Frustrating gameplay brings down a game with nothing special to offer and little in the way of actual franchise tie-in.
The storyline of the game generally follows that of the cartoon and comic series which in of itself is broad and episodic owing to its nature: Shredder, with his henchmen Bebop and Rocksteady have kidnapped news reporter and Turtles friend April O'Neill and its up to the Turtles to rescue her. Later, the Turtles are tasked with preventing Shredder's Foot Clan from blowing up a dam, rescue their sensei Master Splinter and finally defeating the Foot Clan and Shredder once and for all. Except for the aforementioned characters, however, there is little to actually tie-in the game to the parent franchise. There is actually little in the way of Foot Clan to defeat as most of the levels are populated with bizarre creatures and monsters that don't really fit in to the context and universe of Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. One enemy that throws boomerangs and jumps around randomly very vaguely resembles the Rat King from the cartoon series, and Bebop and Rocksteady make full appearances as bosses; other than that, you'll face strange balloons with flapping wings that drop bombs, kamikaze mechanical butterflies, guys consumed in flames that shoot legs also consumed in flames, crawling eyeballs, some weird guy who splits into multiple enemies, an enemy that has a vague resemblance to Shredder himself except that its head will fly around after taking one or two hits, and a whole host of other enemies that in the context of a Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles game simply makes little to no sense.
Gameplay is almost as bizarre as the game's enemies and just as frustrating. Raphael and Michelangelo don't have enough reach in their attacks to really be useful, so the player will mostly stick with Leonardo or Donatello until they're too low in health to be useful. Hits also have trouble registering, and many common enemies take more hits to defeat than what is normally reasonable. Jumping is less than smooth especially the number of precision jumps needed to transverse levels, and the street portions are large and somewhat confusing, leading to sewers and buildings that provide dead-ins or little other reason to enter other than to take massive damage.
Graphics and sound are what's to be expected of a game in the latter half of the NES's market life, although they're nothing spectacular. Moreover, none of the familiar musical tones of the cartoon series are to be heard in the game even though the cartoon was just entering into its stride when the game was published. This omission is simply yet another in a long list of items that fail to bring the franchise's full potential in this game.
Although the popularity and strength of the mother franchise will eventually demand more successful sequels and a game franchise all on its own, the first Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles NES game fails to live up to its potential and remains mired down in its frustrating, long gameplay.