Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles 1989 Classic Arcade Review

Sewer stench

Boss fights follow no set pattern or strategy, so just keep jumping and pounding away.

This honestly came as a surprise to me since, like many others, I had fond memories of the game. Admittedly, this is probably because it was one of the few working cabinets in the lobby of the Stalybridge Palace Theatre, my then-local cinema and an establishment later used as a location for The League of Gentlemen, a fact which should give you some idea of how inappropriate the name really was. Seeing screenshots from the game certainly took me back to a time when such thrills were the best a boy could aspire to but, viewed with adult eyes, its clear my taste had a lot of growing up to do.

Populated by garish and stiff sprites, it's fair to say that the once-amazing visuals have lost their appeal over the years. Unlike the very early arcade games, which still hold a certain minimalist grace, Turtles looks horrible - a muddled splurge of colours and noisy backgrounds cut, pasted and pixelated wholesale from the cartoon, devoid of any real artistry. Animation is rudimentary, while the scrolling is jerky.

Offering a mere five short levels of repetitive scrolling beat-'em-up, and a move set best described as anorexic, the fact that its sole function was to Hoover pocket money from children's hands is made horribly apparent once the Insert Coin mechanic is removed and replaced with infinite credits in single-player. If it weren't for the ludicrously unfair difficulty slowing you down, the whole game would be over in five minutes. As it is, it lasts for about twenty.

Cowadunga

The game is not generous with points - anything over 1000 is considered a high score.

Old games were hard - we all know that, and it's even part of their charm. Those with retro tastes have developed a deep masochistic streak, learning to take pleasure from being savagely beaten. Infamously brutal titles such as Ghost n' Goblins and Defender made life impossibly hard for gamers yet remain well-loved because, beneath the constant death, the core gameplay was fun and improved performance was always tantalisingly within reach.

Turtles has none of that tough love. Once you needed a stack of pound coins, now patience and a cool temper are all that's needed to see it through. Success doesn't require you to get better at the game, just that you keep hitting continue. As you trudge through wave after wave of identical foes, the game changes not one iota from the first level to the last, and nor do the skills required to survive that far.

You can jump, and you can hit things. That's about it as far as instructions go. No high, low, strong or weak attacks. No blocking. The turtles themselves have no distinguishing features or abilities beyond their weapons and masks so there's no reason to favour one character over another. During a four-player game, it's easy to lose track of your turtle in amongst the morass of purple jumpsuits and green shells. Sadly, not being able to work out where you are doesn't even affect the gameplay all that much.

Shelling out

The screenshot that launched a thousand erotic fan fiction websites.

It's not just that the game repeatedly puts you in positions where health loss or death are unavoidable - you can hit the guy to your left, but only at the expense of the guy to your right shooting you in the back - it's that there's no joy in the process, no sense of discovery or excitement. You just keep plugging away through sheer stubbornness, gritting your teeth at each new combination of environmental death-traps and unavoidable attacks. As there's no risk of losing your bus fare home to the slotty maw of the arcade machine, the flatlining gameplay just dangles there, rendered pointless when taken out of context. The closest the game comes to penalising you is in the co-op mode, where you have limited credits. Run out, and you're unable to add any more. It's revealing that having to take an early bath from the game can actually feel like a reward.

The game doesn't even have the good grace to offer up a well thought out array of Achievements for your trouble. Most require near-superhuman feats such as navigating a stage without losing health or defeating a boss without being hit by their weapon, and a game designed solely to kill the player as frequently as possible just isn't suited for such tasks. On the other hand, there are completely pointless Achievements, such as the one that gives you zero gamerpoints for falling into a manhole five times. Is it a joke? Or an admission that in a game so lacking in depth or variety there simply weren't enough things to do to make up the required twelve Achievement Awards?