The Little Mermaid
Okay, this wasn’t on my bucket list: but it was a special request by a special someone! (My daughter, in case you were wondering).
The game actually isn’t terrible… that may seem like an odd thing to say about an obvious movie tie-in video game, but younger persons who didn’t experience the height of 8-bit and 16-bit gaming may not be familiar with just how bad some licensed games were back in the day.
Some of them (I’m looking at you E.T.) were unplayable – actually most were.
When the Sega Genesis came along, the powers that be needed to do something to compete with Nintendo. The crux of what came was a Disney partnership which netted the Genesis some higher profile licensing along with actual quality games attached to it, as Disney cracked their nut in the video game market.
That’s not to say this game was perfect by any means. In fact, it lacked some real depth due to the lack of depth in the source material. However, The Little Mermaid can be very difficult due to controls and the way its setup.
Let me explain.
Ariel has to swim through a maze to rescue mer-people. Unfortunately, she and the enemies are much bigger than some of the spaces you have to squeeze through, and getting through stages without dying can be a challenge.
I imagine that’s by design due to it also a very short game.
There are four levels total before you face Ursula… and receive one of the weakest “thank you” endings in the history of video games. (It blinks for about 3 seconds and goes back to the start menu!)
I’m sure this satisfied most gamers appetites back in the day, and it wasn’t a total suck-fest you’d expect from the licensing tie-in either.
There are better Disney licensed Genesis games (namely Aladdin) so this one is largely avoidable unless you’re trying to complete a bucket list or have requests like I did. Keep in mind, you may want to set some cheats just to see how this plays out or else you may break a controller in the process!
Super Mario Kart
The trendsetter for all “kart” racing games holds up very oddly when reminiscing for this review.
Let’s start with the basics: no one thought a racing game based on Mario characters was ever going to work. Yet it did, and here’s why.
First and foremost, Super Mario Bros. is a beloved franchise with even more beloved characters. Each of the stages, which in this Super Nintendo title there aren’t many (later stages are extended rehashes of the same level, with added elements or driving through them backwards, which is now known as “mirror mode”.)
Yet, those stages had a sort of charm, that when combined with the same Mario-inspired power-ups, added a new dimension to your traditional racing game. It’s akin to bumper cars but within a video game.
So, what issues could I have with this title? If it were 1992, not many. The audio is crisp, the controls, despite using only a D-pad (there were no analog sticks at that time) were tight, the difficulty adjusted appropriately throughout and more.
In fact, this game shouldn’t have even been possible on a 16-bit platform, but thanks to extra processing chips within the SNES, it was groundbreaking. Yet, it’s not exactly the best to go back to. There are some frustrating areas of the game and I attribute much of that to the dated graphics and controls.
Still, for a Super Nintendo era game to accomplish what Super Mario Kart did, as well as establishing an entire new genre of games (and spawning numerous, award-winning sequels) it’s hard to be so down on this game.
Go back, appreciate this for what it was at that time and then move forward to see how each title built upon the previous: because that’s what I’m going to do!
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.
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.
Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles III: The Manhattan Project
Well color me stupid. I never knew about this game, despite it being a pseudo-sequel to one of my favorite games of all time.
I used to play the heck out of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles arcade game. As noted in a previous review, I had the NES port of this game, TMNT 2: The Arcade game, near the end of that console’s life cycle. It’s why I likely overlooked and/or missed this title years ago.
Don’t get me wrong, I knew there was a third TMNT game released, as the second arcade game was released for the SNES as TMNT 4: Turtles in Time. The problem is, I never knew this played near identical to the NES port!
Here’s why.
Turtles in Time actually released in the arcades before TMNT 3 came out on the NES. The SNES came out in August 1991, with Turtles in Time ported to the console a year later, in 1992.
TMNT 3 came out in February of 1992, as the NES started to be phased out. And seeing as it wasn’t the sequel we saw in the arcades, myself (and likely others) dismissed this as another cheap port/title much like TMNT 1.
However, that’s anything but the case. It does get repeptitve and a lot of the same concepts are reused from the NES arcade port, but it’s a brand-new game and worthy of being played. Basically, the devs took the arcade port engine from TMNT 2 and created new stages and bosses, plus added a few tweaks with moves and different style foot clan ninjas.
The result is TMNT 2.5 so to speak.
That doesn’t make the game a cheap imitation. In fact, you can tell that the developers cranked as much out of the Nintendo hardware as possible with this game. The graphics are sharp, the sound is great and if not for Turtles in Time, this may be the gold standard for the Konami beat’em up games such as TMNT, X-Men, and The Simpsons.
The only place where this game does go wrong is the same faults of TMNT 2: an endless barrage of ninjas sometimes makes you feel you’re stuck on the same “screen” for long periods of time rather than the arcade’s natural flow/progression. The idea, as I surmise, was to get more value out of playing the game longer. It was easier to continue adding ninjas to the screen as you beat them than have you walk through the level.
That adds a new dynamic where you are “pulled to the left” as you clear a “screen”. I love the idea and it helps you to know when to continue moving.
The turtles still retain their moves as well as a throw and a special move that depletes your life bar. The ninjas are also a bit harder to beat, with the jump-kick move being practically neutered in this game. (It’s an essential, higher-power move to pull of in the arcade versions.)
Yet, the result is a fun game featuring TMNT bosses not seen in other iterations of the game such as Dirtbag and Groundchuck. Movie enemies Tokka and Rahzar, as well as Super Shredder and cartoon/toy enemies Leatherhead and Slash all appear in this game as well as Turtles in Time.
In all it’s a fun addition to the series, bridging the demand for a TMNT 2 NES sequel with that of its big brother sequel Turtles in Time. I really enjoyed it and think any fan of the series would too.
Mega Man III
Once again adds to the Game Boy iterations by borrowing heavily from the NES installments. The game is more like Mega Man 4.5 on the NES than anything else. In fact, if you go and take a look at my post for Mega Man 4 for NES, these pictures should seem familiar!
The game is a literal copy, down to small screen frustration, of those NES titles with very little innovation. It’s still something to play, but it started to make me rethink playing the Game Boy iterations of the Mega Man series…
Mega Man 5
As far as NES games go, this one was gorgeous and continued to push the limits of the hardware. The music was slightly tweaked with this version, the first major revision to the familiar tunes since MM2.
The Wikipedia entry for this game sums up the rest: “Mega Man 5 was met with a positive critical reception for its graphics and music, while receiving criticism for its lack of innovation in its plot or gameplay.”
It wasn’t particularly groundbreaking and was more or less, the same ol’ same ol’.
Contra Force
I have no idea what Konami was thinking when they released this game. My initial thought is that they developed a game that sucked and had to slap the word “Contra” on the box to get some sales.
Contra Force has zero ties to the first two Contra titles released on the NES.
And I do mean zero.
It feels like your typical side-scrolling action game and nothing like the other Contra titles, with exception of the overhead style levels which are closer to what was seen in Super C, but even those feel more like akin to a game like Commando with the side-scrolling ones in the vein of Double Dragon when it comes to the size of your playable character and the enemies on-screen. (With bosses being absolutely huge and annoying to defeat.)
The graphic direction is different. Entirely different. Gameplay is too, where different guns are instead replaced by upgrades given when finding briefcases. Like the others you lose those upgrades when you die, which is far too often.
Your weapons are instead dictated by choosing which character you want to take into battle. There’s a submenu to change characters or even use a computer-controlled partner, assigning a strategy of how they operate. You can get around the three lives limitation by switching within this menu, though unlimited continues help.
The worst part of this game, aside from the cheap kills familiar to NES players, are several areas with nearly impossible jumps. I spent a great deal of time in one area attempting a single jump: I couldn’t imagine doing so without the benefit of save states.
Therefore, this game gets a thumb down. I completed it. It was cheesy. It was buggy. It was gimmicky. And most importantly, it was not Contra. It was a slow-paced game borrowing a popular title. It’s playable but it’s not that much fun. The only appeal is being able to say you’ve played another “Contra” game.
Contra III: The Alien Wars
Like most SNES titles, Contra 3 is a worthy upgrade and successor to the original series. Upgraded features, graphics, sound, the whole she-bang.
I usually have a lot of things to say about a game, but other than this being frustratingly difficult at times, what is there to say? It’s a bigger/badder Contra and a must-play for anyone who enjoyed the original NES title.
PS – The dreaded top-down view levels, using the shoulder triggers to spin left/right are a pain in the butt! I know that’s a spin on the ol’ forward view of the previous games, but dang… what poor execution in my opinion!