Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles III:
The Manhattan Project
Nintendo Entertainment System
Nostalgia Factor:
Kids these days may never understand just how big the Ninja Turtles were in the late 80s/early 90s. I lived and breathed the Ninja Turtles. Posters on the walls, action figures scattered all over my room. I had the video games, I had the movies. I had a bunch of recorded episodes of the cartoon on VHS. I acted like the Turtles during recess. I quoted them constantly. I dreamed about what it would be like to meet them in real life. I even had an audio cassette tape of their "Coming out of Their Shells" music tour.
As you can imagine, I was very excited when I first learned that the NES was getting its very own new TMNT title, similar to the arcade game but made exclusively for the NES. I went out and got it almost as soon as it came out, and quickly fell in love with the game. I must have played it and beaten it dozens and dozens of times when I was a 10 year old boy. But then came the ill-fated day (as I have mentioned many times throughout this blog) when my mom sold all of my NES games so that she could get me a Sega Genesis. TMNT III was one of the games I had to say bye-bye to. I didn't even have it a full six months.
That was 1992. Let's fast forward alllllll the way to the mid 2010s. I found a copy of TMNT III at a used game store and all the memories of the game came crashing back to me. I had no choice but to buy it. So buy it I did. The game would sit on my shelf for several years, however, until now in 2020. Quarantined at home during the great Covid-19 scare, I had nothing to do but sit around and play video games. What better time to sift through my backlog and knock out a couple of game reviews? TMNT III was one of the first games I picked.
Would I still find this game as magical as I did in 1992? Let's find out.
Story:
The Turtles are enjoying a nice, relaxing Florida vacation when a disturbing report comes on their TV screen. Shredder has hijacked Manhattan, boosting it into the air using some kind of repulsor technology. He snags April O'Neill and challenges the Turtles to come rescue her and stop his nefarious plans.
Off the Turtles go to save the day!
Not exactly groundbreaking stuff here, but no one plays these old Turtles games for their storylines anyway.
Gameplay:
This game is simple to pick up and play, but difficult to master. Taking control of one of the Ninja Turtles, you must fight your way through eight different stages until you get to the end and defeat Shredder once and for all. You can play this game with the assistance of a second player, but for my playthrough I made it through the game all by myself.
Using the directional pad, you can move left and right and up and down on the game's field of play. You have two buttons for attacking: the jump button and the attack button. The attack button simply lashes out at your enemy with your Turtle's regular weapon. The jump button allows you to jump over enemies and obstacles, and also allows you to jump kick, which is one of the more useful attacks in the game. Hit the two buttons together and you launch into an extra powerful attack with a wide attack range. The downside to doing this is that it saps some of your health every time you use this attack. I only used it as a very last resort.
The attack I found myself using the most is one where you press the down button and the attack button at the same time. This launches the enemy over your head and into the air, where they fall to the ground and die. That's right: this attack kills your enemy in one hit. Why wouldn't anyone use this attack on the regular?
After fighting your way through each stage, you face off against a powerful boss character. Most of these bosses have patterns you can pick up on, which makes them fairly easy to beat. Your first time trying to play through this game, however, you will probably die a bunch of times squaring off against these bosses.
Most of the levels are pretty straightforward; all you do is fight fight fight your way to the end. But the game does throw a few wrinkles at you from time to time. There's a stage where you race across the water while fighting on hoverboards. There is a stage you fight on an elevator. There are all kinds of environmental things you have to avoid, like falling signs, deadly pits, mounted weapons, exploding pipes, and electrical beams. Even though the game tries, however, it is still fairly repetitive for the most part.
Graphics:
This game doesn't look like much by today's standards, but in 1992 this was as good as it could possibly get. The cinematic cutscenes at the beginning of the game perfectly capture the essence of the cartoon. All the Turtles are easily identifiable by their color schemes and have their own unique animations that go with their different weapon attacks. The bosses you encounter just ooze (pun intended) 90s nostalgia.
There are a wide variety of enemies for you to fight as the game goes on. Most of these enemies are just reskinned Foot Soldiers, but I like how there is a large variety of them to fight, each with their own specific attacks and move sets. I don't know why, but I always got excited to fight the white ones. The red ones with the spears, however, can eat a bag of a thousand dicks.
The game's stages all have their own unique look and feel. Whether you are fighting on the beaches of Florida, cruising the water on a hoverboard, battling atop a high bridge, battling through a dank sewer, or racing along a high speed conveyor belt while fighting enemies and dodging laser beams, you will notice that no two stages are alike. Considering this title's gameplay doesn't offer much variety, it is good that the stages are all so visually different.
Sound:
The game's music is very charming. Hearing it brings me back to a carefree time in my life when I was TMNT obsessed, and I had nothing to worry about but school and video games.
There aren't a whole lot of individual stage tracks that really stand out, but as a whole they do the job very well and lend a good deal to the game's charm. The remixed "classic" TMNT tracks are the game's bread and butter. You can't be my age (37) and not feel a certain tingling in your body when you hear these tunes. It's just impossible.
Overall:
I wasn't sure what to expect when I fired this game up. It had been SO long since I'd last played it, I was worried it wasn't going to be able to match the lofty nostalgia my heart had built up for the game.
I am glad to say that after all of these years, the game is still a lot of fun to play. Each new stage I'd open up, each new type of enemy I'd encounter, each new boss I'd take on brought back a ton of memories that I had completely forgotten about. This game is everything I loved about the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles in a nutshell. Fun, bright, colorful, action-packed, and filled with lots of memorable characters, settings, and music.
I do have to address a few of the game's flaws before I give you my final evaluation, however. First of all, the game is VERY repetitive. You fight enemies, fight more enemies, fight more enemies, and then move on to fight the boss of the stage. Really all you do this entire game is fight. I mean, the game is still fun to play, but I couldn't possibly imagine playing and beating this game over and over again like I did when I was a kid. I beat it once and that was enough for me.
Also, maybe this is just a me problem, but I found my hand hurting from the NES controller after I finished with this game. You may bring up that I play NES games with the classic controller all the time, so why am I only complaining about the controller now? I don't know. My hand didn't hurt after playing Super Mario Bros, Contra, Jackal, Blaster Master, Castlevania, Ninja Gaiden, any of those games. I think it only hurt after playing this game because it is so repetitive. You hit the same buttons and the same controls over and over again for hours at a time. I had a bump on the side of my finger that made me take a break from video games for a couple days after playing this. It was so bad!
Small gripes aside, this game is still a classic. It probably wouldn't rank in the top ten, top fifteen, or heck maybe even the top thirty of my favorite NES games of all time, but it is still one that I have awesome memories of and I look back on fondly.
Playing this game was a fun, challenging trip down memory lane. I loved this game so much as a kid, and now as an adult I still can't deny that it is an undeniably charming game. It is repetitive and by no means a perfect video game, and I certainly won't be playing it again for another 20 years, most likely. This isn't a game like Mario or Contra that I can pick up every couple years and have an amazing time with. But whenever I do play this game again it is going to be quite a treat for me. I look forward to that day.
Final Score:
B+
If you liked this review, check out some of my other video game reviews:
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