Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles was very popular during the late 80’s and the early 90’s and there were so many exciting games that many fans go to enjoy when they were younger. The original NES Ninja Turtles game had proved to be very difficult while Turtles in Time was a arcade smash hit that many people still enjoy to this day. When it came down to 16 bit classics many people had a lot of fun with the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles games that were released for various consoles including Super Nintendo and Sega Genesis. Even though, some of the games in the TMNT series were generally side scrolling beat em up titles at one point there was a head to head fighting title released in the early 90’s for home based consoles. During the early 90’s Konami had developed a fighting called Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles Tournament Fighters which was released in 1993. After Ninja Turtles Tournament Fighters was released it was made available for multiple game consoles including the NES, Super Nintendo and the Sega Genesis.
The cool thing about Ninja Turtles Tournament Fighters was that each version was slightly different depending on which console someone had. The NES version of TMNT Tournament Fighters had included Hothead from the comic book series while the Sega Genesis version had featured April O’ Neal as a playable character unlike the SNES version. Also, both the NES and the Genesis version featured Casey Jones as a playable character unlike the Super Nintendo edition. Its generally arguable on which version was the best but some people would probably argue that the graphics for the SNES version was among the best. The story mode for the SNES version focused on Leonardo, Michaelangelo, Raphael and Donatello trying to rescue April O’ Neal along with Splinter after being kidnapped. One of the main villains in the SNES version that players had to deal with Karai who was the Leader of Shredder Elite.
The story battle was probably one of the best game modes for the SNES version of TMNT Tournament Fighters. In story battle players got to choose one of the four turtles and defeat various opponents incluidng Cyber Shredder, War Asks, Wingnut and Armaggon who were also playable characters in versus mode. Also the boss battles with Karaoke and Rat King proved to be tough depending on how good one was at this game. If one owned the Genesis version of TMNT Tournament Fighters the plot was almost entirely different and players had to deal with Krang as the main villain of the game in Dimension X. Along with having nice story modes TNMT Tournament Fighters had great soundtracks for the SNES which some people would argue are overrated. The “Sewer” soundtrack was probably the best theme for the NES version of the game while the BGM for April O’ Neal’s stage was awesome.
Other than story battle the versus mode and the tournament mode were great additions to the game which allowed people to get many hours of gameplay out of it. However, some might argue that the tournament mode for the Genesis version was too difficult if not impossible to beat due to the fact that they are expected to defeat at least eighty consecutive opponents in a row. While each version of TMNT Tournament Fighters have its share of differences that make one stand out from the other the concept for the game itself was pretty cool because it stepped outside the beat em up genre that the series was generally accustomed too during the time. The early 90’s was a great time to be a fan of the TMNT series because even though it began around the mid 80’s it was still fresh and there were many awesome games that was released for various home consoles along with arcade centers worldwide during that period.
Gaming Hearts Collection 