Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles IV :
Turtles in Time
Ultra Cool Game #3
Type of Game
An activity unknown to parents, yet legal, making children hyperactive and wild.
Release date on our Machines
November 1992, I think. That would fit in with the impression of having played it exclusively at night.
Developer
Konami Industry Co. Ltd. a company that released nothing but killers in the nineties, with Super Castlevania IV, Tiny Toons, Contra and Batman.
Publisher
Konami Deutschland GmbH. Yes, Deutschland. To publish the game throughout Europe, it was called Deutschland.
Turtles in Time : available on Switch, via the Cowabunga Collection.
Hi Cousin Walter! What are you playing today? Wow, the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, I love them so much, I watch the cartoon every chance I get. And I've even got a Leonardo action figure with an arm that reels itself in and... Waaahohohoh, OK! It's a thousand times better than toys and cartoons combined! That sick rhythm! Those crazy combos! I'll be back tomorrow, the day after tomorrow and the next thirty days to polish up this crazy game, okay? Oh, you don't really want me to come and live with you, do you? Then lend me your console! Still no? OK, I'll go back to playing Altered Beast on my own in my room. I'm just kidding. You're going to have to put up with my presence for a long time, mate, and there's no way you're going to get bored of this cartridge in a week like the others. I'm gonna force you to play it three hours a day, six days a week, eleven months out of twelve for the twenty... all right. Altered Beast. Yes, in my room, alone. I'm sorry.
Torture on a scale
Funnier than the Cartoon
When you launch into a beat'em all, you expect to sweat and have sore thumbs from beating up the many opponents who appear on screen. Turtles in Time has learned this lesson well, even a little too well. There's a lot of fighting going on, with enemies popping up everywhere at once, and an impressive array of moves to neutralize them. Wow. I'd only experienced the very first TMNT on NES before this (yes, TMHT, I know). What a revealing punch I took in the face. If you're feeling a bit tired after a hard day's work, here's a radical treatment to get you back into shape, or to finish you off, depending on your age. We'd do it when we'd had a good night's sleep and were already feeling peachy! And we stuffed ourselves with 80% sugar-containing cookies, too. Not even being eight years old yet. Of course, we were going mega-crazy. The headaches we had to pass on to our guardians, I can't even imagine. Anyway, I don't remember what happened after those crazy sessions beating up Foot Clan punks.
Le cerveau a tendance à ranger les traumatismes de ce genre tout au fond d'une case bien cachée. Je me souviens bien avoir adoré faire équipe avec Walter, en tout cas. Au moins, je ne restais pas à le regarder dispenser son cours magistral sans rien faire. Quand bien même j'adorais ça aussi. On a même réussi à finir le jeu une ou deux fois. Sans doute pas grâce à moi, mais j'espère avoir un peu contribué malgré tout. Et si on perdait ? On recommençait, en choisissant Michelangelo plutôt que Leonardo ; le gameplay nerveux des tortues variait un tout petit peu les unes par rapport aux autres, en termes d'allonge, de vitesse d'attaque, de force… Ce détail nous apparaissait comme le parangon de la rejouabilité. Purée, dire qu'on pouvait s'éclater à quatre à la fois sur la version d'origine sur borne d'arcade ! Jamais vu ce graal ultime de ma vie. Pourquoi j'habitais dans une ville pleine de containers et de puits de pétrole, aussi ? Personne n’aurait osé installer une salle d’arcade dans un endroit pareil. J’y serais allé moi, pourtant.
Brothelman : Potential Exasperation
This title clearly moved Ninja Turtles from “pretty cool stuff” to “indisputable monument of pop culture” for me. Donatello replaced Sonic as my imaginary best friend, and my love for beat'em all grew even stronger. Yet I'd also just discovered Streets of Rage. But while the atmosphere of SEGA's Streets of Rage remained unsurpassed, Turtles in Time was able to draw on its extensive background to rival it. This game sometimes managed to raise the bar even higher in terms of visual identity, and to put my brain into overdrive (which I obviously found brilliant). Everything is done to get kids hooked on pizza, kung fu, graffiti and commando missions through New York at night. Very faithful to the TV Show (and even to some of the comics, but this is getting too deep for me), the cartoon graphics made me dream too.
Each setting incorporates tired clichés from different eras (from the Far West to the Jurassic to the fourth millennium), and various not-so-well-behaved districts of the famous American metropolis. The developers have drawn on the inexhaustible reservoir of secondary characters to create colorful bosses, including those from the films. At least, those already released at the time. Frankly, seeing Tokka and Rahzar, the carnivorous turtle and the wolf... well, carnivorous too, made me so happy. I must have seen Ninja Turtles 2 in theaters not long before. What about Shredder? If we face him in his cartoon design at the beginning, he returns in mutant mode, just like in the film, to act as the final boss. And he pulls it off, the old bastard. How many times have we stumbled over this muscle and metal obstacle?
And in magic too, apparently, as he throws fire, cold, and also a ray that returns our Nijna Turtles to their fragile little animal appearance. This thing took away a whole life. A LIFE! God damn pizza puree. For those afraid of getting bored (which never happens), there's the classic elevator stage, but also a surfing session in the sewers, or flying disc riding in a level saturated with Mode 7. It's still not very well exploited, but I was far better than content with it. And here we go again, for hours of multiplied fun. By seven. Haha. Sorry about that.
Turtles in Trance
Just like the rest, the music is completely insane. It sounds like the soundtrack to the animated series that's been dosed with mutagen (the same stuff that turns little turtles into humanoid martial artists). Very faithful to the universe, it's a real kick, at the risk of sometimes overdoing it. Some passages, bursting with supercharged arrangements, follow one another even faster than a nunchaku combo. You end up with your ears ringing and your whole body overheating. Be that as it may, in small doses, this O.S.T. is perfect for motivating you to do just about anything, as long as it involves the destruction or tearing down of your neighbor. It's hard to find more effective compositions on a 16-bit console. Even if you extend this to all the 90s, I can only think of Wipeout as a rival. And even then, its ever-so-slightly dark compositions never sound as enjoyable as those of TMNT.
Turtles in ALL Times
When I was sleeping over at my cousin's house during our Turtles in Time obsession, when we weren't being attacked by the demonic spiders that invaded the room, we'd launch into a game of Turtles in Time, then two, then three... until we managed to defeat the big, hypertrophied Shredder. We rarely succeeded, but my great videogame mentor was quite happy for me to be there to lend him a hand (I didn't really bore him that much, I think). I also associate these late-night gaming sessions (we had to make it to 9:45pm!) with fantastic memories of more material things, like miniatures and board games (Battletech or Atmosfear, for example), with Termitors, and especially Dino Riders. Walter always had great new stuff to show me, whether electronic or plastic. The toys of the time were nothing like what you'd find at La Grande Récré these days (a boomer punchline we all more or less take on board).
In the cellar, an undeveloped area served as a giant battlefield (it was also from the cellar that the spiders mentioned in U.N. Squadron emerged). We dug out strongholds and galleries right out of the ground to hide our characters inside. Two hours later, we'd surface covered in dirt, but as euphoric as ever. In my top 5 favorite slices of childhood life. But I totally immersed myself in this game again some fifteen years later, on an emulator with my pal Randall. And you could say what you like, it was more fun than Golden Axe III (although Mario Kart might have something to say about that). And at that time, I FINALLY understood how to swing enemies across the screen, towards us, as if we were sending them into our own faces. A mega-class feature, by the way, and the only one that allowed you to defeat the first version of Shredder. It almost made me cry with joy. You've got to keep it simple, without going over the top. But... I did, didn't I?