TMNT: Turtles in Time Re-Shelled (XBLA, PSN)

On August 5th, at exactly 10:42 pm, I downloaded Turtles in Time. On August 6th, at exactly 12:37 am, I fuckin finished it. I spent the next 4 days pondering whether or not I should even do this review, but since this is insanely popular, I have to bash it. It's the American way. If you haven't played the original game, then this review means nothing to you because you weren't going to buy it anyway unless you're a TMNT fan. For those who have, this game bought back a lot of memories I had at my cousin's house. We would played for hours overheating the SNES trying desperately to beat it, but to no avail, until he got a game genie (who remembers that?). When I heard that there were to be a remake for the Xboxlive Arcade, I was generally excited, and after playing the game repeating, I can honestly say...I WANT MY FUCKIN MONEY BACK! It's not that Ubisoft did anything wrong with recreating a game that was good, but it WAS good, and what was good then isn't exactly good now. TMNT: TIT (HA! I love acronyms) did not age well, and my boredom is the proof.

For all the TIT (HA!) fans out there, it should be noted that this game is a recreation of the arcade version, not the SNES version, so you will recognize some differences if you didn't play the arcade version. The Technodrome stage that followed the sewer surfing segment is gone. That stage was an SNES exclusive. In fact, the boss in the sewer surfing stage (Rat King I believe) is also gone. Once you get to the end of the stage, Shedder sends you to Prehistoric Turtlesaurus. At the end of Prehistoric Turtlesaurus, you fight Cement Man, not Slash. At the end of Skull and Crossbones (the pirate ship), you don't fight Bebop and Rocksteady. Instead, you fight Tokka and Rahkar, who were in the left out Technodrome stage. Once you get to the final boss, you don't face Super Shedder; you face Shedder in his normal form. Why Ubisoft chose the arcade version over the SNES is a mystery to me, especially since the SNES version is the one most gamers identify with when talking about TIT (HA!). The only reason I can think of is that the SNES version is licensed by Nintendo, and Nintendo didn't want their version of the game to be released for their competitors. If that's the fact, Nintedo you greedy bastards.

Smack!

This is how you play TIT (HA!): You walk right, you press attack a lot, you walk right, you press attack a lot, a boss appears, you press attack a lot, and you turn off the game. All you do is press attack, and it's the same combo throughout the whole game. That was fun back in 1991, but in today games, we need more complicated moves. I mean, it's so simple, it makes it so hard to even review it. Unlike the original game, you can attack in 8 directions instead of only left and right, which makes thing a lot easier give or take your level of difficulty. Instead of having 2 turtles, you can now have 4 player co-op with all the turtles. The graphics have also been beefed up to match modern day standards. Everything else has been faithfully recreated, for better or worse (mostly worse). You also get unlimited continues, which makes sense since you can't feed quarters into your system. That would be weird if your 360 said you need more quarters to play. And where would the quarters go when the machine got full? If they disappeared, I would run my fuckin ass out of there. I'd probably shit myself too. Like you wouldn't. I played it once with another person, and it was slightly more entertaining. I didn't play with 3 other people, but I think having all 4 turtles on the screen would turn things into a clusterfuck. How would you be able to tell who's who. Like I said, I didn't play it like that, so I can't really comment yet. All the traps and bosses are cheap as hell and will drain your health fast. This was an arcade game after all. They were design to eat quarters with punishing difficulty, but still, not being able to avoid some of these attacks are fuckin annoying.

If you can't beat them, twirl

You will die. You will die a lot. You will die at least once per stage. Despite doing nothing but pressing one button, I can't get over how fuckin hard TIT (HA!) can be. Now, I could have put it on an easier level, but that's not the game was supposed to be played. So I drank some Red Bull, coffee, Pepsi, and pure liquid caffeine, had a smoke, beat my chest, gird my loins, and put that son of a bitch on hardcore difficulty. It took 2 hours to finished it. I would have finished it sooner, but Tokka and Rahkar wouldn't fuckin DIE! And after all the pain I went through to get to the final boss, Shedder was a cakewalk. Then after you beat it, you're left with this "What should I do now?" feeling. All you can do is turn it off, and play a real game like.... X-Blades....AAAhahahahahahahahahahahahaha.....haaaaaa sorry.

TIT (still funny) isn't worth it at all. Here's an idea: download a SNES emulator, download the game, and play it for free. Don't waste your $10 like me. To think, they were gonna charge $15 for it. This shit ain't worth $5.

Rating: ASS (to the 4th power)

NOTE: Ten Rules of Gaming does not condone the illegal use of emulators. To legally use one, you must own the system and the game you are playing, but hey, whatever you do on your computer is your own business. Enjoy your TIT.