Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: The Arcade Game

Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: The Arcade Game is one of the games that defined a generation of arcade goers. KONAMI struck gold with this one, taking the insane popularity of the turtles and translating it into a beat 'em up that's pure chaos and joy. The premise is simple, Shredder's being a big jerk as always and kidnaps April, so it's up to the boys in green to kick, punch and slice their way through the streets of New York or the sewers. You pick your favorite turtle and take him wherever he needs to go while wailing on endless waves of color coded Foot Soldiers.

Now let's be real, the home ports are a noticeable downgrade in every way. You lose the 4 players madness and go down to 2, the graphics take a hit and the audio isn't as crisp. Still, KONAMI didn't just make a straight port, they actually added two brand new levels and bosses, which is a cool move but the combat however, got a really frustrating change: enemies have invincibility frames after getting hit. This means you can't combo them at all, which completely kills the flow of a beat 'em up. The difficulty is another sticking point, it's brutally hard: you've 3 limited continues, bosses are sponges that require you to find a specific pattern or exploit to beat them without losing all your lives. You'll quickly learn that spamming jump kicks from a safe distance is often the only way to survive, which makes the game feels less like a brawler and more like a tactical hopping simulator, it's still fun but it's a big step down from the arcade version's satisfying combat.

But as is typical of millennial games, they have hacks that make the experience smoother. First up is the Revamped hack, which is a visual and mechanical touch up. The creator went through and fixed a bunch of stuff that always looked a little off, like changing Mikey and Raph's skin tone to match the others so they all have that consistent green look from the arcade, he also swapped Splinter's gi from purple to red in the cutscenes, which is a small detail but makes him look more like his cartoon self. Beyond that, he yanked out all the Pizza Hut ads, dunno why, and even added in the ability to do jump kicks at any point during a jump and change direction mid attack, which was a feature from the Japanese version that made the combat feel more fluid. Then you've got the Bugfix & Polish hack, which is a monster, the dev went through the game with a fine tooth comb and fixed basically every single graphical glitch and animation error you could imagine.

And then there's the options mod, which adds a full options menu to the title screen where you can tweak just about everything: you can adjust the number of lives and continues, change the difficulty and even switch between the original combat system and a new one that completely removes the invincibility frames on enemies. That's huge because it means you can finally combo enemies like you should be able to in a beat 'em up, instead of having to rely on the cheap jump kick spam. The special attack also gets a 50% damage boost in this mode, making it actually useful. Plus, there's a sound test, and they changed the game over screen music to something more fitting. It even improves the scrolling so the screen moves more naturally. And the best part is that all three of these hacks are compatible with each other, so you can play a version of the game that looks better, plays smoother and lets you actually have fun without the frustration.

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