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"Send this game back to the sewers!"

Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles was one of the hottest franchises of the eighties(and slightly, the nineties). Quickly, Ultra worked at releasing a game for multiple systems that was based on these young heroes. One version hit the NES and fans cheered. Another of these versions hit the Commodore 64, and Commodore fans cheered...for about thirty seconds, I assume. Simply put, this is NOT the C-64 game that fans were looking for at all...

Turtle Power!

The manual(and title screen) gives you the idea of what happened. The evil Shredder has captured April O' Niel and is holding her hostage. You are to take control of the four pizza-loving reptiles and use your ninja-training to save her and stop whatever Shredder and his henchmen are up to!

They locked us out?

The first thing you'll see after hitting the fire button is...a password screen? Yes, just to play this game you must ''authorize'' your right to play by entering a four letter password from a red sheet of paper that came in the game manual. This was their ''copyright protection'', but should you die in the game, you must enter a completely different password...WHY?! Shouldn't just once per boot-up suffice? Evidently not...

Eww, it's slimy!

But it then goes from bad to worse. The graphics are quite sub-par and flicker if there are more than four objects on the screen, which indeed happens often. Furthermore, they look rather grainy and blurred in comparison to other games of the time. The music was ported from the NES format and placed on the C-64's SID chip, sounding extremely flat and annoying as a result. The sound effects have not changed much, however there wasn't much that could change there.

Shell-shock.

The worst part of the translation is the controls, sadly. The programmers at Ultra decided to have jumping and attacking BOTH handled by the fire button. To attack, you have to quickly tap the button, for jumps, you must hold it down for how high you wish to leap. If you hold the button any longer than the game deems necessary to attack, your turtle instead does a quick hop which is both useless for dodging and leaves you completely vulnerable, as there are very few distance attacks in the game. This makes it EXTREMELY difficult(if not impossible) to make it past the first sewer, much less the first level!

Worth less than ooze...

Several other games released on the NES hit the C-64 as well...seek those out and leave these four degenerate fighters behind for some other fool...


Reviewer's Score: 2/10 | Originally Posted: 01/22/04