The half-shell heroes known as the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles have been a mainstay of American pop culture since their debut in the 1980s. As such, it should be no surprise that the crime-fighting reptiles have starred in dozens of video games over their three-decade-long history.
From the arcades to the NES, and from the Gameboy to the Xbox 360, the TMNT have shown no signs of leaving video games or popular culture anytime soon.
With the new live-action film Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Out of the Shadows arriving in theaters and a brand new TMNT video game having just hit store shelves, now is the perfect time to take a trip down memory lane and remember all the great (and not-so-great) games starring Leonardo, Raphael, Donatello and Michelangelo that fans have gotten the chance to play over the years.
The Turtles' video game history can be broken down into three distinct eras, starting way back in 1989 with the original Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles game for the NES.
The Konami Era
Konami may best be known today as the one video game company (or former video game company) everybody loves to hate, but back in the 1980s, Konami was regarded as one of the top names in the game industry. It is with the storied company behind game franchises like Metal Gear Solid, Silent Hill and Castlevania that the TMNT video game history would begin.
Sending the heroes in a half-shell kicking and screaming into the video game age was the simply-titled Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles for the NES in 1989. As would quickly become a TMNT game tradition, the single-player-only side-scrolling action platformer allowed players to take control of any of the four turtle heroes, a feature that would become increasingly important in later years as TMNT games put an increased focus on co-operative play.
It was also in this first Turtles video game that the long-running theme of pizza acting as health recovery items would appear, an idea that would be included in nearly every TMNT game to come.
Konami's NES game was well-received at the time, but it would be its Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles arcade game released that same year (ported to the NES as Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles II in 1990) that would establish the style of nearly every great TMNT game to come.
Rather than an action platformer like the original NES game, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles arcade adopted a side-scrolling beat-'em-up approach that allowed for up to four players to take on the Foot Clan side by side. Featuring great visuals, satisfying action gameplay and a great soundtrack, it would prove to be a winning formula.
The 1991 Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles III: The Manhattan Project on the NES would take everything great about the NES port of the original arcade game and expand upon it. Like the NES version of the original arcade game, it only featured support for two players, but it more than made up for it with the same great action of which fans had quickly grown fond.
As the saying goes, if it ain't broke, don't fix it, and it seems Konami took that philosophy to heart. While Konami would release the well-regarded platformer Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Fall of the Foot Clan for the Gameboy in 1990 (the first game starring the characters on a handheld console), the company would go on to perfect its TMNT beat-'em-up formula with 1991's arcade classic Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles IV: Turtles in Times.
To this day, it's widely regarded as the best TMNT game to have ever been created. Four-player co-op on both arcade and consoles? Check. Improved visuals? Check. Crazy stages as the Turtles fight their way through ancient history and into the future? Check.
Topping it all off was the game's superb soundtrack, which helped make the monotony of bashing Foot Clan soldiers over the head instantly more entertaining. The game's 1992 SNES port, unlike the NES port of the original arcade game, arrived for Nintendo's new console looking nearly identical to that of the arcade version, making it a must-have title.
A sort-of port of Turtles in Time called TMNT: The Hyperstone Heist would release that same year for the Sega Genesis, making it the first TMNT game for a Sega console. The game took many of the same visuals, and even some entire stages, from Turtles in Time, though it did feature a new plot and new levels as well. Over the next several years, sequels to the Gameboy game would arrive, one in 1991 and another in 1993.
In 1993, Konami looked to capitalize on the popularity of 2D fighters like Street Fighter II and Mortal Kombat with a fighting game of its own by the name of Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Tournament Fighters, which saw release across the NES, SNES and Genesis. Perhaps surprisingly, it proved to be a solid fighting game for fans of the series, with the SNES version widely regarded as the best.
After Tournament Fighters, it appeared as if Konami's TMNT well had run dry. It would be nearly a decade before another proper TMNT game arrived in the form of 2003's Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles for the Game Boy Advance, the first of a new series of games from Konami based on the 2003 Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle cartoon series.
Unfortunately, Konami's return to the franchise wouldn't be a return to the glory days — far from it, in fact. Three new games based on the TV series would be released between 2003 and 2005 across the GameCube, Xbox, PlayStation 2 and various handhelds. Each one was heavily panned by critics, who cited boring gameplay, terrible enemy AI and poor controls.
It was a sad end to Konami's long history for the franchise, with the publisher cranking out each game one after another with little improvement between entries. However, while Konami parted ways with the franchise, it provided a promising opportunity for another game company willing to take a chance.
Ubisoft Takes The Reigns
The company most well-known for Assassin's Creed and various Tom Clancy video games would be next in line to adapt the Turtles for game consoles. Ubisoft's first attempt would come with 2007's TMNT, based on the Nickelodeon CGI-animated movie of the same name. For a first try, it could have gone worse.
While the game was far from a critical success, TMNT did manage to borrow platforming elements from Ubisoft's successful Prince of Persia franchise to solid effect. It was not, however, multiplayer. Co-op play had become a bit of a must-have feature for Turtle games, thanks to Konami's popular beat-'em-ups, and TMNT's lack of one certainly didn't win it any brownie points among fans.
Ubisoft would take the franchise's multiplayer roots to heart in its next game, though perhaps not in the way fans expected. Instead of multiplayer beat-'em-up for the modern age, Ubisoft crafted a four-player fighter heavily inspired by Nintendo's popular Super Smash Bros. series. Called Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Smash-Up and released in 2009 for the Wii and PlayStation 2, the game would go on to receive mostly positive reviews, even if its concept was hardly original.
Ubisoft did manage to release an updated version of Turtles in Time within the same time period as a download-only title for Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3. While the original is one of the franchise's most well-loved games, the new visuals in the remade version simply lacked the style that helped make the arcade version such a success in the first place.
The release of Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Arcade Attack two months later would bring an end to Ubisoft's largely uneventful run on the franchise. Ubisoft attempted to push the Turtles in a few new directions during its time on the franchise, but ultimately failed to restore the TMNT to its former glory under Konami.
Age Of Activision
A franchise as big as TMNT doesn't go unwanted for long, and it didn't take much time for Activision, the company behind Call of Duty, to pick up the rights to the pizza-loving turtles. Whereas Activision saw a great degree of success creating new games around another '80s cartoon property, Transformers, the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles weren't so lucky.
The first game to come from the publisher would be the abysmal Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Out of the Shadows, a download-only title developed by Red Fly Studios and loosely based on the 2012 animated series. Filled with glitches and poor controls, the game only served to prove that TMNT wasn't the powerhouse gaming franchise it once was.
Activision's next attempt would come only a few months later in the form of Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles for the Xbox 360, Wii and Nintendo 3DS. It would fare just as poorly, if not worse, than its predecessor. Despite having all the trappings of an entertaining TMNT game — beat-'em-up action, four-player co-op — it utterly failed to deliver anything coming close to fun.
Two more games would follow, one based on the live-action film produced by Michael Bay and released only for Nintendo 3DS, while another, TMNT: Danger of the Ooze, would see release on Xbox 360 and 3DS. It hardly came as a surprise to fans that neither one proved worth playing.
That brings us to today, as the critically-acclaimed Platinum Games finds itself the latest developer to take a swing at restoring the TMNT to glory with Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Mutants in Manhattan. Sadly, it doesn't appear that's been the case.
Reviews for the newly-released game have been average, at best. Lack of local co-op and repetitive gameplay elements that quickly become a bore look to have severely hurt the game's critical reception, even as more than a few critics have praised the game for its visuals and clear love for the source material.
Will we see yet another TMNT game? Almost certainly, though whether or not it will be coming from Activision or coming anytime soon is an entirely different matter. No publisher outside of Konami has managed to find any real success with the franchise, despite its continued popularity more than three decades after the crime-fighting turtle brothers first appeared in comic book form.
Perhaps one day, a team of skilled developers will finally be able to tap into some long-lost turtle power that has been missing for far too long. Until that day comes, fans will continue to reminisce about the good ol' days when the TMNT delivered the most fun quarters could buy.
