Haggar in a half-shell
Arcade gold in 1989 but after eighteen years of misty eyed sentimentality, can the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles arcade game possibly be as good as you remember? Well...no. But neither is it the adventure in heartbreak that other classic arcade ports have been. TMNT just about manages to land on the right side of fun. Just.
Revisiting the TMNT in 2007, the most striking thing is how simple the game is, even for a side scrolling beat-em up. Pick a turtle, walk from left to right, kill a few hundred foot soldiers, beat a boss...repeat five times and the game's over. The turtles can jump, attack, or jump *and* attack. Hitting both buttons together does a slightly more powerful special move. And that's it. There's no deviation from the 'Clear the screen and move on' formula, no special levels, no hidden characters: TMNT is a spectacularly shallow game.
TMNT's lack of depth was far less obvious in 1989 because it was only ever played in short bursts. Unless you were richer than Croesus and had a stack of change tall enough to get on the rides at Disney Land, you could only afford to have a quick blast on the machine. TMNT devoured money because it was (and is) insanely difficult. A ridiculous number of enemies pour onto the screen, to the point where it's almost impossible to attack one enemy without being hit from behind. Throw in a few sudden deaths, impossible to avoid attacks, bosses without any kind of predictable patterns and watch your money dwindle. Or at least you would have in the arcade. The single player mode on the 360 is blessed (or cursed, depending on your point of view) with infinite continues. Instead of running out of money, it's your willpower reserves that are constantly drained. Finishing the game becomes a matter of perseverance; can you be bothered defeating Shredder?
What saves the 360 version of TMNT is the very same thing that made the arcade machine a classic: the multiplayer. Four people can team up to spoil Shredder's day, locally or over Xbox Live. Wading through the game's five levels with two or more people is vastly more entertaining than doing it solo. The odds feel more even, despite the scaling number of enemies, because the feeling of being ganged up on is greatly diminished. The multiplayer also throws the infinite continues out the window. Each player is limited to 20 credits per player, bringing back the feeling of being down to your last 50p and trying desperately to hang on until the next piece of health bar filling pizza. Playing with other players taps into the charm of the original arcade machine far more successfully than the single player mode.
Like a four player, money swallowing Keith Richards, TMNT's looks haven't aged gracefully. The turtles themselves look fine, if surprisingly pixelated, but the drab backgrounds, awkward scrolling, and constantly recycled enemies stand out a lot more than they ever did in the smoke filled arcades. It's probably a touch unfair to criticise the graphics of a game old enough to vote but compared to Final Fight, which debuted the following year, or the X-Men machine from 1991, TMNT looks extremely rough around the edges. The sound has fared better, with the sampled voices and infuriatingly catchy theme song evoking the spirit of the cartoon. The game still has a hefty dollop of charm, but if ever a Live Arcade release could have benefited from updated graphics, it's the heroes in a half-shell.
As with almost all of the retro Live Arcade releases, your mileage with Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles will vary. If you remember and love the arcade machine, then the 400 point asking price is chicken feed for the chance to revel in nostalgia for a few hours. If you weren't frequenting dingy arcades in the early nineties and you have no love for reptiles doing martial arts, then the games charm will likely elude you. Still, roughly £4 for an online enabled arcade classic is a bit of a bargain, no matter how badly it has aged.