While in my opinion it's not horrible, TMNT for the NES is easily the most frustrating game I've ever played.
The story is pretty standard for a TMNT game. The main goal is to take down Shredder and the Foot Clan. As far as using the TMNT license, the developers did an ok job, but could've done a way better job. For example, most of the main characters from the cartoon series are present in the game such as April, Shredder, Splinter, Bebop, Rocksteady, and of course all four Turtles. Even the Technodrome is a stage and a boss in the game. However, that's about it. The enemies in this game are so weird; it's impossible to even begin to describe them. The chainsaw wielding maniac, flying missile balloons, laser-gun astronauts, and hopping eyeballs are only samples of some of the crazy enemies you'll meet in this game. What's wrong with the Foot Soldiers from the show? They couldn't have put those guys in the game at all? In the second Ninja Turtles game for the NES most the enemies were just different variations of the Foot Soldiers, and that worked fine. I think the only enemy that was based on the show that's in the game are the mousers. Another thing I should mention is that even though the title music is pretty cool, it sounds nothing like the theme from the show. You would think with a Ninja Turtle game that somewhere in the game you would hear the theme song, but no. Not this game. Before I move on, I should point out that the music in this game is well done; it's pretty catchy.
Before I describe my many frustrations with this game, let's talk about what this game does right. I already said that the music in this game is good, but as far as gameplay goes, this game is pretty fun. Killing things is fun, and the control is responsive and works well. You can swap out any of the four turtles at any time during the game, which is especially helpful during the boss fights. Boss fights usually pit you up against characters from the show, and they're fun and challenging. However, after all these positives come the negatives, and there's a lot.
The first gameplay issue you may not realize at first is how unbalanced the turtles are. Donatello is easily the best turtle, because he has the longest range with his Bo staff and deals tons of damage to enemies. Leonardo is probably the next best turtle; His katana blades have pretty good range, but his attack power is pretty weak. Raphael has some good attack power with his Sai blades, but his attack range is so pathetic that he can barely hit anyone with out getting hit himself. Michelangelo is unfortunately probably the worst turtle. His nunchuck's attack range is a little less than Leonardo's, but he has the weakest attack power of all the turtles. At least he's pretty fast. Anyway, keeping Donatello alive is essential; if he dies, your screwed, which brings me to my next complaint: Death.
When a turtle loses all of his health, he's obviously dead, but the game says that "he was caught". When all of your turtles are dead, it's game over, and you can either continue or quit. After 2 continues, it's back to the beginning of the game no matter what. Anyway, if you want to rescue your turtle, he's hidden somewhere in the level. If you find him, he'll join back and you can play as him again. Now even though that makes sense, it's ridiculous to try and find the turtle in the level. The levels in the game are pretty huge, and the in-game "help" you get gives you no indication of where the turtle is. All it says is, "Find your friend somewhere in the level. You have my support." Yeah, some help that is. Another thing that really bothers me is the fact that after each level you don't regain lost turtles or regain any health. I've never played a game before that doesn't refill your energy or give you back your fallen characters before besides this one. Imagine if you were playing Double Dragon III, and after each level your energy wasn't refilled and if you have any special characters that died in the previous level, you have to search around the level and find them. It's ridiculous! If you're not careful with health, you'll die easily transitioning from levels. And with only two continues, that just makes it a whole lot worse. All they had to do was either give me unlimited continues or refill my energy and give back my "Captured" turtles after each level.
The level design in this game is probably one of the worst aspects of the game. At the start of each level, you're in a top down perspective and you can move your turtle all around. When you come across a sewer or a building, you can go inside them, which then brings up the levels you fight in. Some of the sewers and buildings are connected, and some aren't. Now this is all good and fine, but the one thing that really makes me mad are the sewers and buildings that serve no purpose. When you get to level 5, a lot of the sewers lead to underground caves which eventually lead to a door with a Foot Clan symbol above them. You'd think that these rooms would serve some kind of purpose when you enter them, but no, they don't. No weapons, no pizzas, no enemies, no captured turtles, nothing. So basically, you fought all the way through these underground caves for absolutely nothing. It's absolutely ridiculous, and it will frustrate you to the point of throwing your NES controller against a wall. Now, I haven't talked much about the levels themselves, which are even worse. Fighting through the levels is fine, except in some parts where there's obstacles such as sewer currents and spikes below you. When you get hit by an enemy, you fly back a little, and you're stunned for a second. A lot of the times during these hazardous areas, you can't really see what's coming up, and out of no where an enemy will hit you, causing you to fly into hazard. And if it's the sewer current, you have to go all the way back outside the building and try again.
Now this is really annoying, but the worst part is easily the jumps you have to make in this game. A lot of the stages require you to jump off a platform at the absolute last second, or something like if you jump too high you'll hit the ceiling and fall into a hazard. These jumps are annoying to make most of the time, and don't add to any of the challenge. Even worse, some of the platforms make it seem like you have to jump to make it across, but you just end up hitting the ceiling and falling through, having to go all the way back up and try again. So how do you get across? You just walk across. It's so ridiculously frustrating, and there's no way you would know to do that the first time playing through. And even worse, when you miss a jump like that, you have to fight through all the enemies again to get to the jump. Yeah, the enemies respawn, and it's annoying as hell. As soon as you leave a certain part of the screen only to come back, you have to fight the same guys all over again. But when you get a pizza to restore your health, it doesn't respawn like the enemies, so the only way to get that pizza is to exit the building/ sewer, and go all the way back to try and get it.
One stage is so insane, that I just have to point it out. If you've played this game before or you've heard people like the Angry Video Game Nerd complain about this game, you probably know what I'm talking about: The 2nd level with the dam. In the last part of the second level, you have to swim in a lake and de-activate 8 bombs. You have a time limit of about 2 minutes and 30 seconds, so you have to hurry up. But scattered throughout the stage are electrical pillars, spinning spike wheels and electric seaweed. If you touch any of these, they'll take a chunk of your life away. So naturally you're trying to dodge all these obstacles, but you're in a hurry, so you can't take too much time waiting for the one moment the electric pillar stops or you get an opening to swim past the spike wheels. One of the most unfair parts of any game ever is in this one level. Nearing the end of the lake, there's a part where the walls are covered in electric plants. Remember, if you touch these plants, you get hurt pretty bad. You're given such a narrow space to maneuver, it's almost impossible to get past without losing half of your life bar, and if you're taking your time in this part, you can't, because you don't have much time! If you run out of time, you get a game over, meaning that you'd waste a continue if you want to keep playing. You have to ask yourself, should I give myself barely any energy for the next level and just rush through, or should I run the risk of taking my time and possibly wasting a continue?!? And if you manage to survive through this level, in the next level if you fall in the sewer water, you can't swim! In the last level I was swimming in a gigantic lake, but I can't swim in sewer water? WHAT THE F… Ok, sorry about that. I've calmed down…
I could spend a couple more paragraphs describing how unfair and ridiculously hard this game is, but after 5 paragraphs of complaints, I think you should understand by now. Now you know what I mean when I say that this game is hard for all the wrong reasons. If all these problems were fixed, or tweaked a little bit, then this game would no doubt be great. Don't get me wrong, the game itself is pretty fun, but all these problems heavily weigh this game down from greatness. If you have an original NES and the Game Genie (if you don't know what it is, basically you put your NES games in it and you can activate cheats for most of your games), than you might want to give this game a shot. After a few hours of countless tries and frustration, I made it to the final level (which is absolutely insane) with only one code: The electric plants in the 2nd level don't hurt. If you can find it cheap somewhere, I'd give this game a try, but just be prepared for one hard game. And I would recommend not buying this game for the virtual console. The main reason being you can't use Game Genie codes, and that it costs 100 points more than regular games for the NES, which I can't say that it's worth it. Overall, as a game, TMNT is good, but with all the problems it has it's extremely frustrating and annoying, which is a bit disappointing, because this game could've been great without them.