Too easy, too short, too derivative, and yet somehow you find yourself playing it occasionally...
As the title implies, the turtles are sent back in time by Shredder, this after tracking him to the technodrome and engaging in a massive punch-up along the way. They alternately find themselves in the ancient past, such as when dinosaurs roamed the earth, the age of exploration, when they find themselves aboard a pirate ship, and the future, where they engage in a kind of hoverboard duel.
Strangely, foot soldiers are the enemy in all of the locations - clearly I was expected to suspend my disbelief that enemies such as dinosaurs, pirates and robots would've been more suitable, but anyway...
The turtles sadly have a limited number of moves, and the attack and jump buttons can only really combine to execute a wide-range attack, or a jumping attack. You can grab foot soldiers and swing them into the ground repeatedly, which looks satisfying, or better yet, launch them into the screen, something you need to do to succeed on one level in particular. However, there is no button combination to do this, and it's a matter of pot luck - you can't choose which throw attack you want.
What really lets the game down despite the two-player element, colourful graphics and hum-along soundtrack is the fact that it's so easy, even on the hardest difficulty level, to win. Worse, the enemies can be infuriating, getting in an attack on you when you should've hit them first, so to speak.
Ultimately this suffers from being too repetitive, there is little to no variation save for a skateboard level and a hoverboard level, and even then the combat is still the same. Many of the enemies from the comics and cartoon appear in the game, but this only really appeals to fans, and even then the staying power is limited.
That said, you do find yourself giving it a quick go occasionally, and for all its negatives, it does at least provide an element of youthful, care-free fun.