Game-Art-HQ

TURTLE POWER!!!

Back in the late eighties and the early nineties, Capcom almost dominated the Beat’em Up Genre..till Konami started to want a piece of the cake and delivered a Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles arcade game in the best tradition of earlier beat em ups but with the bonus of featuring the TMNT license and making the best out of it.

In 1991, Konami delivered their second Turtles beat’em up with a 1-4 player game, great graphics and many fun ideas related to the TMNT universe.

This was TMNT: Turtles in Time, a beat’em up known as a cult classic and as one of the most fun and liked video games based on a cartoon license ever.

The game was later ported to the Super Nintendo in 1992, got a few different and new stages, was only playable for 1-2 players though and the nice intro and animations from the arcade version had to be removed due to technical / storage limitations on the SNES cartridges.

There was also a port of it on the Playstation 2 when it was an unlockable secret game in the much newer TMNT: Mutant Nightmare game. In this version, the emulation does not work flawless though and it got a new (weaker) soundtrack.

In 2009 a remake of the game Turtles in Time – Re-Shelled got released for PSN and XLBA but received mostly negative reviews and did not add anything beside new graphics to the game..again a weaker new soundtrack..its just my opinion but for me it simply did not have the charm of the original as well.

The game was one of the most sold games at the time it was released though..probably due to its good name. In 2011 Ubisoft had to remove the game due to licenses…yay @ the positive effects of digital distribution only games…this one is kinda lost now for people who want to play it. =/

Since Konami itself was not able somehow to port their old game to the new distribution channels like PSN etc. i have to recommend Emulation for this one..especially the Arcade Version (MAME ftw!)

  – You can enlarge most of the images here by clicking on them –

Relative original in the TMNT  beat’em ups was the strong portion of humor in them while other games focussed on the good guys vs a gang story in a more serious setting like Final Fight, Golden Axe etc. It was relative unique at that time also to have different kinds of unbeatable enemies (Giant Krang in the first stage in the arcade version) or dangerous stage elements like lasers and more there.

New to the beat’em up genre were also stages like the “Swer Surfin'” where Leonardo, Donatello, Raphael and Michelangelo are riding on surfboards and have to brawl different types of enemies and the game changed more to a shoot’em up genre game in the stage with every enemy beside the boss taking only one hit.

Like the whole Golden Axe soundtrack, many tracks of the TMNT Turtles in Time soundtrack were remixed or covered. I recommend visiting OCRemix and Dwelling of Duels for these.

 It’s based of the TMNT IV game version for the SNES, where instead of fighting with a mud monster you get to fight with Slash, something that I thought was cool when I was a kid

… And I really wanted to draw SlashXDDD
Sadly I couldn’t spend all the time I wanted in this, originally my plan was to have the four turtles fighting Slash but with all the holydays and vacations and stuff I couldn’t make it in time so I choose to leave Leo fighting with Slash(that’s more of a fair fight if you think about it)

Alexis Kurosawa from Argentina is a long time supporter and member of the FGE / Game Art HQ Community and participated in the Final Fantasy 25th Anniversary, the Tekken Tribute and other GA-HQ art collaborations before and draws all kinds of things beside video game fan art, take a look at his portfolio here

The Title Screen (Arcade)

Four Turtles Mode

Ending (Arcade)