is a 1989 action-platform game developed and published by Konami for the Nintendo Entertainment System. In North America it was published under Konami's Ultra Games imprint in the US and the equivalent PALCOM brand in Europe and Australia.
Alongside the arcade game (also developed by Konami), it was one of the first video games based on the 1987 Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles animated series, being released after the show's second season. The game sold more than cartridges worldwide.
Plot Shredder kidnaps April and gains the Life Transformer Gun, a weapon capable of returning Splinter to his human form. In order to save April, the turtles (Leo, Mikey, Donnie and Raph) embark on the streets of New York to confront the Foot Clan. While traversing the sewers, the turtles encounter Bebop, a mutated pig, and Rocksteady, a mutant rhino. Though the turtles defeat Bebop, Rocksteady escapes with April O'Neil. The turtles then chase Rocksteady to an abandoned warehouse, fight him, and rescue April. After disabling bombs in the Hudson River dam, Shredder captures Splinter, leading to the turtles giving chase in the Party Wagon. Hot in pursuit, the turtles search the city and eventually find that Splinter is being held captive by the robotic Mecaturtle on a skyscraper rooftop. After the turtles save Splinter, Shredder escapes in a helicopter. The turtles give chase, tracking him to JFK airport, where they encounter Big Mouser. After defeating Big Mouser, the turtles head to Shredder's secret Foot Clan base in the South Bronx via the Turtle Blimp. Once there, they locate and battle the Technodrome underground. The turtles descend into the Technodrome's reactor and ultimately defeat Shredder. With the Life Transformer Gun, the turtles help Splinter return to his human form. After the accomplishment of a tough mission, the turtles and April celebrate with a pizza.
Gameplay
Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles is a single-player action game. The player starts as Leonardo, but can switch to any of the other turtles from the information screen. The information screen shows each turtle's health, special weapons, a map grid of the current area, and messages from either Splinter or April. Each primary weapon has a different speed, power, and reach. Thus, during gameplay, certain turtles may be more adept at defeating different enemies and navigating particular obstacles than others. When a turtle runs out of health, falls into a fatal trap, or is struck by a roller car, the Foot Clan captures the turtle and holds him in an undisclosed location. This forces the player to pick one of the remaining turtles to continue. The player loses when all four turtles are captured. From stage three onward, a captured turtle may be rescued once per each area of gameplay. Overall, six stages (missions) comprise the game: 1) Streets of New York 2) Hudson River Dam 3) Wall Street Rooftops 4) JFK Airport 5) South Bronx Lair 6) Technodrome.
The player initially navigates the mission map in an overhead view. When a turtle enters a sewer or building interior, gameplay switches to a side-scrolling perspective. While in the overhead view, the player can move in four cardinal directions and use primary weapons for a single type of attack. As the game progresses, a higher amount of more lethal enemies appear. In later stages, obstacles include gaps that involve well-timed jumps and inaccessible areas which require specialty items, such as ropes, to progress across building rooftops.
In side-scrolling portions, the turtles jump, crouch, and attack with primary or alternate weapons. Alternate weapons are occasionally dropped by enemies or found in limited quantities. These weapons include single shurikens (throwing stars), triple shurikens (launches three stars simultaneously in a spreading pattern) and boomerangs. A powerful "Kiai" weapon, a scroll that expands into a crescent-shaped beam, may be found in later stages. A limited number of invincibility icons also appear throughout the game, which grant a temporary "cannonball" effect and allows a turtle to bulldoze their way through enemies and obstacles. On a side note, boomerangs can be reused if the player catches them upon return. Lastly, if a turtle acquires a new weapon, it will replace the previous alternate weapon.
As the game progresses, the turtles must defeat various enemies, navigate traps, search for specific items, and complete certain tasks, such as defusing timed bombs in the underwater area of stage two. During gameplay, the turtles collect pizza to replenish health. The amount of health restored is dependent on pizza portions (whole, half, or slice). The player is given a limited number of continues. Boss confrontations include Bebop (stage one mid-boss), Rocksteady (stage one boss), Mecaturtle (stage three), Big Mouser (stage four), the Technodrome (stage five), and Shredder.
Development Background Peter Laird and Kevin Eastman created the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (TMNT) comics in the 1980s. Mark Freedman was the head of Surge Licensing, and had signed on to represent the TMNT brand and secured the rights with Playmates Toys for a toy line and for the first animated television series.
Konami had released its first licensed video game with Cabbage Patch Kids: Adventures in the Park (1984) based on the Cabbage Patch Kids toy line and became the first third-party company to develop games for Nintendo's Family Computer (Famicom) home console in 1986. Emil Heidkamp joined Konami in 1986. He decided to encourage Konami to license other media. Finding that flight simulator-styled video games were popular in America, he pitched the idea of a flight sim to Kenji Hiraoka, who was the liaison between Konami's Chicago and Japan-based offices, and was uninterested in the idea. Upon pitching the idea to Konami founder Kagemasa Kōzuki, Heidkamp suggested they could make a flight sim video game based on the film Top Gun (1986), which excited Kōzuki. This led to Konami making a Top Gun video game and becoming more open to seeking licensed properties for games.
Nintendo of America had limited all companies publishing games to release only five games per year. This led to meetings between Konami and then CEO of Nintendo Yamauchi Hiroshi which did not result in any deal being struck to release more than five games. To release more games, Konami founded Ultra Games in 1988. The company was presented as a publisher, and was publicly known as a spinoff of Konami's American operations branch. The creation of Ultra Games within Konami allowed them to release twice as many games for Nintendo's Nintendo Entertainment System console in a year and doubled Heidkemp's workload.
Production Freedman had reached out to Konami, describing that the "timing was wonderful for [Surge and Konami]", as Konami was searching for action and adventure themed content to adapt into video games. At the time of these deals, the toys and series had not been released, with Andrew Farago author of Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: The Ultimate Visual History describing the brand as an "unknown quantity to the general public." Heidkamp found the submission for Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles in his inbox. He invited Freedman out to Chicago where they struck a deal, with Freedman stating he received a cheque that was "more money than I'd ever seen in my life." Konami had been wanting to develop a new martial arts themed game. Desiring to match the financial success of their licensed games like Top Gun and Double Dribble (1986), Heidkamp proposed the TMNT property for a martial arts styled game.
The animated series arrived to television in late 1987, with its popularity leading to Nick Thorpe of Retro Gamer as overtaking the comics in popular consciousness. In 1991, Playthings described the TMNT as being one of the most successful cross-licensing campaigns by 1991, while Video Games & Computer Entertainment reported that by December 1990, 130 licensees developed products using the imagery from the series. This included films, animated television series, comic books, stage shows, toys, and houseware products.
When Konami was set to the task of making the game, their design documents and resources from Mirage and Surge licensing were based on the original comic and a brief overview of the television show. Influences of the animated series were included, such as borrowing characters Bebop and Rocksteady and featuring the Ninja Turtles with different colored bandanas. Nobuya Nakazato, who worked on the development team for the game, said that members of the team performed many jobs. He explained that it was normal for the development team to check the game they had worked on themselves. This led to him working on the game while also working on debugging other Konami titles such as The Adventures of Bayou Billy (1988), Gradius II (1988), and Blades of Steel (1987). Former Konami composer and audio programmer Hidenori Maezawa said that the company could not use music from the television series due to copyright issues.
Release Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles was presented at the Nintendo Booth at the Winter Consumers Electronics Show (CES) in 1989. The Japanese release was the first piece of TMNT related media to be released in the country. The Japanese release of the game is generally the same as the later Nintendo Entertainment System (NES) release, with small changes such as the character April O'Neil being presented as Splinter's daughter in both the manual and in-game text. The game was released on May 12, 1989 in Japan for the Famicom under the title . It was released in North American markets in June 1989 for the Nintendo Entertainment System (NES). The NES version of the game was released to arcades as part of Nintendo's PlayChoice-10 line of arcades. It was made available by 1990.
In the United Kingdom, the NES game was released by Palcom, another of Konami's subsidiaries. Former Sega CEO Mike Hayes described the NES reception in the United Kingdom as a "failing brand, treated as a toy by Mattel" and that it was not achieving the high sales it had in North America and Japan. As the distributor for the system in the United Kingdom, the company Hayes had worked for included the console with the game, which was re-titled Teenage Mutant Hero Turtles in a bundle called the Mutant Machine. Both the title of the game and the show were changed in the UK, as the word "ninja" was considered to be too explicitly violent for a children's program in Europe. The release of the bundle led to far higher sales during the Christmas season of 1990, leading to the NES to overtake Sega's Master System console sales.
By May 1990, it had sold over cartridges in the United States. By the end of 1990, the game had sold more than cartridges worldwide, earning ( adjusted for inflation) for Konami. Konami reported it as the best-selling third-party NES game in 1991. Combined sales of all the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles games from Konami were estimated at $250 million by June 1991.
Ports Conversions of Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles were later developed for a variety of home computer platforms. Computer Gaming World said that this release was part of Konami's then recent emphasis on porting their popular NES for home computers. The games were set for release in the first half of 1990. At the 1990 Summer CES, the ports for the C64, IBM PC-compatible and Amiga were presented. The ports to home computer versions have a myriad of differences between them. Examples include the UK versions being released with different graphics than their US counterparts. The computer versions released in the UK also contained differences between them. One difference was that the Amiga, Atari ST and C64 versions featured the ability to save the game, while the Amstrad and ZX Spectrum versions did not.