Out of the four games that I bought along with my Nintendo Famicom back when I was a kind, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles II: The Arcade Game was my favorite. I spent hours and hours on this game but I think it was too hard for me to beat when I was younger. Now that I’ve had more video game experience, I decided to revisit this classic.

 

 

 

Let’s see how well this game held up!

 

Game Basics

Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles II: The Arcade game is a hack and slash game developed and published by Konami. It is actually a port of the first Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles arcade game. In this game, you can play with one or two players (co-op) and choose between the four Ninja Turtles (Leonardo, Donatello, Michaelangelo, and Raphael) as they chase after Shredder and the Foot Clan, who have kidnapped news reporter April O’Neil.

 

 

This game is similar to the hack and slash game Golden Axe in that you wield weapons and you move across planes instead of platforms. You have a health meter in this game, which depletes whenever you get hit by an enemy. Once it is fully depleted, you lose a life. There are Pizza power ups in some levels that can replenish your health meter. Your health also starts at full at the beginning of each section.

 

 

In single player mode, you get three lives and three Continues (three lives each in co-op and three Continues for the pair). For every 200 points that you earn, you gain an extra life. Each defeated enemy will only give you one point though, whether it’s a normal enemy or a boss. When you lose all lives and Continues, it is Game Over and you’ll have to start the game from the beginning.

 

Moves and Abilities

Surprisingly, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles II: The Arcade Game is quite simple when it comes to what the Turtles can do. The D-pad moves your chosen character across the plane. The B button does a normal attack and the A button will make your character jump. Each Turtle has two different normal attack animations that function exactly the same.

 

 

When you press B in mid-air, you’ll do a diving kick. This attack comes out fast and is really easy to time and land. It feels as powerful as the normal attack in that it takes two normal attacks and/or diving kicks to kill Foot Soldiers. You’ll use this a lot in the game, especially against bosses.

 

 

Finally, the Turtles all have a stronger attack that can kill Foot Soldiers in one hit. I had trouble doing this move back when I was a kid but the older, more experienced me figured out that you had to press A and quickly roll your thumb towards the B button. Essentially, the move is done by pressing B and A at the same time, but A has to be pressed a little earlier.

 

 

This game was a little too hard for my younger self. But now that I’ve mastered the strong attack, I can beat it consistently. You’ll probably need to use the power attacks and dive kicks a lot more than the normal attacks to be successful in beating this game.

 

Enemies and Boss Battles

I was a big fan of the Turtles cartoons when I was a kid so seeing all the recognizable enemies in Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles II: The Arcade Game was such a treat. What I found impressive was the variety of the Foot Soldiers that Konami was able to have in this game. Unlike other games where palette swaps only meant more health or stronger attacks, different colored Foot Soldiers had different abilities.

 

 

About 90% of the enemies in the game are Foot Soldiers so having different types helped avoid making the game feel repetitive. There are boomerang throwers, mallet wielders, sword fighters, rifle holders, and so on. We also get to see other popular enemies like Roadkill Rodneys and Mousers in this game.

 

 

And of course, this game’s highlight for me are the boss fights. You get to face some popular villains from the cartoon series like Rocksteady, Bebop, Baxter Stockman, Krang, and of course Shredder. They all have at least three different attacks which helps avoid making their battles feel repetitive.

 

 

I really liked how the final boss sequence with Krang and then Shredder is its separate sub-level. When you lose all your lives during this battle and use a Continue, the game won’t send you back to the beginning of the Technodrome stage. You’ll immediately start fighting Krang. That makes beating this game doable.

 

Visuals, Sounds, and Presentation

This might be nostalgia goggles but even now, I still love the graphics of Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles II: The Arcade Game. Sprites are really detailed and well-animated in terms of 8-bit standards. The Turtles all look the same (as they should) but their weapons and colored bands make it easy to differentiate them. The stages are quite detailed too, especially the flames in the first stage, My only issue with this game’s graphics are the constant sprite flickering. It’s a limitation of the hardware but other developers were able to figure out how to minimize it.

 

 

An issue that I’ve seen with licensed games is how they tend to overuse a property’s themes and soundtrack. That’s not the case here. This game does make use of the catchy Turtles theme from the cartoon, but only sparingly. The other tracks that the game has are also really good. And the cherry on top are the voice clips (“Cowabunga!”) that I don’t often encounter in 8-bit games.

 

 

This game also nails it when it comes to presentation. Text is clear and uses a font that fits the property well. The HUD is also clean and there’s this neat bonus of using the upper right space (used for the second player) for the Turtles logo instead of just leaving it blank in single player games. But what really sets this game apart from other 8-bit games are these static cutscenes in between levels that really help move the story along.

 

Final Thoughts

I was surprised at how simple Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles II: The Arcade Game was. I mean, other NES games like Double Dragon III let you do a lot more moves and attacks with the same two buttons that the NES had. Despite the simplicity, I still had a lot of fun playing this game. So much fun in fact that I played it four times – each with a different Turtle!

 

 

I have to admit though, that the next Turtles games are a lot better. The third one, The Manhattan Project, is better in several aspects. The fourth one, Turtles in Time, is an all-time SNES classic. So if you want a little Ninja Turtle action, I recommend those over this one. But if you want your games to be a lot more simple, you can’t go wrong with Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles II: The Arcade Game. Note: If you play via emulation, some emulators allow for the flickering to be disabled.

 

If you want to check out the other Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles video games that I played and wrote about, click here! Or click here to check out every NES video game that I’ve played!