This is another one of those games that didn't start getting a large amount of hate until these more recent couple of years, thanks to people taking reviewers like AVGN a little too seriously, especially the ones that never even owned or play any of they games they riffed on. I have very fond memories of playing this game and while I was never able to get past the third level, I also never had any ill will towards it and as surprising as it might sound, never had any major problems with the underwater world. So it was news to me when everyone said how impossible the level was, when my brothers and myself never really complained about it, in fact it was my favorite level as a kid.
This was also my 1st Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles game and I was a bit thrown back by of a lack of familiar characters but I do love this game and I'm really good at it. I can beat this game in 45 minutes flat or less And not lose much health. I still go back and play it often maybe once a year. Of course my all time favorite is the original arcade version.
Seriously, I just wanted to reiterate how amazing Classic Game Room is.. and how equally amazing Undertow is. In fact, I might say that Undertow is probably the cream of the crop for insightful well balanced reviews on TH-cam. I am really, quickly, gaining lots of respect for the few of you who are doing reviews. I don't know if it's Mark who chooses you or what he process is but SOMEONE knows what makes good reviewers. Congrats to them because you guys are doing an excellent job.
I beat this game as a kid, it was one of the only games I had for ages so it was played daily, been on it again for the last few nights (original hardware not emulating) and after 4 attempts I managed to beat it again and its a satisfying thing to do
I beat it a couple of days back in the original system for the first time as well,and its from those games that though unfair in many parts it is really satisfying when you are beating it like the old days.
My first ever video game, and it will always hold a special place for me. Yes it was EXTREMELY hard (bordering on impossible late on) but it was a lot of fun.
TMNT was a little after my time. (I was already a pubescent teenager by the time the Turtles hit the big time). That being said, I knew of them, but never watched the 'toon or played with the toys. So when I first played this game....I LOVED it! Didn't even know that the enemies were generic. LOL I like the arcade port as well, but this game is more in line with the types of games I associate the NES with. Very good review. :)
I remember playing this game a lot when I was a kid. It had a lot of potential I could never complete it without the game genie as it was just to hard! I would endlessly run out of rope and certainly had issues with the re spawning bad guys. i think what kept me playing was the graphics and the fact you could switch turtles!
Yes the game was very weird and very hard. Stil, now you get to appreciate the music and how unique it was; not to mention dark. If you stop to think for a minute you´ll be reminded of the the first movie. We all knew the cartoon and ended up getting that unusual dark and adult movie. So, the same happened with this game.
I have always loved Classic Game Room since I discovered it a few years ago. Recently I began seeing "Undertow" in links to the right and it always seemed to be newer games so I assumed it was either a) specifically reviews on current games or b) trailers of games When I clicked on one once and noticed it wasn't Mark who was doing the review I clicked off it. What the hell is this shit? Anyway, recently I've been watching them and have been SUPER surprised at their amazing quality. Great stuff!
Think i was about 6 when dad swapped crappy wizards and warriors for this, found the game at 6am there on the sofa while getting ready for school. Friends didn't beleive me you could play yer fravourite tv show! i was very fortunate, solid game but still beat it! Go Donatello
@LargeRedRizla It did contain the "hero's in a half-shell, Turtle Power!" Music cue as the "boss beaten" theme.... which to me was more than enough. So I don't understand that criticism.
I loved this game as a kid! I remember opening it on Xmas day! Wasn't it called hero turtles in the UK? Ninja turtles was ment to be to aggressive? Anyway top game, managed to make it all the way to the tecadrome but was just stupidly difficult!
At least the later TMNT games are better, and they mostly made the series beat-em-up for the better! This would have been an awesome idea if the levels weren't so cheaply hard! In fact, I want TMNT to go open world, just like they tried to here. But make it so that I am doing actual TMNT type of things like sneaking out, stopping robbers, getting in car chases, stopping the Shredder, etc. I would appreciate it if they reboot with a game like this like they did with Batman...with a TMNT feel!
C'mon People? Whatever happened to sleeping over at your friends house, or the other way around and playing NES games like Double Dragon for three hours till you got past the forest level and still died on the killer blocks? Yes! this game was hard, but again c'mon? no save state! Enjoy like you used to!
I only got to watch someone play this once, from outside their house. And when I saw the Wizard. I thought I was missing out like a classic story about being happy, the game I had all along was way better(TMNT 2)!
I remember playing this game and getting my butt handed to me back in the day when this game was first released, I was a very young gamer back then so cut me a bit of slack. For those who were very young gamers during the NES era, Tell me if some of those NES games you played as a young kid weren't set to impossible difficulty setting. Man, many game developers back then really showed no mercy with the difficulty setting of some of their games. Even today some of those games are still a bit challenging but now as an adult I can handle it. Sometimes I can't help to think if some of the NES game developers back then made games for kids or for adults? The reason I think about this question is because some NES games were very difficult play especially for a kid like I was back then but now as an adult those games are still challenging but they don't seem impossible for me to finish now. So I wonder for who were those games made for back then.
i love this game it is amazingly fun and hard hate the underwater dam level only complaint i give it an a for fun and keeping you coming back for more oh yeah actually the enemeis are originally from the adult comic book
Though I sucked royally at the game this was my favorite TMNT NES title, open world before it was popular :) that said I think I still have it, may have to dig this out again (^.^)
Look a map from the internet for that swimming stage, it´s not hard at all. When you know where the bombs are it´s actually quite easy, and use Rafael and Michelangelo first at swimming stage, so when you get past you have some health for Leonardo and Donatello. This game is not that hard, only place which is hard is the final stage inside the Technodrome, and Shredder is very easy. This is a very good game.
Well all nice and all.. but in the 80s, we couldn't look up maps on the internet, if you wanted a map.. you either had to hope that Nintendo Power made one.. or you had to draw one out on paper for yourself :0 yes.. we did that
This game shares allot of similarities with turtles radical rescue for the gameboy,but there are some differences here that i must state.Though in this one the bosses are easier to handle,the bosses in radical rescue were harder.While the areas were harder there in the game boy game were a little easier.Though this a pretty fun game was like playing almost dark souls back then and compare it with fall of the foot clan on the game boy was hard core for the time.Turtles games didn't needed to be that hard i believe but not easy like fall of the foot clan,should be close to a dificulty from back to the sewers rather so freaking hard.
Well being 16 I grew up, still do, playing nes snes 64 gensis so on so forth My brother has this game (now I do) he really didnt like it, we both saw ( different times) the avgn review, I never had got past level 1 b4 he idk but he hated it I really tried to play last month...can't get past water DX
I fucking hated this game as a kid, I pissed me off to no end, I actually remember breaking an NES controller in frustration over this POS. Luckily I was given an NES MAX controller later that year for my b-day, and it in a very very small way made up for this horrible controller breaking game.
This game is really sweet, Ive always liked it because it has a look closer to the first comic and toy series, far away from the cutesy childish look from the tv show, which for me was way too dumb to be truly representative of these great heroes.
I downloaded this to my Wii a couple of years ago before ever watching reviews of this game and I started to dislike it because of the bullshit underwater part and quickly it got to the point of just plain out hating the game because the swimming controls really really suck and it just feels impossible to ever get past that underwater part with that time limit and all the shit that can kill you Watching the AVGN review of it later was just the icing on the cake for me. I already hated the game
the reason the game had nothing to do with the cartoon was because was not on at the time of development all they had to go on was the comic books some merchandising ideas and a handful some concept ideas of the tmnt cart the cartoon did not come on until late in the development and that's why bebop and rock steady are in there
I love this game more than I like TMNT 2 the arcade game! Have You seen the Shredder Shuriken Glitch! It makes Shredder one of the Worse boss in the game! Check it out on my channel!
Actually it's really not a game I'd give a booyakasha. It's not fun. Gave it a try on an emulator thinking it couldn't be so bad, but the limited range of the weapons, the jumping, the brutality of the enemies, and so on... I just don't think the reward is worth the effort. I can put up with glitches and stuff if I feel they don't detract much from the game, but in this case even being the TMNT isn't enough for me.
@AceEbb77 2 sucked on the NES... hated that port.. I loved the arcade original, and it should have been ported to Genesis instead, that would have dome the game Justice. It looked and was shit on the NES. This one was alot better.
QueenRoadKillCandy I've never had a cat that peed behind the couch man...don't know what cats you know, but it sounds as if they may be neurologically damaged...
it's not a bad game it's just really hard
This is another one of those games that didn't start getting a large amount of hate until these more recent couple of years, thanks to people taking reviewers like AVGN a little too seriously, especially the ones that never even owned or play any of they games they riffed on.
I have very fond memories of playing this game and while I was never able to get past the third level, I also never had any ill will towards it and as surprising as it might sound, never had any major problems with the underwater world. So it was news to me when everyone said how impossible the level was, when my brothers and myself never really complained about it, in fact it was my favorite level as a kid.
I thought this game was awesome!!
Totally agree buddy, I always liked this game as a kid and even tho I found the AVGN review funny I still find this game entertaining
Long View He's not your buddy, guy.
I never beat the water level. I hated this game when it came out. The second game was tits though
@@sega32xxx14 Hey, maybe not be a dick, huh?
This was also my 1st Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles game and I was a bit thrown back by of a lack of familiar characters but I do love this game and I'm really good at it. I can beat this game in 45 minutes flat or less And not lose much health. I still go back and play it often maybe once a year. Of course my all time favorite is the original arcade version.
That underwater level I couldn't pass that. This game brings so much nostalgia but when I was a kid I couldnt beat it
I watch a lot of game reviews, and I can honestly say that you guys are the best.
Seriously, I just wanted to reiterate how amazing Classic Game Room is.. and how equally amazing Undertow is.
In fact, I might say that Undertow is probably the cream of the crop for insightful well balanced reviews on TH-cam. I am really, quickly, gaining lots of respect for the few of you who are doing reviews. I don't know if it's Mark who chooses you or what he process is but SOMEONE knows what makes good reviewers. Congrats to them because you guys are doing an excellent job.
F'!! That underwater level!!! AVGN did a review n the part u just walk over is priceless
I beat this game as a kid, it was one of the only games I had for ages so it was played daily, been on it again for the last few nights (original hardware not emulating) and after 4 attempts I managed to beat it again and its a satisfying thing to do
I beat it a couple of days back in the original system for the first time as well,and its from those games that though unfair in many parts it is really satisfying when you are beating it like the old days.
My first ever video game, and it will always hold a special place for me. Yes it was EXTREMELY hard (bordering on impossible late on) but it was a lot of fun.
I loved this game as a kid. I don't think I ever even thought about the random enemies. I mean hell, I got to be Mikey! COWABUNGA DUDE!
Turtles are doing just fine in the water at the bomb defusing stage, but why the fuck are they drowning in the sewers?!?!
TMNT was a little after my time. (I was already a pubescent teenager by the time the Turtles hit the big time). That being said, I knew of them, but never watched the 'toon or played with the toys. So when I first played this game....I LOVED it! Didn't even know that the enemies were generic. LOL I like the arcade port as well, but this game is more in line with the types of games I associate the NES with. Very good review. :)
i realy liked this review.becausr this is one of my favorite games of all time
I remember playing this game a lot when I was a kid. It had a lot of potential I could never complete it without the game genie as it was just to hard! I would endlessly run out of rope and certainly had issues with the re spawning bad guys. i think what kept me playing was the graphics and the fact you could switch turtles!
BOSANOVA!
Great review!
I had no concept of what a good or bad game was when I was a kid...I remember liking them all lol
OMG BeCkY Your face is what nightmares are made of...
Yes the game was very weird and very hard. Stil, now you get to appreciate the music and how unique it was; not to mention dark.
If you stop to think for a minute you´ll be reminded of the the first movie. We all knew the cartoon and ended up getting that unusual dark and adult movie. So, the same happened with this game.
gotta love that intro music
I have always loved Classic Game Room since I discovered it a few years ago. Recently I began seeing "Undertow" in links to the right and it always seemed to be newer games so I assumed it was either a) specifically reviews on current games or b) trailers of games
When I clicked on one once and noticed it wasn't Mark who was doing the review I clicked off it. What the hell is this shit? Anyway, recently I've been watching them and have been SUPER surprised at their amazing quality. Great stuff!
I loved this never completed it tho 🤪
i love this game it is amazingly fun and hard hate the underwater dam level only complaint i give it an a for fun and keeping you coming back for more
Nostalgia overload!! :)
Yeah I still have this game and it was hard as hell.
Think i was about 6 when dad swapped crappy wizards and warriors for this, found the game at 6am there on the sofa while getting ready for school. Friends didn't beleive me you could play yer fravourite tv show! i was very fortunate, solid game but still beat it! Go Donatello
What's up with the sound and music. Was this recorded with a Windows 95 NES emulator?
@LargeRedRizla
It did contain the "hero's in a half-shell, Turtle Power!" Music cue as the "boss beaten" theme.... which to me was more than enough. So I don't understand that criticism.
I always make it past the dam level each time I play this game. :D
I loved this game as a kid! I remember opening it on Xmas day! Wasn't it called hero turtles in the UK? Ninja turtles was ment to be to aggressive? Anyway top game, managed to make it all the way to the tecadrome but was just stupidly difficult!
Good review. I never owned this one but played it a lot by borrowing and renting. I don't know why, but I was naturally good at the swimming stage.
I love this game.
I was always too lazy to do the swimming stage. Lucky me.
Oh man I remember I was the only person I knew that could do that swimming level flawless, my friends would call me over to beat it for them lol
Jamie Tattersall Same here.
Of course this game is still fun; I think it always had been ( and the music is cool )
I know, I played this as well as a kid. at the old days games are made of steel. =) And even at today these old classics separates men from the boys.
I have fond memories of dying repeatedly in that swimming level lol
I miss cgrundertow so much
My aunt, god rest her soul. She gave me a choice. I passed up Super Mario 3 for this game.
Angry Video Game Nerd's video about this game is conveniently in the suggestion videos. ahhhh... CGR and AVGN are amazing
I downloaded an NES Emulator for my phone and this, along with Batman, were what I downloaded.
This game was so damn hard. I didn't hate it, but after about 5 minutes I just said 'forget"
this was a fun game, hard but not impossible
At least the later TMNT games are better, and they mostly made the series beat-em-up for the better! This would have been an awesome idea if the levels weren't so cheaply hard!
In fact, I want TMNT to go open world, just like they tried to here. But make it so that I am doing actual TMNT type of things like sneaking out, stopping robbers, getting in car chases, stopping the Shredder, etc. I would appreciate it if they reboot with a game like this like they did with Batman...with a TMNT feel!
Can you cut off heads in this game?
Yes
some of the characters are from the old comic books
which ones?
superarsenal009
i don't know all of them but i do know some of them are from the Eastman and Laird comics
C'mon People? Whatever happened to sleeping over at your friends house, or the other way around and playing NES games like Double Dragon for three hours till you got past the forest level and still died on the killer blocks? Yes! this game was hard, but again c'mon? no save state! Enjoy like you used to!
I only got to watch someone play this once, from outside their house. And when I saw the Wizard. I thought I was missing out like a classic story about being happy, the game I had all along was way better(TMNT 2)!
GadGades That's creepy as fuck, you need to stop creepin around people's houses and watching them through the windows.
I still pee behind the couch when I'm angry. I didn't seem to need so much beer to get to that point when I was 6, though.
I remember playing this game and getting my butt handed to me back in the day when this game was first released, I was a very young gamer back then so cut me a bit of slack. For those who were very young gamers during the NES era, Tell me if some of those NES games you played as a young kid weren't set to impossible difficulty setting. Man, many game developers back then really showed no mercy with the difficulty setting of some of their games. Even today some of those games are still a bit challenging but now as an adult I can handle it. Sometimes I can't help to think if some of the NES game developers back then made games for kids or for adults? The reason I think about this question is because some NES games were very difficult play especially for a kid like I was back then but now as an adult those games are still challenging but they don't seem impossible for me to finish now. So I wonder for who were those games made for back then.
Whilst not containing the original TMNT theme, I did think the music was good in this game.
i don't see why everyone hates this game. I happen to love it. it's fun for me, at least.
i love this game it is amazingly fun and hard hate the underwater dam level only complaint i give it an a for fun and keeping you coming back for more oh yeah actually the enemeis are originally from the adult comic book
I remember this game being pretty much impossible and certain areas, such as those with a lot of mouser enemies, had terrible flicker.
holy shit i miss this shit
I always thought this game was awesome. Yes, it was hard, and flawed, but still awesome none the less.
Though I sucked royally at the game this was my favorite TMNT NES title, open world before it was popular :) that said I think I still have it, may have to dig this out again (^.^)
This is a beat 'em up? Looks more like a platformer to me.
Look a map from the internet for that swimming stage, it´s not hard at all. When you know where the bombs are it´s actually quite easy, and use Rafael and Michelangelo first at swimming stage, so when you get past you have some health for Leonardo and Donatello. This game is not that hard, only place which is hard is the final stage inside the Technodrome, and Shredder is very easy. This is a very good game.
I beat this game about 3 or 4 times while I was the kid
Well all nice and all.. but in the 80s, we couldn't look up maps on the internet, if you wanted a map.. you either had to hope that Nintendo Power made one.. or you had to draw one out on paper for yourself :0
yes.. we did that
This game shares allot of similarities with turtles radical rescue for the gameboy,but there are some differences here that i must state.Though in this one the bosses are easier to handle,the bosses in radical rescue were harder.While the areas were harder there in the game boy game were a little easier.Though this a pretty fun game was like playing almost dark souls back then and compare it with fall of the foot clan on the game boy was hard core for the time.Turtles games didn't needed to be that hard i believe but not easy like fall of the foot clan,should be close to a dificulty from back to the sewers rather so freaking hard.
I've actually thougth it was awesome.... :D
After 25 years and a little Internet help I finally beat this game holy crap I feel vindicated now
Back then it was kinda an awesome game
Difficult, and a bit weird, as it may be
Well being 16 I grew up, still do, playing nes snes 64 gensis so on so forth
My brother has this game (now I do) he really didnt like it, we both saw ( different times) the avgn review, I never had got past level 1 b4 he idk but he hated it I really tried to play last month...can't get past water DX
the dam stage takes a bit but it's not that hard if you had 2 turtles with full health.
I fucking hated this game as a kid, I pissed me off to no end, I actually remember breaking an NES controller in frustration over this POS. Luckily I was given an NES MAX controller later that year for my b-day, and it in a very very small way made up for this horrible controller breaking game.
Maybe the current in the sewers is too swift?
3:50 you can just walk over it?!
This game is really sweet, Ive always liked it because it has a look closer to the first comic and toy series, far away from the cutesy childish look from the tv show, which for me was way too dumb to be truly representative of these great heroes.
I downloaded this to my Wii a couple of years ago before ever watching reviews of this game and I started to dislike it because of the bullshit underwater part and quickly it got to the point of just plain out hating the game because the swimming controls really really suck and it just feels impossible to ever get past that underwater part with that time limit and all the shit that can kill you
Watching the AVGN review of it later was just the icing on the cake for me. I already hated the game
the reason the game had nothing to do with the cartoon was because was not on at the time of development all they had to go on was the comic books some merchandising ideas and a handful some concept ideas of the tmnt cart the cartoon did not come on until late in the development and that's why bebop and rock steady are in there
They never even played it, the control is good, the killing of an enemy is satisfying, however the enemies didn't make sense and its hard as shit!
CGR is the best! besides AVGN :D
This game is flawed, but still enjoyable nontheless. I play it every now and then.
BOOYAKASHA!
you did not dominate that water level I can clear it easy with over a minute on the clock and only loose 2 bits of health max
I love this game more than I like TMNT 2 the arcade game! Have You seen the Shredder Shuriken Glitch! It makes Shredder one of the Worse boss in the game! Check it out on my channel!
I can't lie this game never did it for me I tried to love it as a kid cause its the turtles but alas..
Teenage mutant Ninja turtles for the original Nintendo entertainment system is not a hard game when using a game genie
Actually it's really not a game I'd give a booyakasha. It's not fun. Gave it a try on an emulator thinking it couldn't be so bad, but the limited range of the weapons, the jumping, the brutality of the enemies, and so on... I just don't think the reward is worth the effort. I can put up with glitches and stuff if I feel they don't detract much from the game, but in this case even being the TMNT isn't enough for me.
@AceEbb77 2 sucked on the NES... hated that port.. I loved the arcade original, and it should have been ported to Genesis instead, that would have dome the game Justice. It looked and was shit on the NES. This one was alot better.
Derek needs to review the Five Nights at Freddy's series! I wanna see that!
i hate this game but also love it if that makes sense the difficulty pisses me off but threes something about it i like maybe just the fact its Tmnt
you could just WALK OVER IT
Everyone rags on this game. I always thought it was good.
dude, pee behind the couch? are you a cat or something?
it's a joke
QueenRoadKillCandy I've never had a cat that peed behind the couch man...don't know what cats you know, but it sounds as if they may be neurologically damaged...
@GadGades
Which was one of the worst arcade ports ever made.....
Your parents should have just given you the quarters and sent you to the arcade....
Not a beat em up, bro.
This game pisses me off
Not Interested.
didnt know the game came out before the crappy movie