TMNT (created by Kevin Eastman and Peter Laird)
Re: TMNT (created by Kevin Eastman and Peter Laird)
Thad what are you doing posting in a TMNT thread while never having watched a single ep of Rise
Re: TMNT (created by Kevin Eastman and Peter Laird)
Aaaanyway. Per our discussion about "Would we have seen more games like the original NES game if it had been more polished?"
The closest thing it ever got to a direct sequel was this fucking thing, TMNT: The Manhattan Missions, which I was not aware of until a few days ago. It's a DOS game by the company that ported the first game to DOS and somehow got a second job after releasing a fucking unfinishable game.
But this one's more of a Prince of Persia deal.
You can play it on archive.org, though for some damn reason it launches the EGA version; you'll want to quit to DOS and then run tmnt2.exe to get the VGA version.
I tried to play it for about five minutes, kept pressing keys to try to figure out how to attack, and then gave up.
I don't think this is a very good game.
The closest thing it ever got to a direct sequel was this fucking thing, TMNT: The Manhattan Missions, which I was not aware of until a few days ago. It's a DOS game by the company that ported the first game to DOS and somehow got a second job after releasing a fucking unfinishable game.
But this one's more of a Prince of Persia deal.
You can play it on archive.org, though for some damn reason it launches the EGA version; you'll want to quit to DOS and then run tmnt2.exe to get the VGA version.
I tried to play it for about five minutes, kept pressing keys to try to figure out how to attack, and then gave up.
I don't think this is a very good game.
Re: TMNT (created by Kevin Eastman and Peter Laird)
good god that gameplay looks awful
but i do like the artwork
but i do like the artwork
Re: TMNT (created by Kevin Eastman and Peter Laird)
Yeah, it definitely copies PoP's elaborate animation.
Continuing on:
Yes! It did. The reason everybody bought it was that it was a TMNT game, but it was actually...I don't know if I'd go as far as "good", but interesting and, up to a point, fun to play.
And as far as its quality, you have to remember it in the context of its peers. It was better than most NES games, because there was a lot of absolute shit on the NES, but it wasn't up to Konami's usual standard (or Capcom's or Nintendo's). It was especially better than most licensed games, but not as good as the best ones (say, TMNT 2 and 3, or Capcom's Disney games).
Considering it in the context of when it came out, it looks a little bit better, but not that much. It was released the same month as Mega Man 2, a month after Ninja Gaiden, a year after Castlevania 2 and SMB2, 3 months before DuckTales, and, perhaps most notably, 4 months before the TMNT arcade game.
The biggest problem with the exploration is how many of the optional sewers and buildings are just fucking dead-ends with nothing much useful at the end. Like, the first time you go through that sewer in area 1 that has an invincibility powerup at the end, that's pretty exciting, but...there's not really any point to it other than "here is one of the few places in the game where you get an invincibility powerup." There's that two-story building in area 1 that has a pretty cool two-floor design and a half-pizza at the end that you can see as soon as you walk in but have to go all the way around the building to get, and that's conceptually cool but pretty pointless once you realize the next sewer has a slice right at the beginning and you can just repeatedly leave and re-enter to fill up everybody's health.
Later areas are worse; there are some straight "what the fuck was the point of that?" buildings in area 3 that just take you in a circle and don't give you anything interesting. Area 5 pretty much fucks with you on purpose, giving you two possible locations for the Technodrome so that any time you play it's a coin flip whether the cave you go into is just going to dead-end. At least they're short.
And I'm not averse to exploring just for its own sake, but here it's just not fun. If the combat and platforming were more fun and the rewards at the end of optional areas were better, that would change everything.
And I played through the whole thing the other day on the Cowabunga Collection (making copious use of the rewind button) and on top of the problems caused by ineptitude (the buggy underwater level, the shitty jumps) there's a nontrivial amount of game that's just straight-up NES-vintage cruelty. Enemies just offscreen after you complete a jump, shit like that.
And the fucking Technodrome, man. The final corridor in particular. As it happens I'd just read a post by Parish saying the way to get through it is to hoard and spam scrolls, and that helped me a good deal, but still, I was rewinding like a motherfucker.
And then you hit Shredder, and if you bump into him he takes about half a health bar, and also he has a gun that one-hit kills you. Lordy.
Continuing on:
Friday wrote:The thing about the first NES TMNT game is that it's weirdly charming despite its glaring flaws. I think a "good" version of the game with cleaner physics and such could have really made an impact. Hell, even with all the jank TMNT 1 for NES still lives in the heads of a lot of people our age. Part of that is due to just how popular TMNT was in general, of course, but even so I think the game had its own appeal.
Yes! It did. The reason everybody bought it was that it was a TMNT game, but it was actually...I don't know if I'd go as far as "good", but interesting and, up to a point, fun to play.
And as far as its quality, you have to remember it in the context of its peers. It was better than most NES games, because there was a lot of absolute shit on the NES, but it wasn't up to Konami's usual standard (or Capcom's or Nintendo's). It was especially better than most licensed games, but not as good as the best ones (say, TMNT 2 and 3, or Capcom's Disney games).
Considering it in the context of when it came out, it looks a little bit better, but not that much. It was released the same month as Mega Man 2, a month after Ninja Gaiden, a year after Castlevania 2 and SMB2, 3 months before DuckTales, and, perhaps most notably, 4 months before the TMNT arcade game.
Walking around an overworld/city with lots of buildings you can enter and explore for cool goodies sort of hits that Zelda/Exploration itch, and the platforming is basically just Ninja Gaiden, but worse. Clean up the bad jumps, hitboxes, etc, and you could have easily had a famous classic instead of an infamous one.
The biggest problem with the exploration is how many of the optional sewers and buildings are just fucking dead-ends with nothing much useful at the end. Like, the first time you go through that sewer in area 1 that has an invincibility powerup at the end, that's pretty exciting, but...there's not really any point to it other than "here is one of the few places in the game where you get an invincibility powerup." There's that two-story building in area 1 that has a pretty cool two-floor design and a half-pizza at the end that you can see as soon as you walk in but have to go all the way around the building to get, and that's conceptually cool but pretty pointless once you realize the next sewer has a slice right at the beginning and you can just repeatedly leave and re-enter to fill up everybody's health.
Later areas are worse; there are some straight "what the fuck was the point of that?" buildings in area 3 that just take you in a circle and don't give you anything interesting. Area 5 pretty much fucks with you on purpose, giving you two possible locations for the Technodrome so that any time you play it's a coin flip whether the cave you go into is just going to dead-end. At least they're short.
And I'm not averse to exploring just for its own sake, but here it's just not fun. If the combat and platforming were more fun and the rewards at the end of optional areas were better, that would change everything.
And I played through the whole thing the other day on the Cowabunga Collection (making copious use of the rewind button) and on top of the problems caused by ineptitude (the buggy underwater level, the shitty jumps) there's a nontrivial amount of game that's just straight-up NES-vintage cruelty. Enemies just offscreen after you complete a jump, shit like that.
And the fucking Technodrome, man. The final corridor in particular. As it happens I'd just read a post by Parish saying the way to get through it is to hoard and spam scrolls, and that helped me a good deal, but still, I was rewinding like a motherfucker.
And then you hit Shredder, and if you bump into him he takes about half a health bar, and also he has a gun that one-hit kills you. Lordy.
Re: TMNT (created by Kevin Eastman and Peter Laird)
When you actually lay out how a lot of that works, it's easy to see how some of it just suffers from Ahead of Its Time and other parts of just seem like a lack of playtesting. That's where that fascinating what if comes in, because a story based turtle game in a semi-open city that let's players explore seems like a pretty good concept. Though a pure single-player experience seems like an uphill journey for a series whose main focus is on four dudes who are brothers and best friends and do everything together
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Re: TMNT (created by Kevin Eastman and Peter Laird)
Yeah, I was thinking about that. And I think in terms of game design, the two most fundamental facts about the TMNT are:
1. There are four of them;
2. Each has a unique weapon.
That each weapon is unique is important (though IIRC there are games where they all play identically; I think TMNT 2 on NES is one), but more important is that all four signature weapons are for close-range combat.
So off the bat you can rule out a couple genres -- you wouldn't want a TMNT shooter, for example, or a TMNT point-and-click adventure game. (Though you could incorporate elements of those other genres into a TMNT game. Like have a shooter level where you're throwing shurikens or flying the blimp or something.)
I really do think it was inevitable that their defining games would be co-op brawlers. If Konami hadn't done it, somebody else would have, and if the first game hadn't been good, somebody else would have tried it again later.
It didn't have to be a 2.5D brawler, necessarily; it could have been something that looked more like, say, Ninja Crusaders, or Altered Beast, or the platforming sections of Double Dragon 2. But having another axis to move on is probably the best way of handling 4 playable characters plus enemies sharing a screen.
So to that end I think the arcade game really was the most perfect possible fit for the license. And it sure didn't hurt that it was good.
But there were other options. Especially back in the days where 4-player games were prohibitive on consoles and handhelds.
TMNT for NES is an example that's fascinating but whose reach exceeds its grasp.
TMNT 3: Radical Rescue for Game Boy fares a lot better. It's a mini-Metroidvania that treats each turtle's unique weapon as the unlockable abilities you use to progress through the environment -- you start with just Michelangelo and have to rescue the other three Turtles, and each one can use his weapon to progress to new areas you weren't previously able to reach.
And then of course there's Tournament Fighters, in its three different incarnations. I wouldn't say a fighting game is the best fit for the Turtles, but it makes a certain amount of sense; they were all the rage in the mid-'90s and it's a way of expanding the playable roster to include the Turtles' extremely large supporting cast.
I can think of other genres you could slot the Turtles into, too. Maybe an Arkham-style game that alternates between brawling and more stealth-based combat (play up the "ninja" part), with different Turtles suited to different missions (obviously Donnie's the one doing all the hacking minigames).
I don't really see that as likely to happen, though. There's not really any reason to make a single-player TMNT game anymore, unless it's a cell phone game. I figure the future of the franchise in games probably looks a lot like the last couple -- either a straight-up retro throwback like Shredder's Revenge, or an attempt to modernize the co-op brawler formula like Mutants in Manhattan. (Which I hear wasn't very good, but "Platinum does a TMNT game" sure sounds good on paper, and I wouldn't be surprised if somebody took another crack at the formula sometime.)
1. There are four of them;
2. Each has a unique weapon.
That each weapon is unique is important (though IIRC there are games where they all play identically; I think TMNT 2 on NES is one), but more important is that all four signature weapons are for close-range combat.
So off the bat you can rule out a couple genres -- you wouldn't want a TMNT shooter, for example, or a TMNT point-and-click adventure game. (Though you could incorporate elements of those other genres into a TMNT game. Like have a shooter level where you're throwing shurikens or flying the blimp or something.)
I really do think it was inevitable that their defining games would be co-op brawlers. If Konami hadn't done it, somebody else would have, and if the first game hadn't been good, somebody else would have tried it again later.
It didn't have to be a 2.5D brawler, necessarily; it could have been something that looked more like, say, Ninja Crusaders, or Altered Beast, or the platforming sections of Double Dragon 2. But having another axis to move on is probably the best way of handling 4 playable characters plus enemies sharing a screen.
So to that end I think the arcade game really was the most perfect possible fit for the license. And it sure didn't hurt that it was good.
But there were other options. Especially back in the days where 4-player games were prohibitive on consoles and handhelds.
TMNT for NES is an example that's fascinating but whose reach exceeds its grasp.
TMNT 3: Radical Rescue for Game Boy fares a lot better. It's a mini-Metroidvania that treats each turtle's unique weapon as the unlockable abilities you use to progress through the environment -- you start with just Michelangelo and have to rescue the other three Turtles, and each one can use his weapon to progress to new areas you weren't previously able to reach.
And then of course there's Tournament Fighters, in its three different incarnations. I wouldn't say a fighting game is the best fit for the Turtles, but it makes a certain amount of sense; they were all the rage in the mid-'90s and it's a way of expanding the playable roster to include the Turtles' extremely large supporting cast.
I can think of other genres you could slot the Turtles into, too. Maybe an Arkham-style game that alternates between brawling and more stealth-based combat (play up the "ninja" part), with different Turtles suited to different missions (obviously Donnie's the one doing all the hacking minigames).
I don't really see that as likely to happen, though. There's not really any reason to make a single-player TMNT game anymore, unless it's a cell phone game. I figure the future of the franchise in games probably looks a lot like the last couple -- either a straight-up retro throwback like Shredder's Revenge, or an attempt to modernize the co-op brawler formula like Mutants in Manhattan. (Which I hear wasn't very good, but "Platinum does a TMNT game" sure sounds good on paper, and I wouldn't be surprised if somebody took another crack at the formula sometime.)
Re: TMNT (created by Kevin Eastman and Peter Laird)
The easiest way to combine the original with the brawlers would probably be something like River City Ransom, where the turtles can explore NYC streets and sewers while leveling up and following unique tech trees.
A tactics style game or RPG would also be fascinating takes, with the player forming a party of characters who fighting styles compliment each other
Could probably also make a Turtles management sim game where the player takes on the role of Splinter, training his turtles to be able to take turf in a New York City overrun with mutants and The Foot
A tactics style game or RPG would also be fascinating takes, with the player forming a party of characters who fighting styles compliment each other
Could probably also make a Turtles management sim game where the player takes on the role of Splinter, training his turtles to be able to take turf in a New York City overrun with mutants and The Foot
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Re: TMNT (created by Kevin Eastman and Peter Laird)
Thad wrote:There's not really any reason to make a single-player TMNT game anymore, unless it's a cell phone game.
People who want to play cool TMNT games? Honestly you cold do almost anything and it would be fun as long as it's well-done. The Riddler here has some good ideas.
Maybe you meant "without a (4+) multiplayer option", in which case, okay, I guess so. Not having a multiplayer option at all in a turtles game in 2022 does seem a bit awkward.
Re: TMNT (created by Kevin Eastman and Peter Laird)
The Riddler wrote:The easiest way to combine the original with the brawlers would probably be something like River City Ransom, where the turtles can explore NYC streets and sewers while leveling up and following unique tech trees.
Yeah, I think the GBA game based on the '07 movie was like that but I only played a little of it.
A tactics style game or RPG would also be fascinating takes, with the player forming a party of characters who fighting styles compliment each other
And that would be another good way to give the massive cast of characters an opportunity to shine.
They could have definitely done something with the whole toys-to-life thing, too, though on balance it's for the best that that fad fizzled.
Re: TMNT (created by Kevin Eastman and Peter Laird)
I broke my "No Mackeys" rule and listened to the Cowabunga Collection episode of Retronauts, and I'm glad I did! Well, mostly. It's still a Bob Mackey episode, which means it opens with ten minutes of going around the table and asking everyone how they first encountered the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. (Spoiler alert: it's "I was a child in the 1980s.")
But the meat of the episode is Chris Kohler, who worked on the compilation, talking about what went into it, and in particular the process of putting together the absolutely staggering amount of behind-the-scenes material.
As impressive as the collection is for how many games are in it and how well they're presented, the thing that impresses me more is all the development docs it includes. I'd buy a book of this stuff.
This is goddamn wonderful, and there are hundreds of pages of it. I think the Cowabunga Collection is worth buying just for that.
(Get used to listening to a variation on, for some reason, the 2003 cartoon theme song for a very long time while looking at it, though.)
But the meat of the episode is Chris Kohler, who worked on the compilation, talking about what went into it, and in particular the process of putting together the absolutely staggering amount of behind-the-scenes material.
As impressive as the collection is for how many games are in it and how well they're presented, the thing that impresses me more is all the development docs it includes. I'd buy a book of this stuff.
This is goddamn wonderful, and there are hundreds of pages of it. I think the Cowabunga Collection is worth buying just for that.
(Get used to listening to a variation on, for some reason, the 2003 cartoon theme song for a very long time while looking at it, though.)
Re: TMNT (created by Kevin Eastman and Peter Laird)
Oh my God I just watched an episode of the 2012 series where Fish-Face says "I will give you bass-to-mouth" and wow that far surpasses "fingerprints" as the filthiest thing I've ever seen sneak its way into a children's cartoon.
Re: TMNT (created by Kevin Eastman and Peter Laird)
Looking at 8-bit TMNT things, I also happened to run across a fan game based on the NES version of the arcade game, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles - Recolored and Extended.
Haven't played it -- still got plenty of TMNT to play through on the Cowabunga Collection -- but it looks fun.
A quick thumb through suggests they've kept the basic shapes of the NES graphics but, as the name implies, expanded the palette. There are some new stages, April and Casey are playable (I'm not sure at a glance if you can play through the whole game with either of them or just select portions of it), the Turtles have some moves from later games, and...there are cutscenes that lift dialogue wholesale from the first movie. I should give it a closer look one of these days.
Haven't played it -- still got plenty of TMNT to play through on the Cowabunga Collection -- but it looks fun.
A quick thumb through suggests they've kept the basic shapes of the NES graphics but, as the name implies, expanded the palette. There are some new stages, April and Casey are playable (I'm not sure at a glance if you can play through the whole game with either of them or just select portions of it), the Turtles have some moves from later games, and...there are cutscenes that lift dialogue wholesale from the first movie. I should give it a closer look one of these days.
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Re: TMNT (created by Kevin Eastman and Peter Laird)
I'm used to seeing Bebop and/or Rocksteady fill in as the boss of the first level but props to this one to putting a twist on the formula by having them be the first boss, but in their pre-mutated human forms.
Re: TMNT (created by Kevin Eastman and Peter Laird)
And standing in for the thugs that mug April in the beginning of the first movie!
Re: TMNT (created by Kevin Eastman and Peter Laird)
Another entry for the "Have they used the Archie Comics Turtles characters in anything else?" question: Hothead appears in season 5 of the '12 series (played by Mark Hamill!). That's after Armaggon showed up in season 4 (and even got a toy). So that's a couple of instances of actual new material since the Viacom buyout (in addition to reissued material like the Archie reprints and the Cowabunga Collection).
Re: TMNT (created by Kevin Eastman and Peter Laird)
6 episodes into TMNT '012 season 5. It's pretty good!
I think my favorite bit is, there's a scene where the Turtles are kicking back and playing games and stuff, and Leo comes out and bawls them out and tells them they need to be out trying to find the bad guys. He gets right up in Raph's face, and Raph...tells him okay, they'll go do it.
Afterward, Mikey complains about how Leo's being a hardass, and Raph responds, "This is hard for him. He's taking Splinter's death the hardest of all of us."
This is the kind of empathetic, emotionally mature response Raph would never have given in season 1. Character growth!
It reminds me of the Laird/Lawson comic about 20 years ago that depicted the Turtles around age 40; Raph's grown up into a pretty laid-back guy, while Leo's an increasingly obsessive loner, and in one role-reversal scene I particularly liked Raph takes Leo aside and tells him he needs to do something about his anger or he's going to get himself killed.
And that makes fundamental sense as their respective character arcs. Raphael is intense because he's a teenager. Leonardo is intense because he's a grownup. Raph grows out of it; Leo only becomes moreso.
The biggest problem with season 5 is that major continuity issues are starting to creep in. In episode 3, they get the medallion that controls Hothead but can't figure out how to use it, so Tigerclaw succeeds in recovering it. Mikey jumps off a moving train to escape, and is badly injured; at the end of the episode he needs to lean on Raph in order to stand. In episode 4, he's fine and his injuries are never mentioned again; when Karai shows up Leo lectures her that she's too injured to fight but nobody says anything about Mikey. And when they get the medallion again, they're able to use it to control Hothead immediately; no trouble like they had before, no explanation for why things are different this time.
Then in episode 5 Michelangelo is apparently vaporized, and in episode 6 he comes back. When he saves Leonardo and Donatello from Dregg's brig, they respectively shout, "Mikey!" and "You're alive!" Problem: Donatello already knew Mikey was alive; he saw him come back in an earlier scene. (Leo had already been captured by then and wasn't there, but Donny got captured after Mikey's return.)
Re-watching the scene where Mikey came back, I think I see what happened: Donatello lunges at Newtralizer, who knocks him on his face; you never see him get up, he's still lying face-down in the next few shots where you see him. Michelangelo reappears; everybody gasps! Oh my fuck! Act break, go to commercial, come back and there's a tableau of the other good guys, including Donny, standing behind Mikey and looking stunned.
I suspect that the script indicated that Donny was to be knocked out and never see Mikey during that scene, but for whatever reason that act break fucked things up in the storyboarding phase. They storyboarded through the act break, Donatello still unconscious, and then they went to lunch and came back to do the next act later, or the next act was handled by another group, or something that interrupted the process so that they didn't realize Donatello was supposed to be knocked out for the remainder of the fight and never see Michelangelo.
Anyway. Despite some pretty big and jarring continuity errors, I like season 5 a lot so far, and I haven't even gotten to Usagi Yojimbo or Savanti Romero yet.
I think my favorite bit is, there's a scene where the Turtles are kicking back and playing games and stuff, and Leo comes out and bawls them out and tells them they need to be out trying to find the bad guys. He gets right up in Raph's face, and Raph...tells him okay, they'll go do it.
Afterward, Mikey complains about how Leo's being a hardass, and Raph responds, "This is hard for him. He's taking Splinter's death the hardest of all of us."
This is the kind of empathetic, emotionally mature response Raph would never have given in season 1. Character growth!
It reminds me of the Laird/Lawson comic about 20 years ago that depicted the Turtles around age 40; Raph's grown up into a pretty laid-back guy, while Leo's an increasingly obsessive loner, and in one role-reversal scene I particularly liked Raph takes Leo aside and tells him he needs to do something about his anger or he's going to get himself killed.
And that makes fundamental sense as their respective character arcs. Raphael is intense because he's a teenager. Leonardo is intense because he's a grownup. Raph grows out of it; Leo only becomes moreso.
The biggest problem with season 5 is that major continuity issues are starting to creep in. In episode 3, they get the medallion that controls Hothead but can't figure out how to use it, so Tigerclaw succeeds in recovering it. Mikey jumps off a moving train to escape, and is badly injured; at the end of the episode he needs to lean on Raph in order to stand. In episode 4, he's fine and his injuries are never mentioned again; when Karai shows up Leo lectures her that she's too injured to fight but nobody says anything about Mikey. And when they get the medallion again, they're able to use it to control Hothead immediately; no trouble like they had before, no explanation for why things are different this time.
Then in episode 5 Michelangelo is apparently vaporized, and in episode 6 he comes back. When he saves Leonardo and Donatello from Dregg's brig, they respectively shout, "Mikey!" and "You're alive!" Problem: Donatello already knew Mikey was alive; he saw him come back in an earlier scene. (Leo had already been captured by then and wasn't there, but Donny got captured after Mikey's return.)
Re-watching the scene where Mikey came back, I think I see what happened: Donatello lunges at Newtralizer, who knocks him on his face; you never see him get up, he's still lying face-down in the next few shots where you see him. Michelangelo reappears; everybody gasps! Oh my fuck! Act break, go to commercial, come back and there's a tableau of the other good guys, including Donny, standing behind Mikey and looking stunned.
I suspect that the script indicated that Donny was to be knocked out and never see Mikey during that scene, but for whatever reason that act break fucked things up in the storyboarding phase. They storyboarded through the act break, Donatello still unconscious, and then they went to lunch and came back to do the next act later, or the next act was handled by another group, or something that interrupted the process so that they didn't realize Donatello was supposed to be knocked out for the remainder of the fight and never see Michelangelo.
Anyway. Despite some pretty big and jarring continuity errors, I like season 5 a lot so far, and I haven't even gotten to Usagi Yojimbo or Savanti Romero yet.
Re: TMNT (created by Kevin Eastman and Peter Laird)
Also they do a scene where April telekinetically controls some water like that other Mae Whitman character in that other Nickelodeon cartoon and I understood that reference!
Re: TMNT (created by Kevin Eastman and Peter Laird)
Thad wrote:like that other Mae Whitman character in that other Nickelodeon cartoon
Re: TMNT (created by Kevin Eastman and Peter Laird)
Thad wrote:I understood that reference!
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