Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles II: The Arcade Game review - Nintendo Entertainment System

Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles II: The Arcade Game box art Just when you thought you'd seen the last of those Turtles, up they pop again to fight crime once more on the NES. The Shredder, being a mite miffed at the foursome's previous success in stopping his plans for global domination, has enlisted plenty of help foe his new escapade of terror. His known allies included regiments of Foot robots, scientist pal Baxter Stockman, evil alien Krang and his drooling mutant bodyguards Bebop and Rocksteady.

To achieve his ends more easily, the spiky one has hatched a series of hideous plots designed to lure the Turtles into a variety of deadly traps. The bait for these traps are the amphibian martial artists' best pals who are kidnapped without a moments warning, causing the Turtles to rush headlong into danger and almost certain death.

TMNT 2 is a conversion of the hugely successful Konami coin-op of 1990. All the levels and baddies of the original are here, along with a few new ones never seen before! You control any of the four Turtles who leap around the screen and duff the enemy over with their individual weapons. At the end of each level, an especially hard challenger awaits, such as Bebop, Krang or even Shredder himself!

What the Mean Machines staff thought

When you first play it, TMNT 2 looks pretty good: the graphics, sound and gameplay are all fairly true to the arcade game. But play it longer and two major weaknesses are exposed. Firstly, the game suffers from a low difficulty level and completing it takes very little practice, particularly for anyone who's played the arcade game at all. And secondly, there's not much in the way of variety. The beat 'em up action is fun at first, but since it hardly changes from level to level it all becomes rather predictable. The two-player action adds a bit more fun, but even that gets dull after a while. To be honest, unless you're a complete Turtles nut, you'd be better off buying a more challenging and varied beat 'em up like Ninja Gaiden or Kabuki.

Although it was simplistic and unoriginal, the Turtles game was quite a laugh in the arcades. Still, chucking a few quid into the coin-op and paying £40.00 for the cart are two different things. TMNT 2 isn't a bad game - the graphics are pretty good and the action is quite enjoyable, but even taking the new levels into account, there just isn't enough game for your money. The whole thing gets a little repetitive after a few sessions and it's not very difficult to beat either. It's a close enough conversion if you're a huge fan of the arcade machine, but most people would be better off putting the occasional twenty pence into the local arcade machine.