The classic arcade beat-em-up returns in fine form as an XBLA game.
I had always been obsessed with the Turtles from the 1980s cartoon to the hundreds of action figures and accessories that I owned. So this pretty standard beat-em-up became my favorite game in the genre. Nothing could beat standing around the cabinet with 3 other people, sometimes friends and sometimes complete strangers trying to make it to the Technodrome and beat Shredder. Through a joint partnership between Ubisoft and Konami as well as digital emulation specialists Digital Eclipse, I have once again been given the opportunity to relive the experience from the comfort of my own home. If you've ever played a beat-em-up game, you'll know exactly what to expect from TMNT even if you've never played it.
Choosing one of 4 turtles, each with different weapons as well as various strengths and weaknesses, your mission is to move through the 7 side-scrolling stages fighting members of the Foot Clan. The Foot are standard beat-em-up enemies who come in a variety of colors and are brandishing everything from bare hands to sledgehammers and even bombs. At the end of each stage, you'll fight a boss character from the cartoon series until the final battle in the Technodrome against the likes of Krang and Shredder.
The XBLA version features both single player and both local and multiplayer through Xbox Live. The multiplayer naturally supports up to four players simultaneously.
The level of difficulty is quite challenging, being that the game was designed to suck as many quarters out of you as possible. Playing on single player, you are able to continue as many times as you like. Unfortunately, this kind of takes away much of the desire to try and utilize strategy to beat the enemies and bosses. However, the single player achievements do make up for this slack by challenging you to beat bosses losing only a certain amount of health. Multiplayer is really where this game shines. Each player that joins you gets a total of 20 lives with which to beat the game. Once you lose those lives, there are no continues. You are left watching until the final player loses his last life or beats the game. If you and your teammates are fortunate enough to finish the fight and defeat Shredder, you'll earn an achievement. This is harder than it looks because the more players there are, the more enemies that fill your screen.
Some of the problems with TMNT include a sometimes unstable connection that may see you or another player kicked out or some frustrating lag issues. Unfortunately, in a beat-em-up game, lag can be your worst enemy especially with a finite number of lives. Another problem is the graphics, which is to be expected from a 1989 arcade release. All in all, TMNT Arcade is a solid emulation of the original game that benefits from Xbox Live multiplayer and the standard array of achievement points. Its $5 retro pricing is also well worth taking a look at.