Turtle Power! Let's Play TMNT for the Game Boy

Why would Krang turn into a milk shake?

Nothing about this makes sense!!

I remember bragging a lot as a child that I could reach the GRAND TORTOISIAN FINALE

Yay! Turtle Power! Thanks for the LP Beowulf!

That spike cart dodging area in the last level really stands out in my memory for some reason. Presumably I had trouble with it?

Anyway, fun LP; looking forward to #2, which I also played/owned but remember even less about than #1.

Looking forward to Radical Rescue!

It is quite possibly the least appetizing beverage offering.

I love old school game manuals. Is there a thread dedicated to them? There must be, right?

Because obviously, when you vaporize things, they transform into a semi-nutritious slurry, and if you start with something pink (like a brain), then the resulting slurry would also be pink.

That I can't say, but I kept my Game Boy manual collection and I love inserting them into my LPs whenever possible.

Your wish is my command!

Did you think they’d only make ONE TMNT game for the Game Boy? Hah, you’re silly.


So, I actually only owned the first Turtles game back in the day. I’ve played bits and pieces of the other two via emulator over the years, but never with any seriousness. So really, the rest of this is going to be my first attempt at a blind LP. Should be fun, right?













(Random note, after I realized exactly how bad some of these turned out, I adjusted the background colors on my emulator to make the cutscenes look a little better going forward.)


This game gets a settings screen. Fancy. I’ll be playing on Normal mode, though Game Genie codes are in use so that a) I can actually complete the game and b) You get to see screenshots other than just me dying over and over.


Like before, I’ll be going through the turtles in what I think of as the “classic” order (Leo, Raph, Mike, Don—I have no idea why I think that).


Basic gameplay is unchanged: Move forward, knock out foot soldiers with single blows. Attack range is slightly more limited and timing is slightly different.

Jump-kicks are the same, but your turtle will do a flip animation during a big jump.


Shuriken-tossing is gone. Attacking when you’re crouched is just a lower attack.


These foot soldiers hang from a ledge and throw bombs at you at increasing arcs.


Pizzas are now obviously being carried by foot soldiers.


The area transition is a bit better animated, and you pop out from a manhole that you can watch transform into a bit of the background.


Also of note: The first game just froze when paused. This game has a proper pause screen.


Rockin’ the city, fightin’ the Foot.


This foot soldier pops out of a manhole and throws the cover at you.


In a nod to similar moments in the arcade game, you can fall in the sewer and make a pithy comment.


Dum-dee-dum, walking down the street, killing foot soldiers.


I noticed in this and later stages, there’s a tendency to have longer stretches without anything trying to kill you, which I suppose gives a little break but is kind of odd.


At the end, you automatically jump into a manhole.

It’s a trap! The foot soldier sets of a bomb, some rubble drops, and urgent music plays!


You have to jump and cling to this pipe as it explodes behind you. This introduces the hang/climb mechanic that becomes very important in later stages.


These foot soldiers hide, jump out, and slide at you.


Then we have a sorta-boss battle where a dozen foot soldiers leap at you in quick succession. They still all die in one hit.


Then we jump back up to the street, where…was that Splinter in the window of the pizza shop? That’s weird.


Rocksteady is our first real boss again, but this time he actually has some tricks. He’ll still shoot and charge at you, of course, but now he doesn’t suffer the knockback problem and his bullets are harder to knock out of the air. He’ll jump across the screen, and can’t be hurt while jumping.


And there’s a foot soldier at the window dropping magic potions on your head. Flower pots, maybe? I dunno. He moves from window to window, trying to stay above you, which limits your access to Rocksteady.


This is an indication of the difference in difficulty between this and the first game. I have a sneaking suspicion that people complained the first game was too short and too easy, and the developers said, “We can fix that!” And did so, crudely.


Completing the Act leads to a bonus game. Your health isn’t refilled automatically; instead it’s refilled based on how many pizzas you collect before they vanish.


And your turtle mugs for the camera when you finish. I give a lot of credit to the animators; they put a lot of cartoon expression into these sprites, especially considering the limitations of the Game Boy.

Next time: Act Two!

All of the sprites being completely in profile looks so weird in this game. I'd never really noticed that most games don't quite do that, with the sprites sort of diagonally facing the camera in most cases.

Yeah the turtle sprites in the second game are pretty awkward!

I had the first game as a kid as well, and I'm pretty sure I beat it. I was really bad at games back then. But the ending text is familiar to me, which makes me think I've seen it before.

I remember enjoying the hidden bonus games. I had one of those Jeff Rovin books (probably "How to Win at Game Boy Games") that I think outlined where some of them were. Incidentally it was fun for me to read those books and try to imagine the game he was describing. I remember doing that for another GB game, Cosmo Tank, which ended up not living up to my imagination.

Oh yeah and old manual copy IS the best, and especially Konami manual copy. I will always wonder if they had some corporate mandate to make them as zany as possible, and if anyone looked them over before sending them to print.

On that topic, some other TMNT games have that same flying robot enemy and the manuals still call it "Tubular Transport." When they first show up in TMNT II, they come out of one of those drill-pod Modules, which is what I think the name was really intended for. I bet it was some mix-up in localization.

Looking forward to reading the rest of this.

This game looks way better than

Oh, no wonder.

If you're saying 2 looks better than 1 because Konami, they're both Konami. Ultra Games was a company Konami created to get around Nintendo of America's stipulations regarding the number of third-party games that could be released for their consoles.

All the jumping animations look so awkward. Especially the jump-kick.

I didn't play this one as a precocious tot, and if I saw everything he all sideways and clumsily aerodynamic, I don't know if I would have even if I had the chance!

If Octotot was capable of saying no to Ninja Turtles, then he had much more discerning tastes than JTot.

This. Also, the Foot Soldier who is performing a slide-kick also looks awkward.

The Turtles' expressions are odd too. Like they have Precious Moments eyes, and their lips are pursed making them look either embarrassed or guilty about something.

You can tell they just drew some legs and grafted them onto the same upper bodies used in the standing/walking poses, which is why everyone looks awkwardly bent in half. They should have at least used the space for that fancy flip for a proper jump-kick pose instead.

This is the one I played a ton as a kid. Love that pizza time pause screen.

We’ll switch over to Raph for Act 2.


This is a skating stage, where you actually have a 3D range of motion. Foot soldiers come through on their own boards. This is a major gameplay change from the first Game Boy game, more in-line with what we see in the later NES and SNES games.


Raph has a similar reach to Leo (which is to say, not much at all) and a different attack noise. Supposedly he’s faster, but I’m not seeing it.


These little airships will drop bombs on you, and require 2-3 hits to destroy.


This is a common trope, but I kinda love the magic skateboard that follows you while you jump and is always under your feet when you land.


Some foot soldiers will speed onto the scene and then throw boomerangs at you.


Hey, it’s my old friends the helicopter-drones! They’ll lazy their way across the screen, briefly hang out, and then charge at you.


This truck will show up and drop a whole bunch of barrels you need to avoid.


Then we get foot soldiers with rocket launchers instead of boomerangs.


With a mighty crash, your skateboard is knocked away.


And here comes Bebop, the second boss as usual.

Like Rocksteady, he’s been upgraded. He shoots four diamonds at you, and jumps back and forth across the screen in a zig-zag pattern. Which hit, he’ll either respond with a kick or an uppercut, depending on where your turtle is.


Then we jump into a hole.


I wonder if I was doing something wrong for this minigame, because I couldn’t actually get past the pillars. I could only collect pizzas nearby with jump-kicks that stretched across them. I couldn’t get the far-right row at all. Weird.

(Later realization: Pressing both buttons together makes you slide-kick. Clearly that’s what I missed, here.)


We’ll switch over to Mikey for Act 3.


Act 3 has multiple levels! You can walk along the top or bottom, and each has its own set of foot soldiers.


Mikey has a comparable attack to Leo and Raph.


The bottom level has land mines.


The top has foot soldiers who rush on, throw three bombs, then rush off.


Then we walk in front of a warehouse, where mysterious buckets drop on us.

And then past a fleet of Mousers, just lying in wait. Some of them you have to walk past before they’ll emerge and become vulnerable.


A foot soldier with a whole pizza appears afterwards.


Then we get the obligatory elevator scene. This has the 3D range of floor again, and a zillion foot soldiers that jump at you in waves.


Hey! The foot soldiers do actual attacks at you if you let them!


Into the construction site, where we can climb up to higher levels. If you’re clinging and there’s space above you, you can flip up onto that platform.


Also featured: Mousers. Holy crap, a lot of Mousers.


I passed this exact same crane something like four times. This segment is actually really long. You pass through a number of these buildings repeatedly. The cynic in me wonders if they extended the length of the level by looping it.


These heli-drones use the same attack pattern as the first game.

This game is clearly harder than its predecessor, and not just because I don’t have it memorized: The first game didn’t have this kind of enemy swarming until the final level.


You can jump between these levels, and sometimes need to in order to proceed. (Though you still can’t move to the left—the game still force-scrolls to the right.) If you head up into this corner, there’s a foot soldier with a pizza box.

This is actually a major change, because there are segments of this level you don’t actually have to interact with. It’s a small thing, but the game isn’t a perfect straight line!


Then, the first new boss of this game: Krang in an AT-ST Walker.

He shoots missiles that come down three at a time from above. He flies around to stay out of reach, and then tries to stomp on you. He shoots lasers at ground level.


Hitting him safely seems to rely on getting behind him when he lands, then getting him once more when he starts launching the missiles.


Then we jump off a building, because why not?


This bonus game has top and bottom levels.

Next time: More Acts!

Wow, Krang as a mid-game boss. That's kind of irregular.

Is Krang's little bug-eye expression from hitting him, or does he just always look like that?

Also it looks like the Foot Soldiers are riding around on the same "TMNT"-branded skateboards that your turtle has. Heh.

I love this thread.

That seems to be the only expression Krang uses outside of his mech--honestly, he just seems badly-drawn in this game.

Did you notice that we keep skating by the TMNT building, too?

I’m switching to Donny for Act 4, because why not? Donny pretends to be slower and have slightly longer reach than the rest of the turtles. These differences are barely noticeable.


Aha, we’re following one of those tunneling ship-things! (Perhaps these are "tubular transports"? That would make sense.)


First, there’s the barrage of rolling rocks. Like a dozen of them.


Then the road turns downwards, and dodging rocks gets more difficult. But isn’t the animation lovely?


Then we have these fire-spouts. If you fall down most of these holes (probably because you got hit by the fire), you land on a land mine (which hits you again).


There are not one, but two secret pizza-holders down certain holes, though.


I’m really getting the distinct impression they looped the levels to make them longer. Like, here’s the exact same level a second time, with rocket launchers added. Yeah, that’s what it needed.


Better shots of Donny in action.