Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Tournament Fighters for NES is a good entry-level fighter
After the frankly fairly miserable experience that was Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Tournament Fighters for Mega Drive, I must confess that I didn’t have particularly high hopes for the third incarnation of this one-on-one fighting game twist on the Turtles franchise, this time originally released on the 8-bit NES.
However, I should have thought back to the other NES titles available in Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: The Cowabunga Collection, because outside of the somewhat divisive nature of the first entry in the series, both the NES adaptation of the arcade game and the all-original Manhattan Project were genuinely excellent titles — in some cases bettering efforts on more powerful hardware.
And, sure enough, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Tournament Fighters for NES is actually a very good game, also; while it doesn’t quite match up to the SNES version, it’s definitely better than the Mega Drive version. And, in keeping with the way Konami handled the Tournament Fighters subseries, the NES version is different enough to the SNES version to allow them both to coexist, making them both worth playing independently of one another.
The narrative setup for Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Tournament Fighters on NES is as flimsy as it always is for this sort of game. The Turtles receive a “strange letter” from Shredder, who challenges them to a fight. No evil plot or anything this time, just a good old-fashioned fight. For some reason, they all have to fight each other first, then their good pal Casey Jones, then the original character Hothead (apparently an adaptation of the character Warrior Dragon from other Turtles media) and finally Shredder himself.
In the “Story” mode, in which you can only play as one of the four Turtles at a time, none of this is explained during gameplay, but at the time of the game’s 1994 release (three years after Street Fighter II first appeared) story wasn’t a particular priority for fighting game fans — it was all about the mechanics and mastery of the characters.
Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Tournament Fighters is actually a pretty good fighting game for beginners to tackle because it keeps things relatively simple with its mechanics, but allows for plenty of depth in terms of tactics and strategy. Using just two buttons — one for punches, one for kicks — each character can attack their enemies in various context-sensitive ways, as well as blocking by pushing in the opposite direction to their facing.
Each character also has just one or two special moves to figure out, encompassing both charge-style moves where you hold a direction for a moment, and directional input manoeuvres where two or more directions must be pressed before an attack button. These are all easy to learn, and form the fundamentals of more complex fighting games, making Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Tournament Fighters for NES a good place to learn some basic techniques that will stand you in good stead for more challenging games.
The overall flow of battle in Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Tournament Fighters for NES has a pleasantly distinct feel, also. There’s a strong emphasis on blocking and making well-timed use of special moves, for example; the basic punch and kick attacks are relatively weedy in terms of power, so you’re best off playing defensively and then making use of the considerably more damaging special moves when you spot a suitable opening in your opponent’s defences.
Initially, this might come across as the game being unreasonably difficult; if you attempt to go into battle with fists flailing, you’ll likely find yourself getting the absolute crap kicked out of you by the computer-controlled opponents in fairly short order. But take your time a bit more and figure out some of the fundamentals of solid fighting game play — controlling space, understanding reach and recognising how to stay safe from incoming assaults — and you’ll have a much better time.
The main obstacle to Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Tournament Fighters for NES having truly long-term appeal is the fact that it’s just pretty limited on the whole. With just seven playable characters, each of whom only have one or two special moves, and four different stages to play in, you’ll exhaust the possibilities of the game before long. And while the two-player versus mode and four-player tournament mode add some party play possibilities, it’s a shame there’s not just a little more substance here for the solo enthusiast.
But then you have to remember that this is a late-era 8-bit NES game, and it’s pretty clear that this game is pushing the system pretty much to its limit. There are impressively large sprites and some frankly stunning Street Fighter II-style parallax scrolling on the floors of each arena — not something one expects to see on the humble NES. On real hardware, the game is somewhat prone to slowdown and sprite flicker, though Digital Eclipse’s optional enhancements found in Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: The Cowabunga Collection make it possible to exceed the limitations of the original host platform and play the game in a smooth, flicker-free manner.
All in all, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Tournament Fighters for NES may not occupy your attention for a long time in the same way as more complex, feature-packed fighting games — but if you have found yourself craving something relatively straightforward that offers a solid means of getting to know the conventions of one-on-one fighting games without getting overwhelmed, this is actually a surprisingly good place to start your journey.
As something of a scrub myself, I found that just a short time with Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Tournament Fighters for NES helped enormously with both my own sense of confidence and my understanding of some of the genre fundamentals. And while I’m under no illusions that I’m now in a suitable position to jump online in one of today’s fighting games and come anywhere even remotely close to participating on a competitive level, I feel like I’ve definitely improved. And that’s got to be worth something.
Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: The Cowabunga Collection is available now for PC via Steam, physically and digitally for Switch, physically and digitally for PS5, physically and digitally for PS4, and physically and digitally for Xbox One/Series blahdepoop.
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