Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles IV: Turtles in Time (Super NES)

I haven’t been good at regularly posting updates, but I’ll get back on track eventually.

Let me start off by saying this game has the best music on the Super NES.  It’s a close one, but Turtles in Time barely beats out Contra III (in my opinion) simply by having so many original tunes that feel like they honestly belong in the TMNT universe.

I have a few memories about this game, but two in particular stand out.  The first, is that this is the first game I ever actually purchased myself!  Technically…  sort of…  well, I brokered the deal, anyway.

A friend of mine owned the game when it first came out, but when Grade 8 rolled around, I got a hankerin’ for some older Super NES titles.  Sure, the Nintendo 64 and Sony PlayStation were cool, but I wanted that nostalgia factor!  I called this friend up, asked him what it would take to buy the game from him, and he said he’d have to talk to his little brother about it.  A few minutes later, he called back and said his price was $20.  Perfect!  I’ll take it!

Now, how does a guy without a job get his hands on $20?  Well, he sneaks into his mother’s wallet and takes it.  That’s how.  It’s not one of my proudest moments, but I would go into her wallet every morning for $5 in lunch money, money she was aware that I was taking.  For about two weeks, I pretty much just took $2 instead of my normal $5.  That balanced things out enough, I guess.

$2 got me a can of pop and a bag of chips from the vending machines at school, which I was a-ok with!

The other memory actually deals with a quasi-clone of Turtles in Time released on the Sega Genesis.

It’s pretty much the same game, but with a few slightly altered levels.

In Grade 4, an old friend who had moved away a year or two prior made a visit to my house for a weekend.  If you read my post about The Legend of Zelda, this is the same kid that told me you could climb a tree in that game.  I knew he was full of it, and he was barely even considered a friend in Grade 1, but I was nice enough to play along with his visit.  Luckily, it ended up being a fantastic time.

To begin with, he had a TalkBoy.

We spent the whole weekend recording ourselves talking nonsense, slowing it down, speeding it up.  It was a blast!  We recorded some game sounds, too, and seeing as how he brought his Genesis, we figured we’d head to Blockbuster Video (ha!) and rent something for it.

I thought it would be fair to rent one game for his Genesis and one game for my Super NES.  We ended up renting Hyperstone Heist for Genesis, and Fatal Fury… for Genesis.

Frankly, I was quite pissed – all I wanted to do was show off a great game for my own console that we could both enjoy, and he’d rent a great game for his console that we could both enjoy.  Instead, we got two beat ’em ups, one of which I was psyched to see, the other I knew nothing about.  Whoopee…  never mind the fact that the newly released Star Fox was actually available to rent that night, but we went ahead with Fury anyway.

Don’t get me wrong, Fatal Fury ended up being a decent game.  It just left the sour taste of unfairness in my mouth for the rest of the weekend…  and apparently, it exists to this day.

The intros and outros to the boss battles had to be included, because I’ve always felt they were just so epic.  From the taunt at the beginning to their dramatic defeat, it felt so damn satisfying beating them to a pulp.  Kicking the Rat King’s butt was great too, because I had his action figure, along with the toy version of his boat.

Just watching this short little video reminds me of how awesome it all is.  The Turtles’ speech before each level (“Let’s…  Kick…  Shell…?”), the sound of the doors opening before that first battle with Shredder…  damn.  So awesome.

One note about recording with Fraps is that, when the image shimmers quickly (like it does in some games), it won’t necessarily pick up on the rapidly flashing image.  In this clip, you’ll notice images that flicker on and off…  in reality, it’s flashing on and off so fast that Fraps can’t make up its mind, and doesn’t pick up on the quick flickering.  It’s no huge deal, really, but I just figured I’d at least explain it!