A playthrough of Konami's 1993 license-based fighting game for the Sega Genesis, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles Tournament Fighters.
This video shows three separate runs through the single player mode, all done on difficulty level eight:
As Leonardo 2:15
As April O'Neil 13:04
As Casey Jones 25:01
This Genesis title was the first of three TMNT games Konami released under the name Tournament Fighters. Just like its NES ( • Teenage Mutant Ninja T... ) and SNES ( • Teenage Mutant Ninja T... ) counterparts, it is an arcade-style versus-fighter that pits characters from the franchise against one another, but that's about where the similarities end.
Along with the four turtles, the roster of playable characters includes April O'Neil, Casey Jones, Sisyphus (created for this game), and Ray Fillet (from the comic). They all have a few special attacks each along with a desperation attack that can be used once your life gauge begins flashing red.
Triceraton, Krang, and Karai also make appearances as CPU-controlled bosses.
The game has a dark and gritty tone with art that more resembles the comic than it does the cartoon, and the fighters look great. (Just check out how Krang swings from his perch as he tries to not fall out of his robot!) The backgrounds are nicely done, too, though they're completely static outside of a few bits of color palette cycling. The upbeat techno music also thumps pretty hard and makes for an enjoyable break from Konami's usual synth brass-heavy melodies.
The gameplay, however, is more than a little underbaked. There wasn't a lot of care put into balancing the characters, and there are tons of ways to exploit the system: hit stun windows can be abused to create combo traps, opponents can be grabbed out of landing animations and thrown, and several characters have unblockable moves. What's worse is that the CPU players' AI enthusiastically uses all of these things to its advantage. Check out 31:16 if you'd like to see an example. I get wiped out in six seconds. Poor, poor Casey.
At least Casey can usually put up a "fair" fight with his hilarious bomb move that seems to utterly confuse the AI. It will often just stand there waiting to be blown up if it's standing at the edge of the screen, and the move can be done again and again.
One big thing to keep in mind: never raise your character's power above five. The higher your power, the slower you'll move (regardless of what the speed stat reads), so if you hike the power too much, you'll never be able to react to your enemy's move in time.
It's funny, but for as much as it utterly fails at being a good fighting game, I am fond of the Genesis version of Tournament Fighters. It's fun to play with a friend so long as you both can resist the temptation of cheap shots and the game's aesthetic is appealing. If you want a good fighting game, though, the SNES version will serve you far better.
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No cheats were used during the recording of this video.
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