Displaced Gamers I have a different USA version in box, it’s odd as it the box says it’s a TANDY version, but they put a sticker over it that says it’s a DOS version, and it doesn’t have the impossible jump. I’ve searched, and yet to find one similar. It was given to me by my Uncle when I was little. I need to get a floppy drive to upload, but I could send you them. There are some unique floppies that look different then other releases too. Tell me how to get ahold of you, I don’t use Twitter.
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 am so sorry you had to deal with the broken version as a kid. I always wondered "What am I doing wrong?" when it came to game-breaking states such as these (typically with a Sierra Adventure game).
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.
@mPky1 No, that first jump was fucking impossible. I remember trying for months as a kid with every different kind of jump height you could imagine. It didn't work. And at the time, I didn't know anything about other versions and hex editing and stuff like that, so I was completely stuck there. Never did get past it.
@@matthewvice721 haha. Bitter after so many years that's awesome. My hated game is ghosts and goblins for nes. It's not brokenness but the rng is ruthless.
@@riggel8804 Well, yes. Looking back, had I known the game was fucked, I could have spend those months playing something else. Something worthy. Fucking developers. Battletoads was my ruthless game. Not broken or unbeatable, just ridiculously fucking hard. I got up the snake section with the spikes - and that was far as I could get. I wonder if I could do it now?
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 :)
What makes you think they didn’t playtest everything, then do a minor change in jumping physics (that’s ugly, looks like moon gravity; make them fall faster) and suddenly one jump somewhere was no longer possible. You don’t have time to get good and playtest the entire game before shipping in its complete state if you are a random programmer in 1989 being payed to shit out a lazy throwaway port in 4 months. That’s how PC was then. Real gamers had an amiga, nes, master system, c64, atari st or anything but the PC. PC really caught up in 1992; but this was before.
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!
Yea back than PC development was the wild west, everyone could make a game for PC and there was no quality controll. TMNT is not the only game to do that, there is a Robocop game that have a level with a timer you just cannot beat it before the time runs out
@@paradoxzee6834 Yeah, I saw that man. I think it was on one of Larry Bundy Jr.'s videos. Never played any Robocop games on PC myself, though I did play the first NES one.
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.
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.
Yes they are not impossible. The QA for the game could get past these jumps (or so they say). I still think they shouldn't have shipped it like this but you are correct.
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.”
Actually this is true. I know the developers of the game, the programmer in fact and he said the QA on this game could do those jumps and yet he couldn't even do them. That should have been a bell going off in his head to have it changed. The Europeans made the changes because no one there could do those jumps. This was some shoddy work but basically because of not enough play testing.
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.
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....
Didn’t say it was easy. Final Boss Shredder kills you in 2 hits. Near impossible to kill with Ralph. Auxiliary Weapons r your friend. Oh, and the flying laser guys clip a third of you life with one shot. And they’re almost everywhere. Good times.
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.
I wouldn’t think so. Playtesters either started directly from the level they wanted to test, or if they had enough time (they didn’t!) made a good editor and started directly from it; e.g. constructing a save file and launching the game with that. I think they probably tested everything once and then made a last minute change that broke this jump. Looks like moon gravity, make the player fall slightly faster; that sort of thing.
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.
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.
The PC in 1989 was underpowered and had shitty sound and graphics hardware tied to a decent processor. It wasn’t until 1992 that PC software performance became so extreme that it could outdo other systems hardware sprites, character graphics, blits etc in software and decent sound cards were common. Most PC ports were shat out in a 4 month deadline by some inexperienced programmer. Programmng is hard, and there’s no time left to take a couple of days and get good at the game and try to complete it after it is done. That’s characteristic of movie tie in games and even worse if they are also ports.
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!
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
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.
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.
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!
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.
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 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.
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...
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.
Yeah the Europeans did get releases of games with bug fixes in them. If you look at Battletoads on NES they fixed the issue when you get to the Stage with the 2 player glitch where player 2 would just die for no reason. And the DOS version of TMNT are two examples of this.
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.
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.
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.
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!
"I still haven't finished it but finished Battletoads" same honestly, though battletoads feels more bearable in a weird way. TMNT felt brutal in some places.
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...
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.
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😂.
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.
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.
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!
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.
The NES version was full of annoying little bugs as well, which made completion of the game all but impossible for those other than the incredibly dedicated. With the NES game, it was a lack of save/password feature that made this - an otherwise outstanding game - average. Then there were the impossibly placed pizza boosts. What I concluded from it all was the TMNT craze blew up fast and software houses wanted to get the games out quickly, meaning that unforgivable errors were left unaddressed in the final products.
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?
I took some old MIDI files I had and played them back with a software synthesizer (using a sound font). I then recorded the playback to use as a soundtrack for the video. My guess is the MIDI files are still around the web somewhere. If I remember the sound font, I’ll add details to the video description.
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...
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.
Looks like you can cheat by using A+S+G. Only three keys are required. Much easier.
1:05 DAMN.
Displaced Gamers I have a different USA version in box, it’s odd as it the box says it’s a TANDY version, but they put a sticker over it that says it’s a DOS version, and it doesn’t have the impossible jump. I’ve searched, and yet to find one similar. It was given to me by my Uncle when I was little. I need to get a floppy drive to upload, but I could send you them. There are some unique floppies that look different then other releases too. Tell me how to get ahold of you, I don’t use Twitter.
Displaced Gamers I posted below please read
Better than just walking over it
@@bizzzzzzle You could use a USB floppy drive. Probably $20 bucks you don't want to spend but it would work to save the disk.
Being an AVGN fan, I had something else in mind when I read the title. Fascinating video, as always
I wish you could just walk over it.
Did he take you back to the past ?
Why can't a turtle swim? Why can't I land the plane? They got a quick buck for this shitload of fuck!
@@mostverticalproductions4808 The characters names are wrong! why's the password so long!? Why DON'T THE WEAPONS DO ANYTHING!???
*"You just walk over it."*
"What, you can just walk over it!?"
Haha. “....you can just walk over it....”
10 year old me is like 'this needed to be on the mf box 😠'
Who knew NES TMNT was the “easy version”??? 😐
Fr. I've never beaten the whole game.
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 am so sorry you had to deal with the broken version as a kid. I always wondered "What am I doing wrong?" when it came to game-breaking states such as these (typically with a Sierra Adventure game).
@@DisplacedGamers aww, thank you! Yeah, it effed with my head a bit. It was always so confusing when I saw a game or a movie that was bad. Haha.
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.
@@djmips if I never believe it, will you blame me? 😭
@@TheSchmuck2 no! I won't blame you. I'm a little skeptical myself. Lol.
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.
Same, actually.
A few years back I revisited all my childhood games and crushed them! Life goals amirite?
@@samporter9785 yeah, actually. That's impressive.
Same. It's still on my bucket list.
Hahaha! So there's TWO impossible jumps? Amazing :D How did this ever pass QA? Was there even any QA at all? :D
“Did we get our check from Konami yet?”
“Yes. It cleared and is in our bank account.”
“OK. Let’s publish!”
Hahaha! No doubt! :D
@mPky1 No, that first jump was fucking impossible. I remember trying for months as a kid with every different kind of jump height you could imagine. It didn't work. And at the time, I didn't know anything about other versions and hex editing and stuff like that, so I was completely stuck there. Never did get past it.
@@matthewvice721 haha. Bitter after so many years that's awesome. My hated game is ghosts and goblins for nes. It's not brokenness but the rng is ruthless.
@@riggel8804 Well, yes. Looking back, had I known the game was fucked, I could have spend those months playing something else. Something worthy. Fucking developers.
Battletoads was my ruthless game. Not broken or unbeatable, just ridiculously fucking hard. I got up the snake section with the spikes - and that was far as I could get. I wonder if I could do it now?
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 :)
Europe is completely irrelevant
Incredible how games were released without actually play testing.
What makes you think they didn’t playtest everything, then do a minor change in jumping physics (that’s ugly, looks like moon gravity; make them fall faster) and suddenly one jump somewhere was no longer possible.
You don’t have time to get good and playtest the entire game before shipping in its complete state if you are a random programmer in 1989 being payed to shit out a lazy throwaway port in 4 months. That’s how PC was then. Real gamers had an amiga, nes, master system, c64, atari st or anything but the PC. PC really caught up in 1992; but this was before.
@@soylentgreenb that isn't the problem. the blocks are in the wrong spot.
:Laughs in FO76:
I'm totally agree with you... Like fallout... And all EA games XD
So basically nothing's changed.
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!
Yea back than PC development was the wild west, everyone could make a game for PC and there was no quality controll.
TMNT is not the only game to do that, there is a Robocop game that have a level with a timer you just cannot beat it before the time runs out
@@paradoxzee6834 Yeah, I saw that man. I think it was on one of Larry Bundy Jr.'s videos. Never played any Robocop games on PC myself, though I did play the first NES one.
Yep same
The one at my local video store and the one my buddy had were both impossible
Me too. Always thought the final games were bug free, due to extensive testing period.
@@persona83 How naive we were.
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.
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.
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.
I am sorry you had to suffer through that!
Super smart way of comparing the code segment via a saved file comparison. Excellent technique. 👍👍👍👍
I sure love your videos man. Keep them coming 😁
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.
US or EU?
Yes they are not impossible. The QA for the game could get past these jumps (or so they say). I still think they shouldn't have shipped it like this but you are correct.
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.”
Actually this is true. I know the developers of the game, the programmer in fact and he said the QA on this game could do those jumps and yet he couldn't even do them. That should have been a bell going off in his head to have it changed. The Europeans made the changes because no one there could do those jumps. This was some shoddy work but basically because of not enough play testing.
@The UK Arcade Gamer Chad weebs and gamers ofc.
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.
I vaguely remember TMNT on my Amiga. It had multiple discs.
Cowabunga! Love that you offer several
Solutions! I like the idea of replacing the level file from the European version.
Great job troubleshooting! That's awesome.
I enjoyed this cute apocrypha and how short the video was. Thanks for making it.
i love the frequent star wars references in your videos
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....
Thanks 4 bringing back fond memories beating this game in my childhood.
Didn’t say it was easy. Final Boss Shredder kills you in 2 hits. Near impossible to kill with Ralph. Auxiliary Weapons r your friend. Oh, and the flying laser guys clip a third of you life with one shot. And they’re almost everywhere. Good times.
You are gloriously nerdy. Thanks for the incisively insightful detailed analysis.
How is he going to explain this?
“Good answer, good answer...”
-Raph
Mystery solved finally. Thanks.
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.
Would you say that the 'walk on anything' code was put in there so the developers could just skirt around those errors during playtesting?
I wouldn’t think so. Playtesters either started directly from the level they wanted to test, or if they had enough time (they didn’t!) made a good editor and started directly from it; e.g. constructing a save file and launching the game with that.
I think they probably tested everything once and then made a last minute change that broke this jump. Looks like moon gravity, make the player fall slightly faster; that sort of thing.
This was super interesting. Thanks for this
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.
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.
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.
Chess.
They probably did, changed how the players jump and move, then didn’t realize there was one place where their new movement would break the game.
The PC in 1989 was underpowered and had shitty sound and graphics hardware tied to a decent processor. It wasn’t until 1992 that PC software performance became so extreme that it could outdo other systems hardware sprites, character graphics, blits etc in software and decent sound cards were common.
Most PC ports were shat out in a 4 month deadline by some inexperienced programmer. Programmng is hard, and there’s no time left to take a couple of days and get good at the game and try to complete it after it is done. That’s characteristic of movie tie in games and even worse if they are also ports.
Mass priduction. High turnover. Deadlines. Its unfortunate but oversights happen.
Mario Maker has a ton of these kind of broken levels, where players just put hidden dev doors to skip the broken part unbeaten part
I bet Master Splinter could make those jumps.
He could make that jump, but not any of the turtles
What about April?
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!
Wow... that seems like a lot of time and effort. Thanks for sharing.
im glad u covered this. the game makers need to be put on trial for this
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
Easily the coolest intro to a NES GAME.
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.
Game was a lot of fun and 1 of my earliest memories of gaming period.
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.
ARG! I am sorry you had to deal with that, RichCale! Catch you in CGG!
This is amazing I'm glad I checked it
This is some really cool nerd stuff you show us 👍😍 I like your passion.
I think it’s time for a 4K ultra hd remake
played this game (DOS) back in the day....good times!
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!
Initially I thought "oh, how interesting to have two impossible jumps". Then I realised how funny that is and couldn't stop laughing.
Second jump is not impossible; you just low jumo.
I had the Pal version for NES. I remember the happiness when I finished the first time😍
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.
Dude. Killer job!
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!
I love the remixed tmnt music
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.
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
Feewwe.. that was so much work for that jump lol. Appreciate the explanation. It probably kept bugging you
Man even the testers didn’t make it past the dam bomb diffusing level. Great video!
wtf lol so much work!!
I appreciate you!
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.
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.
@1Dudelove That's hardcore.
Hahaha, the scary crayon article is how I learned about this in the first place. What a blast from the past.
There's also the Tandy graphics bug where they all have blue bandanas
Ironic since the turtles on the cover art all have red bandanas
"80s PC Master Race"
That's actually really interesting
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...
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.
Yeah the Europeans did get releases of games with bug fixes in them. If you look at Battletoads on NES they fixed the issue when you get to the Stage with the 2 player glitch where player 2 would just die for no reason. And the DOS version of TMNT are two examples of this.
Fantastic video.
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.
I have a vague memory of this impossibility. I definitely had this game.
You are one smart cookie!
I remember beating the game when I was a kid 8 bit was awesome times..
Great work. Subscriber gained
I could never get past that damn level, and now I know why!
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.
Thank you so much
Great video! May I ask where you got the remixed music from?
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.
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.
I believe his name was Mosquitor from Masters of the Universe toy line.
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!
"I still haven't finished it but finished Battletoads"
same honestly, though battletoads feels more bearable in a weird way. TMNT felt brutal in some places.
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...
Oh, wow. A Scary Crayon mention. Now that's a name I haven't heard in a long time...
Never thought about a MS-DOS version of the first TMNT release to NES
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.
It's like that fictional children's book in Will Ferrell's film "Elf" that had a blank page. Poor QC.
Yooo, what version the soundtrack did you use for this video? It sounds so good!
I think I used some MIDI files and just played them back
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😂.
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.
'Shredder's my a$$.. Splinter's my b*lls.. (James Rolfe / AVGN}
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.
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!
What's the name of the hex editor that you used in this video?
Don't remember what I used for this video, but I use Hex Editor Neo these days.
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.
The NES version was full of annoying little bugs as well, which made completion of the game all but impossible for those other than the incredibly dedicated. With the NES game, it was a lack of save/password feature that made this - an otherwise outstanding game - average. Then there were the impossibly placed pizza boosts. What I concluded from it all was the TMNT craze blew up fast and software houses wanted to get the games out quickly, meaning that unforgivable errors were left unaddressed in the final products.
Explains so much. THis game was impossible for me as a ten year old. My poor mom wasted money on this it seems. No idea how this go through QA.
Had it on the Amega. What an absolute bastard that must have been for the US players, not 1 but 2 "impossible jumps".
Lol, had no idea this particular game was ported to PC. 😂, have to give it a go.
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?
I took some old MIDI files I had and played them back with a software synthesizer (using a sound font). I then recorded the playback to use as a soundtrack for the video. My guess is the MIDI files are still around the web somewhere. If I remember the sound font, I’ll add details to the video description.
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...
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.
unrelated but what do you use to compare the files like that?
Probably some kind of Hex Editor like XVI32
What are the flame guys doing on the left?