Game:

Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (1989)

Duration: 36:11

458 views

2

Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (c) 1989 Konami.

Between one and four players can choose to play either Leonardo (blue, katana blades); Raphael (red, sais); Michaelangelo (orange, nunchakas); or Donatello (purple, bo staff) as the infamous turtles fight against the might of Shredder's army to rescue April O'Neil and Splinter; before a final confrontation with their arch-enemies Krang and The Shredder. Turtles was a superb use of its license and perfectly captured the spirit of both the comic-book and cartoon series upon which it was based. New players could join the game at any time.

- TRIVIA -

The UK title for this game (as well as both the comics and cartoon series), "Teenage Mutant Hero Turtles", replaced the original 'ninja' of the title with the less threatening 'Hero'. This is because the Conservative British government of the time wouldn't allow ANY 'children's product' to include the word 'ninja' at any point during its content, arguing that to do so would encourage the children of this fine country to use violence against each other.

This game is known in Japan as "Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles - Super Kame Ninja".

The pizza-obsessed turtles originally appeared in a black and white comic book that debuted in 1984. They were so popular that they immediately spawned imitators with colorful names such as 'Armor-Plated Adolescent Aardvarks!' and 'Adolescent Radioactive Black Belt Hamsters'. A cartoon series based upon the Turtles' adventures debuted in the United States on the CBS television network in 1987 and was a huge success, it was subsequently sold to TV stations around the world and the rest is history.

The first names of turtles; Michaelangelo, Raphael, Leonardo, and Donatello, are the names of Italian Renaissance artists who lived between 1386 and 1564. Three of those artists had full names which were respectively Michaelangelo Buonariti, Raphael Sanzio and Leonardo Da Vinci; but as for Donatello, that was his only name.

There were several distinct versions of this game available in the arcade, but the four player dedicated cabinet was the most common by far. There were also two player versions, but they are much harder to come by. The TMNT dedicated cabinet was fairly large and had an over-sized control panel (to accommodate four players). The sides were decorated with full side-art showing April O'Neal and several of the turtles in a city scene. The marquee shows a city scene with all the turtles and a live action version of April O'Neal. Frankly they just should have drawn her instead of using a photograph, her hair is just awful. The control panel has a city scene similar to the one on the marquee and has four joysticks (one for each player), each of which is a different color. These machines all came equipped with 25'' open frame monitors, although you will sometimes run into one with a different size screen, these are almost always conversions of other titles. Moving on to the interior of the machine, the game itself runs on a JAMMA compatible circuit board. The board itself will plug into a JAMMA wiring harness, but it has a second harness to accommodate the controls for players three and four. The games "The Simpsons", "Sunset Riders", and "Bucky O'Hare" are fully compatible with this extended harness, and will plug directly into a TMNT cabinet without modification. One thing that you may notice is that the jump and attack buttons seem backwards of what they would logically be, but you get used to it quickly.

In the ending epilogue, Konami spell Dimension X : 'Dimention X'.

- UPDATES -

The US version is slightly different, it has the "Winners Don't Use Drugs" screen.

Check out the sites at:

http://amit.dabydeen.com

Other Statistics