Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Smash Up (Review)

I've been meaning to talk about this one for a while. I approached Smash-Up with some trepidation. Modern Ninja Turtle games aren't that good for one thing and the game seemed way too similar to Super Smash Bros Brawl for its own good. I went the safe route and gave the game a rental and despite my low expectations, I still want my four dollars back. The game was created by most of the same people who worked on Smash Bros, hence the similarities. The only real difference is that while knocking characters out of the arena still counts as a knock out, the characters do have health bars that can be depleted like in a standard fighter.

The game suffers largely from poor controls. The characters' movements are stiff and somehow their jumps are ridiculously floaty. Running and dropping down through platforms are executed by double-tapping, which is awkward in a fast-paced fighting game. The gameplay of Smash Up is characterized by frustrating starts and stops. It take too damn long for a characters' attacking animation to register, so attacking is a pain to do and even worse is the fact that it takes far too long to get up once you are knocked down. I guess its also worth mentioning the stupid wall jump that I thought years of platformers had perfected, but apparently this game is completely clueless as to how the simple maneuver should function. The poor designs choices of some of the arenas make all of these control flaws even worse, most notably the crappy auto-scrolling train stage which tosses characters all over the place.

There's some god-awful mini games that appear in the main arcade mode that seriously make me wonder if anyone on the production staff even checked their work. Really, there's like six of these and none of them are anything good. You can unlock characters by finishing the arcade mode, but the characters are all too similar to one another with little diversity between their fighting styles. I'd have to say if there's one thing that's particularly bad about Smash-Up is just that its boring. The game doesn't even have some form of nostalgia to back it up since as the game "proudly" exclaims, its the first turtles game not based on any show, comic, or movie. Well, maybe if it was there would have been something to enjoy about the game. It wouldn't have been much, but it would have been a tad better than garbage...junk maybe?

Turtles Forever (Review)

This year marks the 25th anniversary of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles and they've been celebrating the occasion by releasing special action figures, re-releasing movies, and updating classic Ninja Turtles video games. The celebration concluded about a week ago with premiere of a special animated movie that I had been looking forward to since it was announced. Turtles Forever has the 1987 cartoon cast ending up in the dimension of the 2003 cartoon show. When the 87 Shredder figures out that if are a different set of Turtles, then there probably is a different Shredder, it results in the revival and return of Ch'rell, the Utrom Shredder. Ch'rell is more insane then ever and he takes over and modifies the Technodrome from the 1987 cartoon with Utrom tech and upgrades it to pretty much the equivalent of the Death Star. Both the 87 and 2003 Turtles end up in a fight to save themselves as well as all other dimensions, while learning to put up with one another.

Overall, as a Ninja Turtles fan, the movie is really satisfying. It was a real treat to see the 1987 characters in new detailed animation that still remained true to their original character designs.
The main theme in the film seems to be to show off just how different in tone the two series really are. The 87 series was light-hearted ,and like most 80s cartoons, corny as hell, while the recent series is dark, serious and closer in tone to the original comic book. If I had to chose one over the other, I'd have to say that I prefer that recent series to the older one which is good because the story seems to be more focused on them and giving their series a proper conclusion and their version of the Shredder takes the lead as the main antagonist. If anything, this movie goes out of its way to show just how insane the Shredder of the 2003 series is. He truly is the most heartless and dangerous Shredder ever created and he steals the show.

The only major downside to the film is that here the 1987 series is treated almost as a parody of itself. The movie overplays their stupid and comedic sides from the original show rather then their more serious sides. There is some great humor in the 2003 cast's reactions to the 87 cast's horrible puns and childish attitudes, but at times it really felt like the movie was just one step away from saying "Can you believe anybody ever watched this show?" I have only seen a handful of episodes of the 87 series (as opposed to the 2003 series where I've seen almost every episode) and while I can agree that it can be pretty groan worthy and "kid-friendly", I don't think it ever was or became as juvenile and looney tunes-esque as this movie makes it out to be. Despite this, the movie wasn't perfect but it was still pretty awesome. It had a lot of fan service for the comic fans, the 87 fans, and the 2003 fans. Nickelodeon's acquiring of the Ninja Turtles license has turned this movie into a send-off for an era of the TMNT franchise and as such, it doesn't disappoint.

Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: 1987 Series - Season 1 (Review)

The Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. They're the world's most fearsome fighting team, they're heroes in a half-shell and they're green. Master Splinter taught them to be ninja teens, Leonardo leads, Donatello does machines. Raphael is cool but crude and Michaelangelo is a party dude. When the evil Shredder attacks, these turtle boys don't cut him no slack! Those reordered lyrics from the theme song pretty much explains the premise the show. The TMNT was one of the most successful franchises of the 80s and 90s and of course, the most remembered of the Ninja Turtles' adventures came in the form of their 80s animated series which ran for 10 seasons and over 200 episodes between them.

The first season, which spans 5 episodes, was actually created as a self-contained mini series with the series proper being produced after this run proved to be really popular. The season details the turtles meeting news reporter April O'Neal and the turtles' first encounter with their arch nemesis Shredder. After Shredder's foot soldiers and goons are defeated he creates two mutants called Bebop and Rocksteady, and along with the exiled warlord Krang, Shredder tries to open a portal to Dimension X so Krang's army can conquer Earth. The thing that surprised me about these episodes is how how well they've held up over the past 20 years. Most 80s cartoons are horrifically dated and usually only loved now for the nostalgia factor. Ninja Turtles definitely falls victim to this problem (most of Michelangelo's dialogue to be specific), but not enough as to completely deter from any enjoyment of the show. The show's chock full of corny one-liners and memorable characters and features a surprisingly well done mixture of action and comedy that most other 80s cartoons were fairly inept at preforming. While the parts of the show that are dated are cringe-worthy, the rest manages to show-off why the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles was one of the most popular cartoons ever and for people like me, it's a a fun and entertaining trip back to childhood.

Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Turtles In Time Re-Shelled (Review)

The 2nd Ninja Turtles arcade game: Turtles in Time, and more specifically the Super Nintendo enhanced port of the game are not only the high point of Ninja Turtles nostalgia, but also represent the peak in quality of the beat em up genre. To celebrate the turtles 25th anniversary, Ubisoft has updated the arcade version for the X-Box Live Arcade (it will release later for the Wii and PS3). I use the term "update" loosely as all that has really been changed for this version is a nice graphical improvement and the voice work being handled by the cast of the current Ninja Turtles series. The only major gameplay change comes as a result of the new 3d environments. Instead of just being able to attack in two directions, the turtles can now attack in all eight directions and since your enemies can also attack in this fashion, things get pretty hectic at times.

The game still has some of the cheap trappings of an arcade game trying to steal quarters out of your pocket, but its actually fairly manageable here, unlike the 1989 arcade game. Also unlike the 1989 game, the game is fairly enjoyable in single player. There still isn't any sort of delay time when you get knocked down so enemies near you when you try to get up will still easily attack you again, but it's not as punishing this time and doesn't seem to happen as frequent. Bosses are actually fun and seem to have some semblance of a legit attack strategy (well most of them anyway). Just like the 1989 game, the game is a lot more fun in mulitiplayer and much easier. The only major downside to this release is that its an update to the arcade version of Turtles in Time instead of the SNES version that had more levels and better boss choices. Despite its quirks, I'd say this remake gets a recommendation. It's a pretty fun game to play by yourself, and even more fun with friends.

Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: 1989 Arcade Game - XBLA (Review)

I was born in 1988, so around the time I was 5 I was unable to enjoy most of the craze that surrounded the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles outside of the classic cartoon. The biggest thing I missed out on was the 1989 arcade game. When it comes to Ninja Turtles nostalgia, nothing seems to top this particular game (apart from a another notable turtles video game) and that seems to have been part of the driving force behind this game's release on the X-Box live arcade back in 07 (in addition to being a tie-in with the TMNT movie that was out at the time.). Playing through it I found the game to okay, but mostly a clear sign that the beat em up genre hasn't aged very well...at all.

The game sends you through about 6 or 7 levels fighting hordes of enemies until you fight a boss and there are a lot of enemy hordes to deal with before the game is over. As an arcade title, the game was designed to basically suck quarters out of player's pockets and that was done by making the enemies cheap bastards. Enemy after enemy will give you a hard time, from pesky Foot Soldier gunners to robots that roll all over the screen. No matter how much you try dodge their attacks, you'll get hit...a lot. As you walk up to one and start beating the snot out of him, he'll suddenly, out of nowhere, land a lucky punch to your face, knocking you to the floor, in front of another enemy that beats you down before you even get up. And that's the main problem when playing this game: there's no small delay time when you get knocked down which means that any enemy near you when you try to regain yourself will easily attack you again, knocking you into the path of another enemy. Bosses have no real attack pattern and can break any combo you launch. This is only gets more annoying as you near the end, making the game a test of patience than a test of skill.

Playing the game in co-op is a fairly different experience. Not only does the game become pretty fun, it's also less frustrating than a single player game. This is mostly because every enemy on screen isn't attacking you at the same time, which gives you some breathing room. Not a lot of breathing room but its still an improvement over single player mode. Overall, I'd say this is a terrible single player game, but a pretty enjoyable multiplayer title. It's a pretty good example of nostalgia being a double edge sword.