remember how fall of the foot clan was very basic and bland with no variety
back from the sewers fixes that problem, and honestly it almost seems ambitious. at its core, its still a sidescroller where an enemy jumps at you from the border of the screen and then he dies in one hit, but now, every few minutes the levels will be... not 3d, but you can move in all directions like in most beat-em-ups (but enemies still die in one hit and theres no combos or throws or anything so i wouldnt classify it as a beatemup), and there are even skateboard sections and more enemy variety

problem is
the level design is ass, the enemies will SWARM you, especially mausers, and bosses cant be stunlocked anymore and just take forever to kill
by all accounts everything added should make the game better, but it just ends up making the game worse
its not good

Minor Introduction
Now we’re talking! Welcome to the ninth review of this TMNT marathon, courtesy of the cowabunga collection! For this review, we’re checking out the second TMNT game on the gameboy, which happens to be in the same vein of the first game: a platformer. The first game was rather basic, but still an ok time that I didn’t regret, so it should be easy for this game to build upon that and improve. So did it do just that or is it worse somehow? Let’s find out!

First Impressions
Ok wow this is leaps better than the first game. It really makes the first gameboy game look like an unfinished prototype game and this instead is the final product. Basically every single aspect sees a drastic improvement, making for a game that is very good from start to finish…mostly.

Gameplay
The controls remain the same: a jump, an attack and movement, with the same jump attack combo, but they feel a bit faster here. The real highlight is how everything AROUND it has been improved. The level design is significantly better, with more unique environmental hazards each stage and a focus on verticality for the platforming, as well as generally varied design, from simple left to right, to vertical platforming, to jumping over boulders, it is surprisingly great stuff and I really enjoyed the levels here. The bosses are also significantly improved, as they pose an actual challenge here, while still having understandable patterns that make it really good to learn them and beat them. You now also have the option to pick a new turtle each stage, allowing you some element of strategy to conserve health for everyone else, and the minigame to get them back is also more challenging. The difficulty in general is back to how it’s supposed to be and i’m really glad for that, while naturally increasing so the challenge remains consistently tense throughout. The enemy variety is also a lot more distinct. There are flaws, but the sheer amount of improvements on the gameplay front in comparison to the first gameboy game is nothing to scoff at. This is what understanding the hardware and actual effort looks like.

Story
Someone at Konami actually cared to make a fucking opening cutscene for this game and holy shit I’m impressed they even pulled this off, considering it is gameboy. Though this could also serve as a compensation for the fact they don’t even really tell you what the plot is. However, judging by the progression and environments, it is probably the same old plot that merely serves as an excuse for this game’s existence. The fact they decided to not even mention what it is in-game should probably say a lot, so let’s just move on.

Presentation
The game looks sooo much better in every regard in comparison to the first gameboy game. I feel I need to mention again, but it has a goddamn opening cutscene that also LOOKS GOOD. The character sprites and animation look very good for that gameboy era (the animations in particular being a highlight, as there is a lot of them and makes the game so much more expressive than the “robotic at times”-feeling original), the backgrounds also look great and the skateboard level even makes use of the scrolling effect, which also looks good! The music is also good and the game runs at a mostly consistent framerate. It just is very good presentation work all around, especially when you put into context how impressive it looks for GAMEBOY!

Negatives
The game ain’t without its negatives. While I did mention the difficulty is more natural and also progresses smoothly, what I didn’t mention is how it unfortunately maintains the cheapness that plagued NES TMNT games. It’s still not near the original arcade game level of bullshit, but it becomes more noticeable in the final two levels. It also doesn’t help that the enemies respawn infinitely, so that becomes annoying too. They are less intrusive cuz the unlimited continues are here and they get you back to where you were, as opposed to starting all the way from the beginning, but this is still a glaring flaw worth mentioning and a big reason for the score.

Final Thoughts
Despite the inconsistent difficulty complaint, I still really enjoyed my time through this game. It takes the blueprint of the first gameboy game and actually turns it into a final product, where every single aspect of it has been improved to a ridiculous degree for a game that is very fun to go through from start to finish. Never would have thought I would be sitting here and tell you this game is better than the actual original arcade game and its NES port, yet here we are. Final Rating: 7.5/10.

Technically played via the Cowabunga Collection on Nintendo Switch.

Those Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles made a decent enough leap to the Game Boy with 1990's Fall of the Foot Clan so naturally a sequel was bound to happen and it arrived a year later in the form of Back from the Sewers.

It's a game that does play a lot like the previous title but unfortunately in this game's scenario, our turtle friends seem to have taken a few rather nasty things with them out of the sewers... like the fact that they seem to walk at the speed of treacle and that their hit boxes seem to have taken a turn for the worse, or the enemies being more annoying this time around or the screen crunch fucking you over in certain cases or the poor bosses.

There's not even any funny story text to laugh at unlike the previous game so no Shredder milkshakes for you this time.
:(

But there are some voice clips though which is kinda impressive for the Game Boy so there's that I guess.

I wanted to like this just as much as the first GB game but I'm afraid to say, this wasn't much fun to play and is a massive stepdown in quality. Better to just leave this one in the Turtles time machine.

Anyway, "Pizza time!"

This game really took everything nice I had to say about Fall of the Foot Clan - namely the part where I was like "wow, they gave you enough reaction time for enemy spawns despite your character moving so slow!" - and decided to just throw all of that in the garbage.

As your selected turtle gently strolls through levels and attacks with a hit box best described as "pathetic", the sound of your teenaged reptile taking damage will start to become rhythmic as you slog through a tidal wave of relentless enemy spawns and asshole traps. I can't even compliment the more detailed sprites here either because some of the characters (like Bebop, good lord) inexplicably look worse in this game.

The only silver lining in all of this? This game is pretty short and, hey, it has voice clips and they're actually pretty good! Congratulations, TMNT II: Back from the Sewers, you made audible voice clips play through my Game Boy speakers.

Version: TMNT the Cowabunga Collection

It's worse than the first game in almost every way. I'm a real gamer of course 😎, but couldn't beat it without using the new features sadly.

My thoughts:
(+ = (mostly) positive; - = (mostly) negative)
- Gameplay;
Bad, there were multiple cases where you just couldn't continue without getting hurt. All characters played the same and when the game forgets to offer you pizza after a hard part.

- Music;
Nothing to mention.

- Graphics;
Worse than the first game...

- Story/Characters;
Nothing to mention.

Recommend?
Only if you have to collection.

The most minor of upgrades from the first Game Boy TURTLES game, in that it now mixes in some actual belt-scrolling areas in between the LCD-handheld-on-steroids stuff from before. Mostly the game is just harder, which was, uh, not the way to go. The biggest upgrade is the backgrounds, which look fantastic, but this weirdly seems to have come at the cost of the character art/animation, which looks goofy and off-model. (The turtles' walk and attack cycles are really funny, check 'em out. And what the EFF is going on with Bebop???)

It is striking me while playing through all of these that by FAR the most ambitious game is gonna be that nightmarish first NES one, huh. That's kind of rough. Why couldn't they have done something like that again on Gameboy? Holding out a fool's hope for something more special with the third one.

The first TMNT game that was released for the Game Boy, Fall of the Foot Clan, was quite possibly the most basic and bare-bones Ninja Turtles game that has ever been made. It was nothing more than just a regular action platformer where you walked from left to right, slashed up enemies, and jumped sometimes. For what it was, it was nothing awful, and I had a decent time with it, but it is definitely not gonna be the TMNT game I choose to revisit multiple times in the future. Of course though, because it was the Ninja Turtles, it was extremely successful, leading to yet another series of games that would be released right alongside the NES and arcade games. So, just one year after that game came out, we would then get the sequel known as Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles II: Back from the Sewers.

When going into this, I had very low expectations. Given how the first game went down, I was assuming that this was gonna be just a generic sequel, with not much more going on compared to the original game, and was primarily meant to be another piece of merchandise for the brand. For the most part, I was right in my assumptions, but I will give it credit, as there does seem to be a lot more “effort and care” placed in this one compared to the previous, making it more likable. So as a whole, I would consider this to be a good game, definitely an improvement over the original, and while it still isn’t anything all that special, I’m sure it’ll satisfy the cravings of any rabid Turtles fans out there.

The story is, what else, Shredder’s being a dick, and the Ninja Turtles gotta stop him, with there being no story elements presented to the player whatsoever, so I am glad to see that the game cares about the plot as much as I do, the graphics are Game Boy graphics, but the sprites and levels this time around do look a lot better, especially with character portraits and animations, the music is pretty good, having a lot of tunes you would expect, with some others that sound good for a Game Boy game, while accompanied by a bunch of compressed voice lines that are just so painfully enjoyable to hear, the control is exactly what you would expect, so moving on, and the gameplay is almost identical to the original game, but there were some change implemented that, while not being original for a TMNT game, do make it feel like a more complete package.

The game is primarily a 2D action platformer, where you take control of one of the four Ninja Turtles, or in my case, Leonardo only, go through a set of six different levels, slash through many different typical baddies that one can find from this universe, gather plenty slices of pizza to make sure you are completely prepared for whatever lies ahead, complete several bonus stages to get even more pizzas, and take on plenty of familiar faces in plenty of boss fights, which range from extremely easy, to only slightly more difficult. It fills out all of the checkboxes for what you would expect from a typical TMNT game, while also managing to expand the gameplay… or at least, as much as you would expect from a Game Boy TMNT game.

First off, there are now levels in the game where you will be riding on hoverboards while taking out enemies, and these levels actually have a Z-axis rather than being limited to a 2D plane. It doesn’t change up the gameplay too much, and this isn’t a completely original segment never before seen in a TMNT game, but… hey, at least it is something. In addition to that, instead of having a typical set of lives, the turtles themselves act as the lives. Whenever you die, the current turtle you play as gets captured, and you are then forced to play as one of the other turtles. Thankfully, at the end of the level though, you are then given the chance to save the captured turtle to use once again, which is a pretty neat feature, making you experiment with the turtles if you are too bad. Obviously, I never had to go through this, because I am just too awesome (really loves that rewind button), but it sounds like a neat feature regardless.

If that isn’t enough to fulfill your picky TMNT desires though, then what you end up with is yet another generic Ninja Turtles platformer. Sure, it does manage to look, sound, and play better then the original game in every regard, but if you weren’t really a fan of that original game, then you probably won’t like this one either. That’s really the only big issue that I ended up having with the game though. If I had to get extremely nitpicky, I could complain about how you don’t get fully healed in between levels, but that is what the bonus stages are for, so there's really no point in complaining about that. Much like there isn’t much point in playing this game.

Overall, despite the improved presentation and gameplay, this game just barely manages to be better than the previous game, being more of what you got from the first Game Boy title, which could be good for some, and bad for others. I would recommend it for those who loved that original Game Boy game, as well as those who are big fans of the Ninja Turtles, but for everyone else, you are better off playing other TMNT games that came out around this era. Although, with all that being said, if you haven’t heard any of the voice samples that came from this game, then you should go give them a good listen. They are just as crusty as you think they are.

Game #439

Turtles II - Back from the Sewers does a lot better than its direct predecessor Fall of the Foot Clan in many cases. You notice this as soon as you start the cartridge, which plays a wonderful Gameboy version of the cartoon intro. The music is varied and catchy. There are even two scratchy voice samples. After each level start, a euphoric "COWABUNGA!" is heard, and "Pizza time!" when you pause. Can it get any more charming than that? The levels are also more dynamic and no longer consist of bluntly running to the right and beating everything that runs in front of your green nose. Instead, there are autoscrolling sequences on a skateboard or surfboard in which you have to dodge all kinds of obstacles and defeat foot soldiers and more. The graphics have of course also been improved and now offer more detail and depth. It is simply satisfying to see the flips of the four boys while jumping. With each level, however, the difficulty level increases considerably. Already in Act 3, it gets annoying because the game throws endless spawning mousers at you. In the Technodrome at the latest, the difficulty level has reached its maximum with more Mousers, Roadkill Rodneys, which this time are unfortunately not stunned when we hit them. Instead, they can counterattack directly after we hit them. Again, there are openings that spit out enemies endlessly until you pass them, which often results in a hit to the Turtle. You eagerly await the next pizza in this Endurance test. Where Konami has also tightened up are the bosses, which now not only take 5 hits but have a life bar like us. Especially in fights where the map goes into depth, it is almost impossible to hit the boss without taking a hit yourself. Here they have cranked the dial a little too far. And after each of the Turtles has been defeated once, it's game over, so you have four attempts. Back from the Sewers is an improved, albeit really tough game that you can really cut your teeth on.

An improvement over the first GB game, as there's at least some strategy involved when going from left to right. I enjoyed it for the most part but then area 5 I think, the weird sky platform level, just sucked. It throws everything at you.

It does improve after that but there's some absolutely horse shit enemy placement in the technodrome level that can just get fucked. I liked the fight with Shredder and Krang at the end though.

A decent enough game that I've probably rated rather generously but this was quite fun when it wasn't being annoying.

The entire time I kept playing this game, I couldn't stop thinking how weird this game was. Back from the Sewers kinda felt like they tried to combine elements of each TMNT up until that point and what they made was the turtles and enemies had huge sprites with weird hit boxes like TMNT(NES), a constant jump in of enemies like Fall of the Foot Clan, animations trying to call back to TMNT (2 as well) arcade and Turtles in Time. In theory this should be good but...

I always said I love the GameBoy because a lot of the times, games made for it weren't just mini copies of bigger games, they were game meant to compliment the series and the bigger games, and in a sense this kinda does that...but it feels more like an amalgamation of the series and lacks it's own identity.

I'll say the animations and sprite work looks good though the backgrounds are bland. The music is actually very forgettable save for the second to last level. The game does have like a cute pause menu, but honestly the bosses are very cheap with huge hit boxes and some bosses have counter attacks that require split second movement to not get hit.

I know it sounds like I didn't like the game, but I honestly did, it was just a weird way of going at it, but it was definitely an experience and I'm glad I played it as a bit of history of one of my favorite consoles.

'Back to the Sewers' is a 'TMNT' game with unlimited continues, and this is so forgiving that beating it is guaranteed on first playthrough. I, however, only learned about the continues after spending a day unnecessarily training on levels and bosses. To make sure this game provided me with a challenge, I only declared the game completed once I beat it all the way through without using any continues. Now doing this is MUCH harder than it was in the original 'TMNT' Game Boy game, 'Fall of the Foot Clan.' And not in the fair way you'd hope for in a precision action game.

There are sections of this game where the pattern and pace of enemy introductions are such that there is absolutely no way to avoid taking damage. Sometimes considerable damage. The liberal offerings of pizza throughout seem to be an admission of the developers' mistakes. The boss patterns are much more difficult here than in the original game and require pixel perfect accuracy and perfect execution of the slide move. That slide move sucks, let me also say, considering it involves pushing both jump and attack buttons simultaneously and usually results in a jump or an attack rather than the desired slide.

The graphics are more detailed here than in 'Fall of the Foot Clan' but the turtles look dopier and the reach of the weapons is reduced to an absurdly short distance. The hit boxes make less sense here. The level design is messier. And as mentioned, the enemy encounters are poorly designed. A more challenging game, and I felt great beating it without using continues (and with two turtles left in the bank), but I still prefer the elegance and simplicity of 'Fall of the Foot Clan.'

Alex's Cowabunga Collection Marathon, Pt. 8 of 13

A lot of these TMNT games are essentially the same idea, you go left to right, start on the street, go in sewers, end in the Technodrome. This second Game Boy title still hits those same beats, but it's great to see the ways they tried to improve on what came before with each release.

Back from the Sewers improves on Fall of the Foot Clan quite a bit! There's some really impressive sprite work for a Game Boy game, with the first level beginning with a gorgeous little animation of your turtle climbing out of a tunnel in the wall, emerging towards the camera. It's brief and only happens once, yet some animator at Konami in the 90s decided it was worth knocking out of the party. This brief entrance shows the care that was put into the visuals of Back from the Sewers. The artists drew a rad foot-first inverted high jump, a hilarious squashed-by-a-boulder sprite, bug eyes when slipping down a slope, and more. The turtles have a lot more charm and life to them this time around.

The level design has improved too, with tiered level paths being a big part of this game. Stages have a bit of verticality early on, but it's just a higher platform and a lower level like some of the arcade games. Later on, the third world features a construction site that will have you climbing girders to a third story, and the fifth world employs loads of floating platforms in the sky, which becomes an impressive maze that you can navigate however you'd like. It becomes a bit repetitive, but it's a welcome change from walking a simple left-to-right path.

Fall of the Foot Clan was Kirby-levels of easy, but the bosses here really put up a fight, making Back from the Sewers much more of a challenge. Thankfully, health isn't too hard to find, with bonus levels after each Stage is finished giving you an opportunity to grab as much pizza as possible within a set amount of time.

You'll also find the funniest part of this game once or twice in each level: A Foot Soldier pizza delivery guy. I don't know what this person's deal is, but he's just hanging out holding a pizza box. Not moving, not attacking. Just frozen, paralyzed, waiting for you to kill him and steal his lunch.