Looks like you can cheat by using A+S+G. Only three keys are required. Much easier.

"What, you can just walk over it!?"

Being an AVGN fan, I had something else in mind when I read the title. Fascinating video, as always

Who knew NES TMNT was the “easy version”??? 😐

As a kid I never even got passed the NES version. I thought it was impossible. OK now I gotta go finish some unfinished business.

I remember owning and playing the us dos version. Game seemed way too hard compared to the nes version; took way too much damage too easily. However, if you got next to a pizza, grabbed it then saved and loaded the game, the pizza would still be there, so with repeated saving and loading it was possible to progress through the game. But when I came across that impossible jump area, I couldn’t get past it. I thought it was possible to (i thought you could do a medium-sized jump height, but could never do it), but I didn’t know it was such a big deal til I tried to look up playthroughs of the dos version and found out nobody completed it.

Hahaha! So there's TWO impossible jumps? Amazing :D How did this ever pass QA? Was there even any QA at all? :D

Ok! i'm from europe :) There were more difficult jump sections, but this one was insane. The game was hard to play on pc. I remember saving every 2 seconds on the last levels :) but finally beat the pc version without any cheats. i didn't have a nintendo back then and loved the turtles and playing this on pc. all negative reviews of this game on pc just because of this jump are way to harsh, the game was awesome :)

I had that broken version as a kid. It was so frustrating because I didn't understand that games could be broken like that. I was like 8 years old. Thank you for making this video! Seeing that second impossible jump makes me think someone did this on purpose.

I always figured I was missing something, but the game being broken explains a lot. I definitely ran into the impossible jump on our copy.

Incredible how games were released without actually play testing.

I played this game 30 years ago. Damn good game. To get past those awkward jumps I lightly tapped the jump button to avoid hitting my head.

I sure love your videos man. Keep them coming 😁

Super smart way of comparing the code segment via a saved file comparison. Excellent technique. 👍👍👍👍

There's also Amiga port or even two ports! TMNT was ported to Amiga by two different dev teams. One has graphics and gameplay similar to PC with more colors and better audio, but with almost the same gameplay and the other (better) one is a new port with new engine based on NES original with new graphics made for Amiga. PC port was a mess. Did you know that sometimes it just skipped second level with water dam? I've stuck in level 3 for many years, until at some point I've read about cheat codes and returned to this game in DOSBox. Also it was so frustrating seeing how choppy this game was and in the same time it had few vertical scroll instances that had unlimited frame rate. Playing at 8 or 10 fps and then you see a transition screen that's 30 or 60 fps. Pretty much all NES ports were that bad, while ID Software's Commander Keen series showed how to make smooth scrolling and good gameplay on PC. 1991-1992 marks the time when PC games become competitive with other platforms and devs started to know how to utilize PC hardware to it's full potential.

See the devs just had one QA tester that was like “so here its easy, all you have to do is a noscope backflip off the ledge and hold all 14 keys down at once to slide across the water well well hitting up 34 times a second. Nothing to it.” Devs: “well if you say so mister Mahatma Gandhi.”

Damn. When I was a kid, I thought I was doing something wrong, perhaps taking the wrong route, or perhaps there was some kind of special jump I didn't know how to do - but no, it was the developers releasing a broken game. As I kid, I didn't even think such a thing was possible, I mean, why would someone release something that doesn't work? Fuck you, developers!

Cowabunga! Love that you offer several Solutions! I like the idea of replacing the level file from the European version.

i love the frequent star wars references in your videos

I enjoyed this cute apocrypha and how short the video was. Thanks for making it.

I remember clearing these gaps. You need to make jump and hit attack mid jump so not to trigger the roll animation and the turtle will glide through the gap while being stuck with the hitting animation.

Mystery solved finally. Thanks.

Easily the coolest intro to a NES GAME.

I love the remixed tmnt music

You are gloriously nerdy. Thanks for the incisively insightful detailed analysis.

Just heard you mention this on the CGG podcast, and had to look it up. I remember reaching that point in the game....and not getting past it.

Great job troubleshooting! That's awesome.

Thanks 4 bringing back fond memories beating this game in my childhood.

There is a warp, by using the rope on the layout screen, then going into the two side by side screens in level 3. The rope shouldn’t work in the above screen but it does. Once you use it go into the two side by sides buildings where you use the rope fall to the left press up. You’ll immediately go to level 4

This is some really cool nerd stuff you show us 👍😍 I like your passion.

My dad and I specifically remember making it all the way towards Shredder on the American DOS version, but maybe we thought we were farther than we were.... Also remember finding a hidden area in the underwater level as a kid that had some giant text written out in it. I remember I clipped through some stuff (maybe accidentally put in the no clip code and didn't know?) towards the bottom of the level and found it. And it wasn't the Dean and Mike section either I don't think....

Man even the testers didn’t make it past the dam bomb diffusing level. Great video!

This was super interesting. Thanks for this

Thirty years. That's how long it has bothered me that I could not finish this game as a kid. I can't explain the relief at knowing it was actually impossible! A little frustrating also...and now the music will be in my head all day...ahh the memories!

I bet Master Splinter could make those jumps.

Feewwe.. that was so much work for that jump lol. Appreciate the explanation. It probably kept bugging you

im glad u covered this. the game makers need to be put on trial for this

How is he going to explain this? “Good answer, good answer...” -Raph

Wow... that seems like a lot of time and effort. Thanks for sharing.

I wish I had my old IBM-compatible, because the version of TMNT I had was labeled "1.3", and it included the L306 files from the European release!

These were the first games I ever played as a kid. I remember this. Yonoid castlevania 3 and mega man 3 were the earliest games I have any memories of.

There's also the Tandy graphics bug where they all have blue bandanas

Dude. Killer job!

"80s PC Master Race"

I had the broken DOS version, and got stuck there every time. Wish I'd known the ASDFGH trick! What I remember most about the game is that to play it, you had to enter in a random code from the instruction manual, which had pages full of codes printed on red paper so you couldn't photocopy it. The most simple copy protection of all time!

Crikey I luved this game on more NES and I have just recently re bought a copy of it. As I am growing my retro game collection.

As a professional software developer I can explain what's going on here. This is what we in the industry refer to as an "oops". Ordinarily we would try to classify this as a feature, but there's no wiggle room on this one.

This is amazing I'm glad I checked it

That's actually really interesting

Game was a lot of fun and 1 of my earliest memories of gaming period.

OMG!!! This frustrated the hell out of me as a kid. I couldn’t work out why I couldn’t make the jump. I didn’t get how they could make an error like that because essentially you could not go any further in the game. I never got to mecaturtle cos of that. On the NES version the jump was not as far & could be made easily. But pc version was exactly that…IMPOSSIBLE JUMP!!! Thanx for making this video. peacebro

I had this back in the day on the PC, before much of anything was known about cheats (had Castlevania as well, also by Ultra). Pretty sure this was as far as I'd gotten in the game, and if I still had my installed copy of it, the save file was very much like that initial one here. Loved the super jump cheat, though. It was a great way to some easy ways of beating some bosses.. Another fun fact that I remember on mine was that saving and reloading in Level 2 essentially stopped the 2:00 timer, and various other animated dangers underwater. Made that level far easier.

wtf lol so much work!! I appreciate you!

I genuinely find it offensive that a developer never tested his game by playing it all the way through to make sure you could actually complete it. I would never release a game I hadn't actually beaten entirely first.

I had the Pal version for NES. I remember the happiness when I finished the first time😍

Amusingly I got stuck on that jump for a bit in the NES version. Eventually the nuances of the controls clicked, and I got past it. I didn't realize you could walk of small gaps instead of jumping, and you need to hop certain parts by barely tapping the jump button. The manual makes no mention of either of those things, so Stage 3 has some annoying platforming till you reach that breakthru. The game is not easy by any means, but I think I got stuck on stage 3 the longest of the game. The rest seemed to click I beat the remaining parts of the game much quicker. That jump was what held back the rest of the game for me.

Great work. Subscriber gained

played this game (DOS) back in the day....good times!

As meandering as this game was in terms of finding your way, my bro and I just sorta assumed there was some other way we never found. It never occurred to us that the level (and, by extension, the game) was, in fact, completely unbeatable.

I grew up with the European NES version of the game, and I had no idea there was a PC version. Since I'm big into retro pc games I'll be looking out for this one now...

Fantastic video.

Hahaha, the scary crayon article is how I learned about this in the first place. What a blast from the past.

2:27 See what childhood trauma does, some give on the game and move on in life, others delve into a world of super intricate detail and madness.

As a kid back in the late 80's, early 90's. I had no idea that the original TMNT game was on anything other than the NES. I didn't find out until I saw AVGN play the C64 version.

I remember that jump. It was also on the NES version as well and I had a difficult time passing and always let my older brother and cousins pass that part for me. Lol Btw that game is probably the hardest I ever played.

You are one smart cookie!

There are .ima files of four 5.25" floppies floating around the Net. It's the american version with those 2 fixed files, timestamp for both is 14.09.1990.

I remember beating the game when I was a kid 8 bit was awesome times..

I could never get past that damn level, and now I know why!

I have a vague memory of this impossibility. I definitely had this game.

Holy. Fucking. Shit...!, All these years thinking I was wrong!!! I even went back to the store and showed them the game was broken, back in 1992; nobody heard me. Thank you, @DisplacedGamers.

Initially I thought "oh, how interesting to have two impossible jumps". Then I realised how funny that is and couldn't stop laughing.

By analizing both screens from NES and DOS version, seems like that it IS the level layout from the original game, the issue being incorrect replication. The sewer water was raised higher, making the jump too narrow (Having 16 pixels of free room to jump, while in NES it's 32 pixels) and the gap itself in NES version was only 3 blocks large in compare to DOS version it seems to be larger by 2 blocks.

Very interesting that you can fix this yourself by using the files from the European version. Yeah I knew about the impossible jump and I had issues getting to that jump. The 1st jump in the sewers isn't easy because of the control mechanics of the Dos version. The same thing goes with the Hex editing the saved game file.

Never thought about a MS-DOS version of the first TMNT release to NES

As someone who knows the developers of that game , I can tell you that the QA could get past both of those jump but it was incredibly difficult and it should never have been allowed to ship like that. The European developers who were localizing it thought it was too hard for the average player and that's why they made the EU version with the better gaps.

Thank you so much

I swore my nes version was messed up as well?? As a kid I recall trying to make the rope shoot out to no avail at that spot. Ended up driving around shooting foot soldiers till I got bored and turned it off.

As some have duly pointed out, the 2nd jump is not impossible at all. As I recall, there are 4 jump heights available to the player -- two with a spin, and two with no spin. The higher variant of the spinless jump clears the second gap (as seen at 5:04). I had the misfortune of being stuck with the US version in Europe -- however, there is a bug exploit using the rope that enables you to warp past the final sections of level 3 to the beginning of Level 4 without cheat codes, but doing so means you never get to fight the cool endboss in Level 3.

I had the PC port way back then and I remember the impossible jump. What's interesting though, is I remember the second jump, not the first! It was exactly the same with the single column coming down right between the gap. The gap was too wide to short jump, and the column blocked the long jump. But how did I make the first jump? I can't explain it! Maybe I had a later copy that fixed the first jump but not the second? I don't know, but I definitely remember it was the second jump that got me stuck. Weird!

Oh, wow. A Scary Crayon mention. Now that's a name I haven't heard in a long time...

3:37 Holy crap! I used to have that toy on the right. It was this mosquito guy and he had a button on his back you could press to make blood ooze into the little red window on his stomach. I have no idea what it was from, but I always thought it was cool as hell.

You can probably pass that second gap with a short hop jump... when I had this game back in the 80’s, I tried that a million times to try to pass the impossible jump. It never did work. I swore I got close a couple times. Nobody believed me, because they all had the NES version, and at that time, I didn’t have an NES...

I just checked now and I also have version 2.0. It also seems to be 5.25" disk based on the label. I don't know for sure if mine had the impossible jump, but I'm pretty sure that it did since I never got far in the game (although I had a save from my cousin or something that got pretty far, maybe he cheated? IDK). The game was hard though, and being a kid didn't help

Great video! May I ask where you got the remixed music from?

I wonder if there are any other broken levels in the dos version than this one.

Man i got a NES for Christmas when I was 7 with this and super Mario 2. Me and my friends played the shit out of that machine.

This game is already hard on the NES version (I still haven't finished it but finished Battletoads, can you believe?). Imagine if this was not a case of omission from the programmers and the jump is right? Damn!

There was a PC version? Wowww

Even though the game is pretty old, I'm surprised that the impossible jump hasn't been addressed yet. I played the Nintendo version on my pc but I never made it there.

I knew exactly what this was before even watching the video. Believe it or not, I was able to get past that point without cheating. (I wasn't aware of a cheat code.) If you recall, there is a half jump you can do. When you pull it off correctly, your turtle will jump standing up without turning into a ball. I remember it took a while, but you can maneuver across. Same thing with the next jump but I recall getting hit by the enemy which helped to get by on the second jump.

Some even think that the game cover art is a mistake, but it's the cover to TMNT no.4 by the creators.

What about the impossible jump right before that? Hasn’t the AVGN stressed out that jump enough???

Does anyone know of a video where the turtles fall into the water in the DOS version? Most of these gameplay videos almost never show mistakes.

As a kid, i played the hell out of this game because i loved nintendo, and i loved turtles. It never sank in how bad and unfair this game really was, and how little the devs really tried in making a decent game. Seeing the DOS version makes me realise some kids werent as lucky as me...

'Shredder's my a$$.. Splinter's my b*lls.. (James Rolfe / AVGN}

It's like that fictional children's book in Will Ferrell's film "Elf" that had a blank page. Poor QC.

"Games are so much buggier today than they used to be!"

Not impossible. If I remember correctly, in code your input for jumping has three states, and is coded in such a way, that makes hitting the desired 3rd state (going into a controllable roll) isn't easily done as desired, in conjunction with input presses, and registered animation. Is because the two are set, or one offset, while the other is coded to follow traditional framerates. Your input checkes 2 times, every frame if coded the same as NES. The Animations of the jump are offset. If this is the case for DOS, then you can see how it's not impossible, but very difficult nonetheless. As I do remember getting the timing down to get past this part shown, but certainly takes some good hand-eye coordination, and even a bit of luck. Barely touching the blocks above the turtle's head, then just before you go into fall (which is coded weirdly, but believe it's for this purpose) you press jump again and hold, going into your controllable roll, and aim for the next platform. If done right, you'll look to fall short, even after the second jump, but like I said the physics is weirdly coded, along with the timing of input, and animation offset, is going to take a few tries😂.

Where can I listen to this far superior soundtrack? The songs in this video are all from the game, yes, but not with that much sound quality. Or does the dos-ost simply sound like this?