear coding and optimization issues.

@WaveBoy great ideas for improvements 👍 I would put them on my everdrive 😃

@BBL Nobody managed, and everyone loved it.

@smoreon I found the red dragon on stage 23 in Cobra Triangle a real pain and would destroy you in seconds. I got past it by making sure I had the Force option on the Gradius style power menu (desperately avoiding any power up capsules once I had it!) The shark was pretty easy to avoid and hit but yeah v tough time limit.
But years later I find out all you have to do is not fire at the red dragon and hide in a corner and it will self implode! lmao doh!

Battletoads! Sadly never played it but would love to have tried back in the day to see how I would have got on. I dream of having Rare Replay on PS!

Another funny thing - I never used continues back then. As games were expensive, my elder sister (who would play with me) guilt tripped me into not using them to make the games last longer! As the youngest I was very malleable, I just went along with it and when I lost all my lives it was back to good ol Stage 1! 😂

@RZ-Atom Yeah I don’t even know if it’s the best thing to do what is happening here in terms of Google but linking to primary sources is 101 in decent journalism.

Hopefully this ends up looking and sounding like a SNES game, and doesn’t have a 500 piece orchestra performing the soundtrack via the MSU.

I mean could they make use of the SNES graphics capabilities to make it look better?

@OdysseyPoint mesen supports hd texture packs for NES games. Also there is a 3D emulator for the system.

@GravyThief Someone will use MSU to insert the TV show theme and call it done.

@Mrakey None of which are a SNES game.

@WaveBoy Oh yeah that would certainly be improvements.

@WaveBoy I got my everdrives for home consoles many years ago now, basically as soon as I knew they existed, lol. I think I thought at the time that a lack of interest or legal pushback would end their production.

At my college job, someone brought in a self-booting Dreamcast disc with every NES game. We had so much fun with that thing that when I realized you could do that with original hardware, a decade later, my mind was just completely blown! 😄

Mine are very early versions and look much more bootleg than the newest ones. I like the charm!