Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles commiseration thread

[Zycrow]

I have a list of NES and Famicom games that I'm working on beating this year and one of them is the original Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. I've had this one since I was a kid (my copy is actually one I bought from the rental store in my town growing up, and it's still in the clamshell box from that place), but I've never actually beaten it without using Game Genie.

So today I set out on that journey. I made it all the way to the Technodrome stage, where the final meat grinder hallway pulped most of my turtles repeatedly. I made it to Shredder twice before running out of continues, and both times with only enough life on Don to take one hit and then it was over. I know the trick is to lure Shredder into the corner and whack him as he leaps up, but he leapt up an angle that was just enough to clip me...and that was all she wrote.

I'll be trying again soon but in the meantime, I had to vent somewhere where someone would undoubtedly understand... 

[nerdynebraskan]

I actually beat TMNT for the first time a few weeks ago. Are you talking about the final hallway with the laser/jetpack guys? I actually found that to be one of the easiest parts of that brutal Technodrome stage. You'll want to use a high-damage turtle like Raph or Don, so you can destroy the mini-helicopter things in one hit. The jetpack guys there are actually much easier than they are elsewhere in the stage; just edge to the right and wait for them to come onscreen. They'll take one potshot at you, you duck, and then they'll back away offscreen and disappear.

I actually killed Shredder on my first try. If you can get some scrolls (there are some in the stage, and there's not much need to use them all in the stage), just blast him from across the screen. He goes down quickly.

[Zycrow]

That all sounds easy in print, but I'll have to see if I can actually pull it off next time I take that game off the shelf. I know the laser troopers won't bother you in the very last part of that hallway (the bottleneck part), but it seemed there was very little way to avoid them in the wider areas. I'll have to try the edging forward technique next time.

I had some scrolls the first time I got through the stage, but I can't remember why I didn't use them. 

Anyway meanwhile I'm working on another Konami classic, Goonies II. Much lower on the sliding scale of difficulty and frustration. 

[L___E___T]

Heck I struggle to get past the bomb stage most runs

[P]

I also had this since I was a kid, but never got further than the airport (stage 4). Mainly because I failed 9 times of 10 on some of those weird jumps in the third stage (primarily the one in the sewer).

I played it for the first time in a long while and could surprisingly easily get to the airport. But since I don't know my way around the airport it's just confusing and the enemies are already much stronger than before.

[L___E___T]

I don't get this game sometimes.   I just played through stage 1 perfectly and the first part of stage 2 - then I couldn't make the jump.  Not once, but at least a half dozen times.  I have done it plenty of times before, but on this run, nope, no dice.  I tried the usual 'knacks' but it wasn't happening so I switched it off.

If any game was in need of an improvement hack, it's this title.  I love the graphics, the sound effects and the gameplay but it's riddled with inexcusable flaws.  Considering Contra is so finely polished, I don't understand how this game ended up like this.

[nerdynebraskan]

I feel your pain with the jetpack jerks, Zycrow. And I was referring to that last leg, where they are shockingly easy. Until that point, and afterward with that mini-boss one right before Shredder, they are a pain in the ass. I just try to attack them quickly and dispose of them without taking too much damage. (And then I won't backtrack and risk respawning them.) I think I did occasionally retreat when they took me by surprise, because they are much slower than your turtles' max speed.

I don't know if there is an easy way to deal with them. I'm definitely someone who attacks them with Don because of his range and higher damage, just to get through them a little bit faster. The good news is that the level itself isn't too hard to memorize the layout of, and pretty much all of the other enemies can be easy disposed of one way or another. That means you can kind of save your best shots for dealing with the jetpack jerks. I'd definitely save at least 10 scrolls for the area after the last hallway. Two or three will make quick work of the jetpack jerk miniboss, and six or seven are enough to dust off the Shredder.

[Zycrow]

I don't get this game sometimes.   I just played through stage 1 perfectly and the first part of stage 2 - then I couldn't make the jump.  Not once, but at least a half dozen times.  I have don it plenty of times but this run, no dice.  I tried the usual 'knacks' but nope, not happening so I switched it off.

If any games was in need of an improvement hack, it's this game.  I love the graphics, the sound effects and the gameplay but it riddled with inexcusable flaws.  Considering Contra is so finely polished, I don't understand how this game ended up like this.

One reason I'm bothering playing it all are the graphics and sound. They're just wonderful, and the overall feel of the game is, I think, totally appropriate for Ninja Turtles. It's just got that all-too-common flaw of many NES games of the difficulty being at a level where it's hard, but it's hard because it's designed poorly, rather than the challenge being designed tightly. When you lose you feel cheated. If I don't get to the end of Contra I feel that I didn't because I wasn't good enough, not because the game was stacked against me.

But yeah without knowing too much about Konami's team from those days, I wonder how many designers they shared between games. So many of the Konami games have similar feel between each other. The nice thing is that it makes even the crappier ones (like TMNT) fun to play even in the face of many flaws.

[L___E___T]

I love it too, but yes it's unusual. I know that the same team designed and made Akumajou Dracula, Akumajou Densetsu and Akumajou Dracula SFC (Castlevania 4) - though I can't recall exactly if they did Simon's Quest as well.   I think Konami were the best when it comes to Famicom games overall - the graphics, wide range of play styles, the sound expansion chips.  Capcom were great of course and brilliant with licenses, but I think Konami were the kings back then, sorry Nintendo...

[fcgamer]

I had this game as a child as well, and I always enjoyed it.  The next turtles game I would get would be part III, which I had gotten as a kid for my birthday several years later -- I had always wanted part II, but even when the NES was dying, all of the shops carried part II for full price, never discounting it and then finally the stock disappeared.  I never had that one until much later.

As a kid, I had some troubles with the bombs in the dam, then later in the city.  But I would keep working my way through the game (we never owned a Game Genie or cheat device back then either), and before I knew it, I could make it to the airport and the last world every time I would run through this game.  The caves would always kick my ass though, and I might have made it to the technodrome once or twice back in the day. 

Only later did I throw in the game again in more recent years to find that not only could I get to the technodrome, I could make my way to Shredder and then win the game, so many years later.  It was such a good feeling to finally be able to close this chapter of gaming.