Finally! The original Turtles on Virtual Console in all it's challenging ludicrisness! Now I can dodge masked hobos tossing boomerang bananas once again! Obviously, they're capitalizing on the recent movie venture which could only help Ubisoft's shifty game.

I'm not sure how this game is received by many. A lot of people I ask about it prefer or mistake it for "The Arcade Game" but I definitely disagree. It's been overshadowed perhaps by generic identity, but many children of the 80s and 90s fade-out know this game as a haunting companion to their youth. This game has so much quirk and character for its own right and will certainly have people giving up in minutes if you don't know the game's patterns and strategies.

And I don't know about the rest of you, but this game used to scare the piss out of me as a kid. Creepy music (to which we will never truly know who composed it), questionable enemies, and related sprites that don't seem to follow the TMNT canon. Area 5 used to make me fear the dark. Flying search lit ceiling fans - I mean helicopters and ooooh... the music...

Lastly, why's this game the only Virtual Console title which costs more (600 pts) than the others in its bracket? It's worth all of it for another foray into lush nostalgia...

I also wondered the same thing, why this TMNT game of all TMNT games they could've released, is more expensive.  I would think because Ubi Soft has the license and has to get a cut of it (Ubi Soft's name, not Konami's, appears on the frontend of the XBLA TMNT arcade game... that and Ubi Soft's stupid character pictures appear on the character select screen).  However, the XBLA game was only 400 pts.  So that hypothesis seems weak.  Perhaps because Nintendo would let them change the pricing, unlike Microsoft, or they priced it in such a way as they didn't expect it to sell as well.  I'm curious if they intend on releasing the rest of the TMNT games on NES, SNES, and Genesis; I hope it doesn't depend on how well this TMNT game sells.

On a side note, I would hope Konami would cash in on the Simpsons movie release and put the old Simpsons arcade game on XBLA.

God, I forgot how ridiculously difficult this game was.  Died at the infamous (at least in my circle of friends) bomb defusing mission.

Is that before or after the impossible sewer jump?

Dude. f---. That.

Amen.

I heard Starfox64 is out too. I must get it. I played it back in the day but never actually owned it.

Yeah, my buddy already downloaded it and beat it a few times. Such a great game. I'm going to cough up the 1000 points for that once I clear out some of my queue.

Seriously!  AUGH, I can feel my rage building at the mere mention of that jump.

GAH!!!!

I almost never got past the bomb section and when I did, I always died in the gigantic third level. Somewhere.

Man that was a fun yet altogether controller-chucking title if there ever was one. I always hated how Shedder always had some move at the end of each game that would turn you back into a pint-sized turtle. I like TMNT II arcade game more though... isn't that out on the X360?

I remember that horrible jump, but the seaweed is even worse. I guess that would be the bomb-defusing part, so yea...#%(#)$%!!!

TMNT is such a great game.  In fact, all the old Konami TMNT games were great (the Arcade Game, Turtles in Time, Tournament Fighters).  Post 16-bit, they all suck (just like all the post 16-bit Contras).  I beat this game once, and I think it was because I lucked up and found the Technodrome on my first try in the Bronx.

Someone beat this game in just over 20 minutes.  I was utterly gassed:  TMNT NES 20min speedrun

My memory of the TMNT game from my game is of pure hatred and loathing at one of the only NES games that I just could not get through.  Still can't, to this day.  So frustrating!  I am not spending 600 yen on something I'll just be angry at!

What "sewer jump" are we talking about exactly? I know of a few notorious jumps (Dad always taught me to "tap"); which is in the Dam (Level 2) where you have to jump to the door that leads to the roof in order to get to the infamous Hudson Bay level (and if you hit your head on the ceiling, you have to go all the way around again).

Or is it in the final connector building/sewer on Wall Street (Level 3) which leads to the final building and boss where there's a series of jumps and enemies to impede you? I have no problems with this game now; no continues loss or anything really until Level (friggin') 6.

I just cannot beat the Technodrome (Level 6). That final "hellway" is absolutely impossible without getting brutalized by those multiple lazer drones. A speedrun I saw presented what seems to be the only solution; allow the screen to eat the enemies and just hell drive to the ends...

The farthest I ever got on my own was to the end of the Technodrome, other than that, the only way I ever beat the game was by using the Game Genie... =p

I was so tempted to pick this up just for old time's sake, but then I wised up and remembered that neither myself nor any of my friends could get absolutely anywhere in it, so I decided to keep my $6.  Maybe ActRaiser will be the game that finally gets me to buy a VC title since I'm pretty sure I don't have the actual cart for that one despite having beaten it numerous times.

I never could beat TMNT 1 without cheating, but I love 2 and 3.

Same here. I always tried fighting the drones and ran out of life too quickly. Great game, but I never did finish it.

On another note, I hear Dragon's Curse  (aka Wonder Boy III: The Dragon's Curse)  was released alongside TMNT. That's one of my favorite games of all time (completely justified owning a Master System, which it was also out for) and it's a really lengthy and sleek side-scrolling action RPG (think Zelda II laced with Altered Beast). It's more than worth the 600 Wii points for anyone who hasn't played it yet.

Hehe, are you talking about where you have to jump on two moving platforms and if you miss you fall in the flames and basically your game is over? If so, yeah that was a pain in the ass and the game was ridiculously hard! My friend and I did actually beat it more than once, but I tell you I have NO patience for something like that these days! Kids these days just don't know how easy they have it

cheers,

-avatar!

edit: Nostalgia can be fun, but as Zane noted, this is nostalgia akin to missing having your knees scraped and bloodied after falling of your bike... over and over and over!

TMNT was tough.  I, too, had trouble in the bomb-diffusing mission.  Those electrified seaweeds were a pain.  Swimming in the water wasn't very precise.

Well, I have no need to buy TMNT at all on VC... I just went to YouTube and watched a 20 min speedrun of the game... =p haha

Well put...

The Area 5 Overworld music is possibly the scariest music I've ever heard in a game yet. It used to make me fear the dark.