The whole sewer crew, except Michelangelo, is captured in a most heinous hideout. Who could be behind this travesty? Who else. Shredder has returned as Cyber Shredder - half-man, half-machine and he's created this twisty-turny fun house of Turtle torture. Use Turtle strategy and all new moves to help Michelangelo rescue the gang from Cyber Shredder's Fortress.
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No me esperaba que se influenciara de Metroid en cuanto a la estructura del mapa y upgrades opcionales para la vida, aunque sigue siendo bastante lineal. Empiezas solo con una tortuga y vas poco a poco rescatando a las demas. Cada una tiene una habilidad especial que te permite explorar zonas nuevas similar al primero para NES solo que mas en cuanto a movilidad y exploración mas que solo combate y alcance. Me hubiese gustado ver otro juego de home console con estas ideas.
Minor Introduction
And here we are, the final GB game and the one I was most interested to check out for one singular reason: it’s a metroid clone (not really metroidvania, since this came out before sotn). Yup! A TMNT metroid clone, so this should be fun. Welcome to my tenth review of the marathon, courtesy of the cowabunga collection and let’s jump immediately into it, cuz i’m very curious if they were able to pull it off or not.
And here we are, the final GB game and the one I was most interested to check out for one singular reason: it’s a metroid clone (not really metroidvania, since this came out before sotn). Yup! A TMNT metroid clone, so this should be fun. Welcome to my tenth review of the marathon, courtesy of the cowabunga collection and let’s jump immediately into it, cuz i’m very curious if they were able to pull it off or not.
First Impressions
Yep. They pulled it off. This is my favourite of all the GB games and it’s honestly amongst the most memorable of all the TMNT games, purely for having the balls to break out of the bubble and have its own take on a metroid game. Since this is still a clone of the metroid game formula during its developing stages (before it would reach a sort of pinnacle with Super Metroid), there are flaws here and there, especially on gameboy hardware, but they did a very good job with it and I loved my way through this game, start to finish.
Yep. They pulled it off. This is my favourite of all the GB games and it’s honestly amongst the most memorable of all the TMNT games, purely for having the balls to break out of the bubble and have its own take on a metroid game. Since this is still a clone of the metroid game formula during its developing stages (before it would reach a sort of pinnacle with Super Metroid), there are flaws here and there, especially on gameboy hardware, but they did a very good job with it and I loved my way through this game, start to finish.
Gameplay
The BASIC controls remain the same: jump, attack, movement and a jump attack combo. Where it differs is that this is used in a metroid formula, where the priority is the overall maze level and powerups you acquire through the level. For story reasons, you start as Michelangelo, who has one unique ability: Glide. It’s exactly what it sounds, it lets you glide after jumping. Over the course of the game, you’ll unlock three more powerups: drilling over certain terrain with Leonardo, this game’s equivalent of the morph ball to enter small spaces with Raphael and climbing walls with Donatello, each one of them with their own uses. The maze design does a good job of making each of them useful and progression feel quite natural, even while being nonlinear. I do feel Raphael’s unique power is more underutilized than the others (which is quite funny, since it’s the only one to copy the most iconic move from the metroid games), but it makes up by also making you almost invincible to enemy attacks, which becomes quite useful in sections where you want to descend super quickly. Outside of that, the rest are very useful throughout the game, whenever used as intended or used as shortcut or speedrunning options. The general design of the maze is also very solid for a metroid clone, each with their obstacles, methods of getting through, enemy placement and the whole package and it’s fun traversing them and finding quicker routes through the newly acquired powers. The enemy variety is also solid, but the bosses have to be a highlight. They’re probably some of the best that all the games have offered, with understandable attacks and patters, but with an added level of unpredictability to them, which adds to their challenge and tense feeling throughout the bosses (if you do happen to lose, the game has both continues and a password system to get you back in no time). They also replenish your health when you beat them, so they serve as great resources of health outside of pizza. Speaking of, the game also has its own hp bar increase collectibles, similar to metroid games, which are usually hidden in off-the-beaten-track paths that normally you would ignore, serving as neat little rewards for exploring and experimenting with the environment and your moveset. Simply put, I quite enjoyed the gameplay here a lot more than I was expecting, I thought they were gonna do a lazy man’s metroid with no effort, but I was proven wrong.
The BASIC controls remain the same: jump, attack, movement and a jump attack combo. Where it differs is that this is used in a metroid formula, where the priority is the overall maze level and powerups you acquire through the level. For story reasons, you start as Michelangelo, who has one unique ability: Glide. It’s exactly what it sounds, it lets you glide after jumping. Over the course of the game, you’ll unlock three more powerups: drilling over certain terrain with Leonardo, this game’s equivalent of the morph ball to enter small spaces with Raphael and climbing walls with Donatello, each one of them with their own uses. The maze design does a good job of making each of them useful and progression feel quite natural, even while being nonlinear. I do feel Raphael’s unique power is more underutilized than the others (which is quite funny, since it’s the only one to copy the most iconic move from the metroid games), but it makes up by also making you almost invincible to enemy attacks, which becomes quite useful in sections where you want to descend super quickly. Outside of that, the rest are very useful throughout the game, whenever used as intended or used as shortcut or speedrunning options. The general design of the maze is also very solid for a metroid clone, each with their obstacles, methods of getting through, enemy placement and the whole package and it’s fun traversing them and finding quicker routes through the newly acquired powers. The enemy variety is also solid, but the bosses have to be a highlight. They’re probably some of the best that all the games have offered, with understandable attacks and patters, but with an added level of unpredictability to them, which adds to their challenge and tense feeling throughout the bosses (if you do happen to lose, the game has both continues and a password system to get you back in no time). They also replenish your health when you beat them, so they serve as great resources of health outside of pizza. Speaking of, the game also has its own hp bar increase collectibles, similar to metroid games, which are usually hidden in off-the-beaten-track paths that normally you would ignore, serving as neat little rewards for exploring and experimenting with the environment and your moveset. Simply put, I quite enjoyed the gameplay here a lot more than I was expecting, I thought they were gonna do a lazy man’s metroid with no effort, but I was proven wrong.
Story
Once again, the story merely serves as an excuse for the setting and why this game exists, but the initial concept and presentation of it is definitely better. This time Cyber Shredder kidnaps all the turtles, april and splinter…except for Michelangelo, who gets challenged from him instead to save all of them. The story progression after the fact is straightforward, but I appreciate that they present it better, with cutscenes and even dialogue boxes after each save for some turtle interaction, neat touches.
Once again, the story merely serves as an excuse for the setting and why this game exists, but the initial concept and presentation of it is definitely better. This time Cyber Shredder kidnaps all the turtles, april and splinter…except for Michelangelo, who gets challenged from him instead to save all of them. The story progression after the fact is straightforward, but I appreciate that they present it better, with cutscenes and even dialogue boxes after each save for some turtle interaction, neat touches.
Presentation
And of course, this is the best looking TMNT game on the gameboy. The presentation jump isn’t as noticeable as going from first game to second, but it is still noticeable in its own way. The game runs smoothly as you would expect, the character sprites look very good and are an improvement over the second’s, the animation is also really good, as is the music. The backgrounds and environment work is also well-done. Generally well-done presentation work yet again.
And of course, this is the best looking TMNT game on the gameboy. The presentation jump isn’t as noticeable as going from first game to second, but it is still noticeable in its own way. The game runs smoothly as you would expect, the character sprites look very good and are an improvement over the second’s, the animation is also really good, as is the music. The backgrounds and environment work is also well-done. Generally well-done presentation work yet again.
Negatives
My flaws are related to this being a metroid format game on a limited hardware like gameboy, which leads to the classic “where the fuck do I go” problems and a map that doesn’t really help you, outside of showing how many total rooms there are, your location and which rooms hold important stuff…but the game never tells you what those important stuff are and where are the entrances, so you have to gamble a lot to figure out the ideal route….or alternatively look up a better detailed map (which the strategy guide on the cowabunga collection thankfully provides). While the difficulty of this game is actually perfect for the most part, there are still spots where the game likes to throw unavoidable attacks from offscreen just to chip a bit at your health, and the bat enemy ends up becoming quite annoying to deal with…there is also a boss rush at the very end, which was thankfully a bit more manageable cuz the game always replenishes your health to max when you finish a boss. These really are my only complaints.
My flaws are related to this being a metroid format game on a limited hardware like gameboy, which leads to the classic “where the fuck do I go” problems and a map that doesn’t really help you, outside of showing how many total rooms there are, your location and which rooms hold important stuff…but the game never tells you what those important stuff are and where are the entrances, so you have to gamble a lot to figure out the ideal route….or alternatively look up a better detailed map (which the strategy guide on the cowabunga collection thankfully provides). While the difficulty of this game is actually perfect for the most part, there are still spots where the game likes to throw unavoidable attacks from offscreen just to chip a bit at your health, and the bat enemy ends up becoming quite annoying to deal with…there is also a boss rush at the very end, which was thankfully a bit more manageable cuz the game always replenishes your health to max when you finish a boss. These really are my only complaints.
Final Thoughts
Overall, this was a great send-off to the ninja turtles’s stint on the gameboy, with the most interesting installment in the series, one that experiments with a very unlikely formula and succeeds 80% of the way through. As long as you have a detailed map with you, you’ll have a great time with this game, I highly recommend you check it out. Final verdict: 8/10.
Overall, this was a great send-off to the ninja turtles’s stint on the gameboy, with the most interesting installment in the series, one that experiments with a very unlikely formula and succeeds 80% of the way through. As long as you have a detailed map with you, you’ll have a great time with this game, I highly recommend you check it out. Final verdict: 8/10.
A great GB title. A Metroidvania that isn't too confusing but still is fun to explore and find new areas. Good graphics, music and controls. Overall this game is radical.
"The metroidvania one."
So what do we really have here? You start off as Mikey. You're trying to find and rescue your brothers scattered throughout a large continuous environment. Each turtle has a unique ability that allows you to progress deeper through the labyrinth.
You get a complete map at the beginning of the game with areas of interest marked with a nondescript dot. Unlike Castlevania, you don't see doors marked on the map.
The player is left to make educated guesses about where to press forward, and this is my favourite design element. The maze is fairly simple to actually explore but seems vast from the map. Navigating without a guide is not difficult.
What is difficult, is the bosses. They move too fast. They are too big. They have too many i-frames. As you learn their movements and improve your reaction time, they are beatable but it's not enjoyable.
The turtles themselves are fun to control. You have an air kick, and a generic attack. As best I can tell the hit boxes are the same for all turtles. You aren't able to spam attacks, they have about a half second cool down period, so you need to be precise with your strikes like with a Ninja Gaiden.
Music is good. Enemies lack variety. It's no Metroid II but it's interesting and competently put together.
Played via The Cowabunga Collection
I dare say this is unfortunately the only TMNT Castleroid (at least to my knowledge), because Radical Rescue has some neat tricks up its sleeve for an original GameBoy release. Obviously, Radical Rescue plenty of technical limitations related to the hardware, and the expected gnarly difficulty at specific times (notably the final boss gauntlet).
That all being said, Radical Rescue is easily the best the TMNT had to offer on the original GameBoy.
I was totally not expecting this game to be a Metroidvania style game. First of all I had never heard of Radical Rescue and to be honest I didn't know the Game Boy had 3 TMNT games, I thought Fall of the Foot Clan was the only one. That aside, I only found it out through the Cowabunga Collection and it shows images of the game and I thought it was another side scroller brawler like the others, but the sprites were sized better. Nope, this is a TMNT Metroidvania and honestly it feels like TMNT (NES) done the right way.
I honestly really like the detailed sprites of all the characters including the turtles, it really doesn't look like it was reused from any of the past games, all the assets actually look brand new. The world is pretty open and there's health upgrades and stuff to find. It's not a deep Metroidvania by any means, but it's done quite well.
I'll admit I was a bit thrown off at the start of the game because you are forced to use Michelangelo due to everyone else being captured. My first thought was "Great..." until I jumped and pressed A again and found him spinning his nunchaku to slowly glide down to the ground. This! They got that from the cartoon intro and it's the reason he does it in future games! Honestly it was awesome to see. Each turtle has their own ability to help get through the areas, while none of them have any other difference of speed or power or anything besides Donatello having like an extra pixel of reach their difference lies in their newfound abilities.
The music is actually really good and again uses it's own songs only borrowing the main theme in spots, but everything else is brand new.
The difficulty sits somewhere between Fall of the Foot Clan and closer to the end hits like Castlevania levels of difficult, but all in all stays fun.
I highly suggest people play this game, it's very different and I think they were on to something, though it seems this was the last time they made this type of TMNT game, future ones would just be brawlers or regular side scrollers. Shame, this was amazing.