Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles 2 Hands-On Impressions

Apparently, the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles go over well with gamers, because the boys in green are back for another round at Konami's E3 booth. Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles 2 will be based on the second season in the new revival of the cartoon series, and we're told roughly a third of the characters in the game will be taken from season two. Interestingly, another third of the characters were created specifically for the game, so Turtles fanatics can look forward to both familiar faces and some new ones as well.

We got to try the game in two-player mode on the PS2 and found it to be largely similar to the first game, although the addition of four-player support will certainly increase the madcap action by a factor of...well, four. In an interesting twist, all four players will share the same jumbo-capacity life bar, so the weakest link in a team will likely take some real-world lumps if he or she ends up getting everybody killed.

There are a few more mechanical changes in TMNT 2 as well. For one, there's a lot more platforming and dodging obstacles, since the game isn't solely focused on fighting anymore. We had to jump across several moving platforms and dodge some falling stalactites in a cave at one point, for instance. Also, in a nod to the original TMNT arcade brawlers from way back when, your turtles will now do a power-dive sort of jump kick when you attack in the air. Finally, the four turtles' attributes have been tweaked to correspond to their personalities. So, for instance, Raphael is slightly stronger than the other members of the team now.

Speaking of Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: The Arcade Game... It is, in fact, unlockable in TMNT 2. This fact alone may drive extra sales of the game among the truly nostalgic among us, but this new game is looking solid enough to stand alone even without the embedded nugget of history to help it along. Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles 2 is due out in October, so look for more on the game soon.