The Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles Game Boy Games - Every Gamer Review

So we're going from the 16-bits, all the way back to 8-bit, and on handheld. There were three Ninja Turtle games on the Game Boy. But here's a fun factoid, the MSX team from Konami, became a Game Boy division after Konami ceased support of the MSX. Naoki Matsui, who worked on Vampire Killer and Gradius on MSX, also worked on the first game in this Game Boy series.

Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Fall of the Foot Clan, known as Teenage Mutant Hero Turtles: Fall of the Foot Clan in Europe, and Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles in Japan, developed and published by Konami in Japan and Europe and published by Ultra Games in the US. It was released in 1990 in the US and Japan, and in 1991 in Europe.

The game near enough follows the same simple plot of the NES original, where Master Splinter and April get kidnapped by Shredder and the Foot, and the Turtles fight the bad guys to save them.

The game is a platformer where you go from A to B fighting enemies and fight a boss at the end. You have five stages to beat. Yep, I can count how many stages the game has with only one hand and they're very, very short, and the game is very, very easy, but this is the Game Boy, you don't really expect a lot of long games. The challenge is to beat the game in its entirety without getting a Game Over; I mean sure, you can continue, but you won't get the proper ending because artificially stretching the game even further is fun.

You can choose to play as one of four of the Turtles, but they also count as lives, so if you lose all your health, it counts as a Turtle being captured and have to pick another Turtle, and making sure that you don't lose your favourite character.

The gameplay is simple, walk left, right, jump, use a Turtle's signature weapon and push down to use a Shuriken and jump-kick whilst attacking in the air. The game is quite similar to Bad Dudes vs. Dragon Ninja in its simplicity...wait, did I review that? I don't remember. But despite it's short and easy gameplay, it's quick decent game to play for about half an hour...the time it could take for you to actually beat it.

The graphics are good for the Game Boy but the level design is quite basic, which makes for a basic platformer for the Game Boy.

Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles II: Back from the Sewers, known as Teenage Mutant Hero Turtles II: Back from the Sewers in Europe, and Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles 2 in Japan, was released in 1991 in the US and Japan, and in 1992 in Europe.

So April...and only, April, has been kidnapped, so the Turtle have to rescue her...I think Splinter was spared the capturing, rat droppings can be hell to clean...OK, I made that up.

The game...is very similar to the first game. But at least there's more than five stages...there are six, a slight improvement? But what improvements we do have are the Turtles having their own strengths and weaknesses, with Donatello has a long ranged attack, but his attacks are slow, Raphael attacks faster but his range is short, whilst Leonardo and Michaelangelo are the all-round guys. Yep, I'm picking Leonardo and continue to be careful not to lose him.

The game now has more variety, not just platforming, but now we have Beat 'em Up sections, a level consisting of riding on skateboards, going underground to dodge everything like spewing fire and boulders, scaling air lifts in what may be the most confusing levels in the game. The game feels longer and more difficult, even on easy mode, the challenge is high but very fair. Yep, there's difficulty settings so they'll be extra enemies and bosses with extra attacks. So everyone will have their own preferences, which is good.

But oh no! You've lost a Turtle or two. Thankfully, you can get them back without a Game Over, however, you can play a bonus game where you can battle Robocop...I mean REX-1. It's very difficult to battle and every time you get hit, time quickly decreases. There is no way of defeating this thing...is what I would say if I didn't use my brain and crouch in one spot, and attack since the spot you're standing in won't hurt you.

The graphics look much better, but I guess because there's more variety to the levels, there's more the developers could do. Heck, it even ends up being more faithful to the original cartoon.

And finally, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles III: Radical Rescue, known as Teenage Mutant Hero Turtles III: Radical Rescue in Europe, and Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles 3: Turtles Kiki Ippatsu (Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles 3: タートルズ危機一発) in Japan...wow, Japan finally has a slogan.

So it seems that not only Splinter and April have been kidnapped, but all three of the Turtles have been kidnapped trying to be the rescuers. However, Michaelangelo went to get pizza or some shit, and when he finds out that his Turtle brothers have been captured, it's up to him in a one-turtle mission to rescue everyone.

So we...DO NOT have an ordinary platformer, rather a...Metroidvania? Yep, before Castlevania: Symphony of the Night, Konami made this game. In fact, Hiroyuki Fukui, the designer of this game and a few others who developed this, was also part of Symphony of the Night. WOW! This means that Radical Rescue is the precursor to what is one of my favourite games ever made...it's a shame Radical Rescue is annoying to play.

The objective is to go around the map and go to the dots whilst fighting enemies along the way. These dots could be either bosses to get keys, doors to use said keys to rescue a Turtle or find a card. When you rescue each Turtle, they will have their own unique abilities. Michaelangelo can use his nunchucks as a propeller, Leonardo can use can use his sword to spin to break weak floors like a drill, Raphael can go into his shell and go through small passages, and Donatello can climb walls.

So the game is known to be as similar to the likes of Metroid II, but I felt that Metroid II was made much better and it had saves. Radical Rescue has this BS difficulty, the game can be hard, but instead of saves, you have password for each task you do, and the fact that a game like this with cramped spaces and annoying enemy placement put me off ever investing myself into this.

The graphics are still good, but the level design doesn't exactly work, it could be done well, like Metroid II, but it's trying to be a Metroidvania in the style of a platformer like the previous games.

Overall, these TMNT games on the Game Boy are pretty good, though I highly prefer Fall of the Foot Clan and Back from the Sewers as they're decent platformers for what are considered licensed games. I only appreciate three in terms of Konami taking what they did in this game and making something amazing. So try them out if you want something quick to play, especially the first one.

You can get these games on Game Boy.