Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Fall of the Foot Clan
One of the first games I ever owned for the original Game Boy, this TMNT version was light years ahead of the first NES game and way more faithful as a beat’em up in vein to arcade game.
Or was it?
Yes and no: that’s because of crude Game Boy graphics and being an early title. The turtles on the screen, as well as the enemies, were often too large in some cases, yet the difficulty of the game was easy enough where this didn’t hinder your progress.
There was also an ability to go back and rescue any turtles that were “captured”, that is, losing a life and having to choose one of the other four should you fail to defeat a board.
The game itself is short: there are only five bosses, but at least all of them are culled from the cartoon series unlike the original NES game. In fact, you actually get to fight Foot Clan soldiers as well, a big missing piece in that turd I hate on the NES too!
The game can be rather repetitive and while its short, there’s a small challenge involved if you happen to die and need to start over from scratch – which is about the only “difficulty” you may find playing this.
In all, you could skip this for one of the much more polished sequels that I’ll review soon.
Ken Griffey Jr. Presents Major League Baseball
I used to get terribly made fun of as a kid for many reasons. One of those was being the owner of a Super Nintendo while all of the “cool kids” owned a Sega Genesis.
For a period of time, that meant no cool games for poor little Joe. No Joe Montana Sports Talk Football. No World Series Baseball. No blood or violent fatalities in Mortal Kombat.
Then a game dropped out of the heavens that gave me some major bragging rights about the console I felt was superior. Nintendo partnered with Ken Griffey Jr., the biggest name in baseball in the mid 90’s, and created one of the greatest sports games ever.
While it’s true that Griffey was the only MLB player to appear in the game, due to a lack of MLBPA license, the real teams names, logos, and most importantly, stadiums, were all here. And honestly, that was the major appeal – aside from being the only true baseball game in town on the SNES, the audio track of the game had a pseudo play-by-play with “strikes” and “balls” being called on the clear console audio chip, but it was the near-to-life stadiums each team played in that really hooked me as a kid.
Fenway Park had the Green Monster. Orioles Park at Camden Yards had the warehouses in the outfield. The Royals field had the fountains in the outfield, among countless other special touches. Some homeruns were easier to hit where the ballparks had shorter fences, and even the Expos wall had the distance in metric unit measurements listed rather than the American “feet” distance.
And if you play in Canada, expect the Canadian National Anthem to play in lieu of the Star-Spangled Banner to open up games!
I never realized a few of the generic ballparks, such as the Pirates, weren’t as authentic due to space limitations on the cartridge, but that didn’t seem to matter: they played on Astroturf at the old Three Rivers, and as such, there was only dirt around each base – which helped mask that there wasn’t more detail for a couple of teams.
Even with a lack of “real players” the game used real stats and simply substituted each roster’s with a theme. For example, the Mariners used names of Nintendo of America employees, while the Phillies had a mix of local landmarks (L.Bell) and celebrities (R.Balboa and A.Creed). That lent to the arcade/cartoon style and feel of the game, with muscularly jacked up homerun hitters down to smaller base stealing players.
A roster editor built into the game allowed you to change the names of these players to their real-life counterparts, and anyone with a baseball guide or card collection could connect the dots to put in most of the player’s real names, further expanding on the depth of the game.
And speaking of detail: umpires and base coaches were even included on the field!
The controls were rather tight, and you could play a full season all the way through to the World Series. (Back then you played for the pennant!)
An added homerun derby mode, something which was a newer addition to the All-Star Game back then, was included – and you could also play the All-Star game too!
In all this was one helluva game that still, to this day, has a cult following akin to Tecmo Bowl with football. If you’ve never played any of the games in this series, they’re definitely worth checking out.
Note: Game is listed as “incomplete” in my ratings because I wasn’t going to play 80+ games – I had already done that several times as a kid! 😉
Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Turtles in Time Re-Shelled
It certainly feels strange acknowledging this as a “retro game”, however, it’s even stranger to think this game is already ten years old!
Is a decade long enough to call something “retro”? Well, it doesn’t matter, because this title was a modern-era remake of Konami’s classic second TMNT entry in the arcades: Turtles in Time. Of course, Turtles in Time also saw a famous console release on the Super Nintendo back in 1992. Then, it was considered one of the greatest beat’em up games and to this day still is.
The “Re-Shelled” entry takes that formula and cranks the volume knob until it twists off, complete with a totally redesigned, high definition presentation using the TMNT series’ style and voice actors at that time. The result is a trip down memory lane that feels like deja vu, but is far from being old hat.
As before you control one of the four turtles: unlike some of the other console editions, there doesn’t appear to be any advantage to using one of them over the other, meaning no special abilities for say, Donatello over Leonardo, in this one.
The game plays like the original: hoards of enemies fill the screen and it’s your job to defeat them. Many of the nice touches of the arcade game are still here, but none of the special SNES additions made the cut.
This is a pure remake of the arcade game only.
Regardless, it’s cool seeing the newer 2003 cartoon styles placed into the old environment. Oftentimes you’ll forget that the game is a remake, as many of the enhancements are enough to only bring back nostalgia in key spots.
If you’re a Turtles fan and haven’t played this, I highly recommend it. Especially if you were a fan of any of the Konami beat’em up games that were all the rage in the arcades throughout the early 90’s.
Mega Man: The Wily Wars
The second of the two Sega Mega Man titles, this one will also seem as obscure as the Game Gear title because it was only released in Japan and Europe as a cartridge: with the American release being available exclusively via The Sega Channel…
Remember that service?
Wow, that could’ve been cutting edge! It was Netflix for video games delivered directly to your Genesis via a modem… but who had the capability back then?
Okay, back to the game: it’s a sequel and it’s not.
Wily Wars includes the first three NES Mega Man titles completely revamped with new graphics and sound. Think of it like Super Mario All-Stars is to the NES Mario games… which, Mario All-Stars also included a fourth game, and so does Wily Wars: the “Wily Tower”.
Wily Tower is unlocked after completing the other three games and retains the same look and feel as the remakes. The remakes themselves, compared to their NES originals, appeared to play faster; the music is fantastic, and graphically, I like this rendition of Mega Man as opposed to the NES appearance which was rehashed for MM9 and MM10 on later generation consoles. (Those games looked very generic by comparison of this 16-bit collection.)
Another great feature is when you begin Wily Tower. You are brought to a menu screen where you select eight of the 22 weapon upgrades obtained by beating the other three games’ bosses, plus an additional three items. This is the coolest idea I’ve seen in any of the Mega Man games I’ve played thus far and adds some replayability and strategy to the status quo. (This being the 16th Mega Man game I had played to date.)
The Wily Tower itself is short but can be difficult. There are three robot masters, but plenty of other goodies once you get to the Wily stages. Cameos occur and the game was just so much damn fun I’m not sure what else I can say about it: even if a great portion is mostly a remake.
It’s kind of disappointing that this title doesn’t get more recognition. I actually prefer its reboot style to the NES originals. The addition of Wily Tower, despite this game being released in 1994, should be a heads up to other developers with classic IP to reboot their series by packaging the old games with an updated look and then adding new challenges.
In summation, this is one of the better classic Mega Man games to play. Unfortunately, the cartridge itself is rare and a properly translated North American ROM can be as equally challenging to find: due to the translation of both the English language as well as the proper speed/framerate for NTSC (versus PAL systems it was released on).
Regardless, if you can obtain a way to play it, Wily Wars is an incredible trip down memory lane that definitely needs revisited even by the most casual of Mega Man fans.
Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: The Hyperstone Heist
Where do I even begin with this game?
Anyone who has followed this site for some time knows my love of the TMNT arcade games. Those games were ported to home consoles as TMNT 2: The Arcade Game on the NES, and TMNT 4: Turtles in Time on the SNES. A third game mimicked the NES style port of TMNT 2 as well, titled TMNT 3: The Manhattan Project.
All of the titles were well-rounded beat’em up games which were faithful to the entire lore of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles movies, cartoon, comic book and/or toy line… unlike the disaster which was the first NES TMNT game that was anything but!
With many developers have exclusivity rights to their games with Nintendo, it’s no surprise that none of those games appeared on the competing Sega Genesis – a console which was a rival of the Super Nintendo in throughout the 90’s. In order to get around contracts and licensing, developers would often re-release games under different titles, with slight modifications, on the Genesis.
Some of those modifications were often necessary due to the Genesis being a bit underpowered compared to the SNES hardware, yet a leap in a generation over the 8-bit NES.
It wasn’t until Mortal Kombat was released that games were published on multiple platforms, therefore, while the SNES got the arcade direct port of Turtles in Time (the arcade TMNT sequel and labeled “TMNT 4” on the console) Sega’s console would receive a modified version of the TMNT 4 game.
Being a fan of the series, more of these games should be a good thing, right? Well yes and no.
If you were a Genesis owner this was the only way you’d be able to play a TMNT beat’em up game and in that regard, it’s a solid title. The graphics and audio are truer to the arcade source material than the NES versions, but obviously inferior to the SNES TMNT 4 in almost every way imaginable. The Genesis lacked the same array of colors and the “Mode 7” motion graphics capabilities of the SNES, making Hyperstone Heist a flat, drab looking game at times. A stark comparison to the eyepopping visuals and colors of TMNT 4 on the competition.
After playing the other games, anyone would also note quite a few things which were ripped directly from the other two arcade titles. First, the levels look almost the same. In instances where they do not, color palettes were changed. There’s also an obvious limitation of on-screen enemies, so the game does not lag much like the NES version – and like its cousin, the Genesis title lengthens the game by sending extra waves of the same enemy groups multiple times before proceeding through the level.
That cheap shot isn’t bad enough when you get confused by the level layout. A decision was made to not end each section with a boss battle, rather, the turtles randomly move from sewer to above ground or otherwise, to stitch together a “level” between 2, 3, or 4 layouts which then end in a boss battle. For anyone who played the other games, the awkwardness feels like a glitch or mistake. I actually replayed the first few levels just to make sure it wasn’t!
Initially the game looks and feels like the arcade games, that is, until you start to play it. Everything that made TMNT 4 a classic feels watered down in Hyperstone Heist. It’s a shame too as the game released four months following the SNES release. There’s no way to throw enemies into the screen, for example.
Nearly every element is lifted from the other two arcade games with very little new content. The five levels mostly comprise chopped off and repetitive pieces from the other games, which feels particularly out of place when you’re on the pirate ship (rebranded “ghost ship”) but the stage was hundreds of years in the past in the arcade game. “The Gauntlet” stage changes the color theme of the previous cave, from the prehistoric levels of TMNT 4, to have a “blue” floor that the watery Pizza Monsters could jump out of. Even the sewer levels in the other games had a “floor” and a “water” path you could jump between, but in this game they are broken into two different areas using the same brick walls at the top and either a floor or water: not both.
The levels are also all linear: there’s no moving diagonally up/down through any of the levels and the only auto-scrolling stage is the Technodrome elevator borrowed from the SNES.
Worse than not facing many bosses, you actually face the same bosses over and over. Leatherhead returns from TMNT 3 and 4. Rocksteady is another boss, but Beebop isn’t in the game: a dubious omission when considering the addition of Leatherhead of him. The human form of Baxter Stockman flying his machine around also makes a brief appearance in “The Gauntlet” stage.
A new boss, Tatsu, fits the bill as a leader of the Foot Clan ninjas. He, along with “Shredder’s hideout”, are among the only “original” ideas in this game. And at that, Shredder’s hideout is largely comprised of rebadged pieces from an added level to the NES TMNT 2 port.
That’s where this game really falls down: both TMNT 2 and TMNT 4 were ports which also added more content in the home versions whereas Hyperstone Heist feels hastily thrown together. I’m not sure if it had to do with the Sega vs. Nintendo legalese or an actual hardware limitation, but the Genesis title feels also feels like an imitation.
The game ends by facing the three aforementioned bosses in succession once more before battling the arcade versions of Super Krang and Super Shredder. Truly the only non-recycled piece of the game is a portion of Shredder’s hideout.
I understand there’s only so much you can do within the confines of the TMNT license, such as “fight ninjas repeatedly” but when all of the other three games include such great use of the source material, plus add more to their home game brethren, it’s hard to give this title anything more than the thumbs in the middle. Heck, even TMNT 3 on the NES has a “credits” scene at the end which scrolled through the enemies (rather than stay on one graphic and scroll names).
I would’ve expected much more from a next-gen title… It plays like the other games and has fairly accurate visuals, but in the end it’s sorely lacking anything to make it stand out on its own.
Yoshi’s Story
The Yoshi games have roots in the Super Mario Bros. lore: the very first “Yoshi” game being Super Mario World 2: Yoshi’s Island. That game broke barriers in video games for its use of the Super-FX graphics chip, allowing SMW2 to have a unique “drawn” presentation.
The unique concepts continued through Yoshi’s Story; a game initially developed for the non-existent Nintendo 64DD (disk drive) hardware. It was converted to cartridge and a game I overlooked back when the system was in its heyday: and now I realize there’s a solid reason for that.
The game is not your linear playthrough like Yoshi’s Island. Instead, it’s a four-part “storybook” presentation which alters depending on how you play each chapter of the book. The cardboard book format looks good for the N64, but due to the gameplay tweaks the title offers little to no challenge, unless you want to fiddle around with collecting all of the items.
In order to clear each chapter, you eat fruit: and depending on how/what fruit you eat, alters the next chapter. You can easily breeze through the game in about an hour without giving it much thought. My initial feelings were that the game was designed for younger kids. You can make the game play a bit deeper, but once you beat it so quickly, the entire thing feels like a waste.
So much so that I feel it’s easily the worst Yoshi title I’ve ever played.
If you’re a completion freak you may find this fulfilling, otherwise, you can largely ignore it. It doesn’t play like any of the other Yoshi games in the main series and as such, it may confuse and/or annoy you.
Super Mario 64 DS
Take a groundbreaking game which basically launched three-dimensional, free-roaming, open-space worlds in the video game genre and then up the ante.
That’s what Super Mario 64 DS is – not just a remake of Super Mario 64 for the Nintendo 64 but a launch title for the fledgling “dual screen” Nintendo DS console, showing off its own graphic capabilities when compared with its predecessor the Game Boy Advance.
All of the usual suspects are here: the game plays 90% like it’s N64 groundwork, but the few subtle changes are where the game really shines.
Rather than begin the game as Mario (the only playable character in the N64 version) players find themselves navigating Yoshi outside of Peach’s castle. Of course, the narrative is the same: Bowser did something bad to the Mushroom Kingdom and now you’re tasked with saving the princess.
Except, this time, you can control Mario, Yoshi, Luigi and Wario: each with their own special powers. As you progress through the castle, you must acquire stars – earned by defeating each level’s task. Each of those tasks is dependent, in this version, on which character you choose at times. As I mentioned, only about 10% of base game differs from the N64, but it’s this 10% where you’re forced to use Luigi or Wario in certain situations that makes this game stand out on its own.
Add in better, but still not quite sharp 3D graphics (hey, it’s still the DS) and the usual crisp audio, and the game is a pleasure to play – except for when certain cramped DS controls spoil the fun. (I already strongly disliked some of the precise jumps or mistaken back flips to my doom in the N64 original.)
Overall if you’re going to play (or replay) Mario 64 for nostalgia purposes, this is the title I’d recommend… yes, even over the WiiWare rerelease of the N64 source material. It’s just really cool to have some of the added perks with additional stars, minigames, multiplayer, and more.
Pick this one up if you’re a Mario fan for sure!
Contra 4
For not liking or being very good at Contra as a kid, I sure do love revisiting these games as an adult. This one, made for the Nintendo DS, continues the Contra legacy with an excellent two-screen rendition which may be one of the better titles to use the DS format on the platform.
Taking the same weapons, lives, and endless barrage of enemies, plus mixing in some nods to the older games as well, nostalgia buffs will bask in this edition of Contra. The controls are tight, the levels play out as you’d expect them to, the graphics are superb (since it’s really a 2D game on newer hardware) and the soundtrack is spot-on too.
There are unlockable goodies, difficulty settings, and just about everything clicks with this game. The only downfall might be that it’s short: but it will take a you a few playthroughs to fully master this title. The added challenge mode brings replay-ability too.
I wish there was more to say, but the only complain that could be had about this game is the “gap” between the DS screens. Sometimes enemies, items, or your own character can get lost in the “void”, though that’s really more an exception than the rule with how balanced each level is.
If you’re a fan of Contra, this is a must-play game in the series.
Halo: Combat Evolved
When everyone pointed to this game as a franchise for the (then) brand-new Microsoft Xbox, I was leery. I came from the era of Goldeneye and Perfect Dark, just how good could this game be?
Returning to Halo years later, the storyline-driven game content, the near seamless loading times and more cohesively makes this game a classic still to this day. I upped the ante by playing this on my Xbox 360, as it is a backwards compatible game and the visuals, though letter boxed on my screen, were incredible for a game created so long ago.
I remember thinking back then that seeing the ammo remaining on the assault rifle was groundbreaking: and it still looks cool! The story and the cut scenes really make Halo standout, however, and the its transfer into a survival genre add-on later in the game also makes it really “pop” in terms of classic games.
The only thing I could do without is the Warthog: that jeep inspired vehicle that’s nearly impossible to control and critical to finishing the game. Otherwise, this is about as perfect and instant classic as you can get. If you’ve never played it, drop everything and do it now!
Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles IV: Turtles in Time
In a previous review I had mentioned that the TMNT arcade game is one of my all-time favorites. As a child growing up, the Saturday morning cartoon was life.
The arcade game because a quarter-sucker for me and a literal cartoon brought to life by the Konami game, with up to four players able to play. The graphics were accurate, the audio lifted soundbytes and music from the series and just about every aspect of the game was perfect, as a beat-em-up that had you destroying hundreds of on-screen ninjas by its completion.
Much of that was carried over in the NES port of that game, TMNT 2. Yet, the translation left something lacking, as the game’s visuals and audio were altered for the underpowered original Nintendo. It added more enemies and added two entirely new levels with new bosses to lengthen the game.
That was great, but it felt like something was still missing.
The true sequel to the arcade game, Turtles in Time, is labeled as TMNT 4 on the Nintendo platform due to a third game, The Manhattan Project, being released on the NES during the end of its life cycle. Oddly, and not in a bad way, TMNT 3 borrowed the entire platform of the TMNT 2 port, down to the visuals and game play, creating an entirely new game which was a direct sequel to the NES title but not the arcade one.
Adding to the awkwardness is the timing of the game’s releases: TMNT 3, which borrows elements from Turtles in Time, released after the arcade version and only six months before the arcade game was ported to the new Super Nintendo.
Unlike TMNT 2 and TMNT 3, TMNT 4 (Turtles in Time) is a faithful recreation of the arcade classic. Everything that was in the original arcade game is retained, along with newer visuals, music, stages, and bosses. The turtles have some additional moves, and the game, even with it’s quirky time travel stages, melds the cartoon, movies, and toy line in harmony.
Also, unlike TMNT 3, this game doesn’t appear to extend levels by adding additional waves of the same enemies like its siblings. There are newer palate swap foot clan ninjas of course, but the update in technology in the arcade, as well as the horsepower of the SNES port, are on full display here.
The visuals are nearly identical to the arcade game, whereas the NES clones are not. A few unnoticeable effects were removed because of playing on a console, much of the stutter and glitchy-ness of 2 and 3 are gone. The game plays smooth as butter both from an animation and control standpoint.
Like the TMNT 2 translation, other changes were made, in particular to the bosses. The evil mutant turtle Slash appears in place of Cement Man (a great decision I may add) while the game also adds the Rat King (a major secondary villain in the cartoon) as well as Beebop and Rocksteady, who were absent from the arcade version.
The arcade sequel also includes the “fly” version of Baxter Stockman, who originally only appears in human form in the original arcade version, but replaced playing against the duo of Beebop and Rocksteady simultaneously on the NES TMNT 2 port. Other bosses from TMNT lore include Metalhead (or “Chrome dome” as he’s known in other mediums), Leatherhead (who appears in TMNT 3 also) plus Tokka and Rahzar (from the second movie) round out much of the roster.
Some of the auto-scroll levels were changed to bonus stages, with a new Shredder “battle tank” boss battle was added at the end of new Technodrome level.
The game ends with a climactic battle against a mutated “Super Shredder” much in the same vein as the end of the TMNT 3 NES game.
Overall TMNT 4 is one of the gold standards of arcade ports on the SNES. It showed just how powerful a home console could be, at a time when arcades were starting to die. Any fan of the games, cartoon, toys and/or movies would be hard-pressed to not give this game a look.