Once again for summer gaming MAME-ories we re-enter the mental time machine back to the old Holiday Inn in Grand Forks, North Dakota where this time I talk about a franchise that is still making money even to this day, that’s right Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, and unlike the Simpsons Arcade game, this game actually got a home release......that doesn’t work on RetroArch.


But before I get anywhere I must point out that there is a semi spoiler alert.


Gameplay and Story: So, the story starts where April is trapped in a burning building that is surrounded by foot soldiers and even though we defeat the first boss (which is Rock Steady or Be-Bop I don’t remember which one is which, it’s the rhino) Shredder storms in and kidnaps April before the player can get her out of the burning building.


BUT THAT HAPPENS EVERY EPISODE!!


No it doesn’t! There aren’t damsel moments in every single episode you know. Anyway aside from the foot soldiers we deal with these strange robots that can gang up and you bite you, and then there’s the bosses. Even that scientist that didn’t last very long on the show made it in (it was Casey something) now you would think that once April was rescued the game would be over, right? WRONG! You still have a techno-drome to destroy not to mention rescue Splinter! Oh yeah after the Shell mobile goes off the bridge Splinter gets kidnapped as well, but don’t worry it doesn’t take as long as it did April to save Splinter (besides if we stopped there it wouldn’t be much of a game now would it?) but now I have to question why are we fighting Krang before we fight Shredder? Shouldn’t we be fighting Shredder first since he’s technically working for Krang.



Graphics: The cut scene graphics look way better than the animation in the game, normally the graphic are better looking in the coin-op versions of arcade games than they do on the home releases and for some reason that isn’t the case here.



Soundtrack: well in freefall mode we can hear the familiar theme song from the TV show. And we do hear the theme quite a bit in the game but it’s not memorable, it doesn’t trigger my nostalgia like The Simpsons Arcade game.



Addictive: To be honest I just wanted the game to end after going through all that, I have finished the game for the first time recently, but I have no burning desire to play it again.



Depth: There are 5 scenes as they are called in this game, and there’s a bonus round where we are on a skateboard. But it’s the average length of a standard coin-op game depending on how good you are at the game.



Difficulty: Well, I have said this with other Coin-op games, at least with these games you have a better chance at winning the game rather than just stopping because you ran out of lives or continues. I just wish I could play as a different Turtle but of course RetroArch won’t allow that.



Post review follow up: I’m not going to lie, even though back then I have memories of TMNT OG’s existence in the 90s I didn’t grow up with it. I did however give the show a chance when Teletoon Retro did ultimately pick it up, I thought it was okay, I could see why it was so popular, and well I’d take this over the darker version that came out in 2003.


This concludes my review, join me next week for summer gaming Mame-ories where we leave the time machine at home and I talk about a game that is still in use at one of the few hotels that still has an arcade, I’m talking of course about Daytona USA. It will be tricky because this is just a plain old racing game that I haven’t played in awhile because of the stupid pandemic, and it’s not playable anywhere online (not even on the RetroArch, and it won’t load on the emulator JS either).

This concludes my review, join me tomorrow when I review.....Cluefinders 4th Grade Adventures The Puzzle of the Pyramid (though it doesn't exactly match what we see but I'll explain when I get to it).