I had a roommate who grew up rather poor in the USA deep south. He and his brother collected chicken eggs on a farm to buy their own Nintendo. They only had enough for one game so they bought Turtles. They played it and only it religiously through their childhood. I brought out my old Nintendo one night and not only did he beat the thing, but I dare say he speed ran it. People would come over just to watch it.
Thats crazy. I wish I was that skilled at some of these games. Father was wealthy so I had most games and all systems. But I never became pro at any, just good at all.
I love stories like this. Growing up back then seemed like every kid had TMNT1 on NES but no one I knew could get past the map after the Dam level, let alone reach the technodrome or even sniff Shredder’s farts so to hear finally how there were actually kids back then who were able to beat this game is incredibly vindicating.
@@hairball178 Contra is actually a great game to speedrun without thinking too hard about it - you mostly just have to memorize all enemy spawn points.
As a kid I killed shredder and then the game softlocked when I jumped on the platform to finish the game. I was TERRIFIED to jump on the platform again after working my way back. It was nice to see that I wasn't alone in my suffering
happened quite a bit on old consoles. even the SNES. i remember the first time me and my brother beat TMNT arcade on Super, the damn thing froze on a white screen.
Here's a bit of turtle tech and tips for those of you who want to try to beat this yourself: - Donatello does more damage when he's at half health and under. It's a bit risky, but he chews through bosses like no one's business. - Spend some time practicing the jump mechanics at the beginning of the game until you have a good feel for it. It'll make the later stages a lot easier to deal with. - Use either a full health Mikey or Raph to damage boost through the bs seaweed section of the dam level. You're on a tight timer here, so whatever time you can save helps. - If there's a pizza at the start or end of a sewer, that infinitely respawns, so cheese the crap out of that. - Sub weapons drop on a counter, so be careful when blasting through waves of enemies because nothing is worse than losing your stock pile of Scrolls to a sub weapon drop you had no chance to react to. - Finding the technodrome is the hardest part of the game because its location is randomized depending on when you hit start on the title screen. If you're good at timing, it'll be in the same location every time. There are only a few locations it can be, but backtracking is a pain in the butt. - There is an infinite captured turtle bro location right before shredder, so as long as you're good at getting back there, you have as many shots at the final boss as you want. (Note: You can only recover one turtle per life, but that turtle will always be there) I also never beat this game until I was an adult, but now that I have, I enjoy it a lot more than the other turtle games for the NES as far as single player goes. Good Luck!
Don't forget to stock up on KIAI Scrolls! I think it was in the 3rd(?) level you can stock up on 99 of them and they make the rest of the game a cakewalk! That final hallyway with the laser guys they come in super clutch!!!
@@_APG_ A guide to this game as a child: Step 1: spend 2 hours maxing 99 scrolls per turtle Step 2: accidentally pick up throwing stars Step 3: get grounded for swearing after picking up throwing stars Step 4: try again after getting ungrounded Step 5: die to the stupid lava jump Step 6: die trying to get the impossible pizza in the spike room Step 7: give up and play Megaman 2 instead
yeah everyone got destroyed on the water level and even if some kid got good enough to get past it, they would die shortly after because of how much they lost on the water level. at least, that's how i remember it.
I was the first in my school to beat the dam. I even worked it into a science. Most people make two mistakes, they rush it, there's actually plenty of time to get all the bombs. Second, they don't realize how much control they have in the water. If you hold down you won't ascend that much so you can swim with precision, which you need with the seaweed section. Most people just try to speed run the dam and that's not the strategy you need. Be the turtle.
The water level was not that hard you just had to memorize the path through the dam underneath when searing the water I mean. I beat it with ease plenty of times often without losing any energy with plenty time to spare it was the technidrome and the randomness involved THERE that was the problem
True. Yeah, sure, that final boss might take dozens of attempts, but at least you didn't have to play the entire game every time you lost more than thrice.
Idk what was worse, seeing splinter change back to human form or seeing mike Tyson in that jockstrap. It's been an emotional childhood nostalgia crushing day. Congrats on beating turtles I think we all barely made it past the dam as kids.
When I was a kid I would borrow this from a neighbor. Never knew you could change turtles at any time. It made it much more difficult but still managed to beat this one. Battletoads just destroyed my love for gaming and everything other than the damn bikes was so good.
The sewer jump is indeed impossible on the PC, however there is a warp glitch on the roofs in the city level where you can use the ropes, and that takes you to the start of the airport. The game is beatable from there.
As someone who played this as a kid and fell victim to all the pitfalls you went through, this was hilarious to watch. I didn't beat it till I was in my 20's. Bravo Now do Astyanax or Little Nemo next!
Same, I keep thinking he is wrong about it being bad. Its janky, unfairly hard, and HIGHLY lore-inaccurate, but the music and gameplay never made me dislike it for killing me.
I watched this live when you streamed on YT! Been a fan for years, but don't have ready access to Twitch. I mentioned Nemo's Dreamland in the YT chat, hard AF NES game. I did beat this as a "kid", I'm 39 now and played this as soon as it came out. I didn't beat it till I was a teenager. I don't think I ever beat Nemo. GG!!!
This game haunted me as a kid as well. Finally beat it on the NES in my early 40s. Here’s how: take Nintendo Power’s advice and grind for 99 scrolls in level 3; that’s 99 scrolls for each turtle. If you survive level 4, the difficulty is pretty manageable until you reach the hallway before Shredder. That’s probably the hardest part of the whole game.
I played this game a lot as a kid. I remember I made it to Shredder ONCE with 1 bar of health and insta-died. Also fun fact, this game runs at 30fps, instead of the common 50/60fps for NES games, just to give it twice the time to calculate all the crap going on before a new frame is drawn to screen. And it STILL has flickering and slowdowns
Once you know all of the tricks to beating this game it's actually very low difficulty, just a matter of putting the time in to learn the game. The infinite pizzas by entering an exiting a room over and over and farming scrolls at the end are the main 2 things.
Yeah, there were plenty of NES games I never managed to beat as a kid, but this wasn't one of them. Once you learn the pizza and scroll locations and level layouts, it's smooth sailing. The dam is still hard, but that's what Raphael and Michelangelo are for.
I'm going to play devil's advocate here, because as you get closer to Shredder in the technodrome you have enemies that are VERY tightly packed together and that take multiple hits to kill. You can't retreat, because doing so will cause them to respawn (or worse, duplicate) when you start going forward again. You can't go forward because they fly around dealing heavy damage on contact. The only way I managed to beat it is by swapping between Mikey and Raph and just eating the damage where needed. I saved Don for the final battle. It's many things, but easy is definitely NOT it. Not impossible either though. Also, farming scrolls is great but it only takes an enemy to drop cheap shurikens in front of you for you to lose the entire stack. That can be immensely frustrating when you're saving them up for the technodrome.
The key to this game is understanding what is actually different about each turtle and when/how to use each of them. Yes they do all have a use, not just Don. Leo has medium damage, range, and speed, but his swing hits all 3 "zones" in front of him - it will hit enemies slightly above him all the way down to the floor. He's a decent default option because he's okay at everything, but he's never the best at anything either. Donatello does the most damage and has a long reach, but he attacks slow and only hits straight ahead, he won't get anything up or down. Those are pretty significant drawbacks in a lot of stages, so he's mostly only good against a single large enemy like bosses. Raph has short range, but he does good damage so he can take out a lot of things in one hit that Leo can't, like the dragonflies. And he's quick, so he's good for places that enemies fly at you. If you can get used to the short attack, I think he's the best all around option for most of the game. Mike is kinda bad. He's got short range and mid damage. The only thing he has going for him is he's fast, but that really isn't that good in this game. You use him for difficult jumps where you don't want to risk losing anyone good, or to hold onto scrolls for the end so you don't accidentally pick up something to replace them.
Took me 35 years but I finally beat this damn game. Not trying to advertise but I did record it and upload it if you want to see my hell in beating this damn game.
I beat this as a kid. Level 3 actually cost me more than 2. The secret to beating the technodrome was this: I would spend a few hours in the previous level collecting 99 of that wave weapon for every turtle, then spam the heck out of it! With some trial, error, and luck, you can run all the way through to shredder.
6:02 I hear people incorrectly refer to a vcr as "vhs player" all the time, but I think this might be the first time I've ever heard anyone say "vcr tape".
The low health beep is doubly traumatic for me, because my tumble drier has the _exact_ same alarm. Same tone, same rhythm. There must be a TMNT fan working as an engineer at Miele.
Try "Legacy of the Wizard". Now that is a wildly confusing and hard game, especially being so cryptic like "Milon's Secret Castle" with fake blacks, fake enemies, and fake treasure chests lol
I actually just gave that a try again. It was still very imaginative and cool, but I decided I'll have to pick it up with a walk-through some weekend because it is totally unclear. I think it is on Switch Online or something or I wouldn't have thought to try it again.
This is the one game that has taken me many years to get really good at. The hardest spot has always been the underground at the foot base if you navigate it wrong. However, the technodrone maze you can memorize to get to the shredder and there are several tricks to get to him. But I could always get to the end but having enough scrolls to cakewalk the end was the biggest pain in the ass.
Once you get inside the technodrome the game falls apart, I can consistently beat this game but I know it inside out, it being one of the first four nes games I got when I got my system in 1990. Once you get good enough to get to the final corridor consistently you want to move very slow and keep some body with the scroll weapon that you can switch to to quickly take out the space men as you figure the area out.
It’s very difficult, but this game can be beaten. You just have to memorize the layout, conserve your turtles, and remember where the weapon scrolls are.
Congrats! Thanks to this video I finally saw the ending. I owned this game as a kid and managed to get to the final boss a couple of times, but with very little health and no special weapons so he always beat my ass. It was so frustrating to start over that I gave up. Now that you put the itch in me again maybe I'll go and torture myself trying to beat it
This was the first game I used my Game Genie on as a kid to help beat... the code I used was the "no energy taken from seaweed level" code. The roadblock for me beating this game was that level took so many lives/continues from me that when I did get to end game I didn't have "bullets in the clip" left until that code
For the Mouser fight, you can just stand in the middle and hit the mouth with Donatello from standing. The eye lasers won’t hit you and you’ll kill the small enemies as they drop. It’s 100% free.
Play Fester's Quest on the NES! TMNT and Fester's Quest are the two games I'm most proud to say I beat way back in 1991 when I was 9 years old. Give it a go mate! Also, congrats on beating TMNT. Hearing your primal scream when you took down Shredder actually brought me back to when I did it 33 years go. You work HARD to beat this game and feel VERY rewarded when you finally do.
The NES game I thought was absolutely impossible as a kid was Alien 3. Hard time limit to rescue hostages on every stage, ever increasingly complicated mazes to try and find the hostages, and Ripley runs near the front of the screen making it impossible to react to enemies in front of you. I would love to see you play it.
As a kid, I barely got past the dam level. As an adult I eventually beat it. That hallway of death at the end actually has a trick to make the spacesuit men despawn. Once you know that it gets way easier. Also, Shredder can be cheezed by standing on the top platform and just using any attack when he jumps up. He will fall off and let you keep doing that. The whole game can be really tough, but its a lot easier when you know some of those tricks. Anyway, good job finishing it. Especially after the game over at the very end followed by the bug where Shredder didn't die.
I got this game after it was released. I was 10 or 11 at the time. The satisfaction of beating the game was a great feeling. TMNT was one of my favorite cartoons at the time.
I beat that game multiple times after I figured out what you had to do, it was still very difficult, especially once you got to last level. But I bet once I got use to playing it again, I could beat it again because once I find the particular sewer to farm it would make it so much easier.
I got this for Christmas as a kid. After playing for about an hour I came downstairs to get something to eat. My Mom excitedly asked, "How's your new game?". I responded, "It's pretty good but I just can't beat this dam level!" And I immediately got in trouble for swearing...
I can blow through this game in less than 45 minutes with no Game Genie. I used to get stuck in level 3 where you drive the turtle van but once I figured that level out, I was always able to get through it easy. I didn't have benefit of a chat or Google to figure it out back then either.
Holy SHEEEEIT this game kicked my ass when I was a kid. The dam level, the street travel trying to avoid the vans, it was pure hell. Never came close to beating it.
This game brings back memories... of feeling of frustration. So glad we live in an internet age now, so we get to see the ending while others can suffer while playing through it multiple times 🤣
Yes. This game was super hard. Thanks to you I can finally see the ending. A game that was super hard and made me insane was Skate or Die. I was going nuts when I died because the the title screen song.
I’m fascinated that you found this really difficult. I clearly remember beating this several times when we got it back when I was a kid. Granted, navigating around the sewer grates took a bit of a good memory, but using Donatello or Michelangelo made this fairly straightforward. Maybe I just better skills as a kid than I do now, though.
So many memories with this game. Some of my earliest video game memories are of my Dad beating this game and Mike Tyson's Punch Out! legitimately. Also getting extremely high scores in Burger Time
No, Don has the best color, but Leo has the best weapon but his reach is a Lil shorter than Don's, but he can attack quicker. For reach it is: DON LEO MIKEY & RAPH.
I beat this one too. Cold. No game genie, no codes. I didn't even know anyone besides myself who got past the dam. Save the scrolls for Raph for the final bosses. If you want extra security, give all turtles scrolls. Level 3 is where you can fully load all the turtles.
Honestly a game you might enjoy for the difficulty is Goonies II for the NES. While I do remember beating it as a child (5-ish years old), it was done through copious usage of passwords. It's actually surprisingly difficult and has a ton of secrets you can very easily miss.
My best friend from highschool...we bonded in afterschool detention..discussing hiw hard TMNT was..then went to his house and played..and eventually beat the game..still friends 35 yrs later..and occasionally discuss hiw stupid hard that game was
I had a friend who lived across the street, back in the late 80's early 90s. I remember his older brother (who lived in the converted garage) was playing this, there was like these 4 kids and his older brother watching him try to beat it, but he could never beat the water stage.
One youtuber (Displaced Gamers) hacked and checked of those hard games. He tried to fix Fester's Quest, for example. This game run on 30 FPS by design. Because of how long it takes to check all ingame logic, the graphics only updates every 2 frames. Outside of it, he also displayed why water level is hard. First, seaweed hitbox are much smaller, but don't make sense how it was actually placed. Second, how finicky collision was for turtles. Collison of turtle depending on where you looking. Third, rotating spikes have collision bug - actual hitbox of every spikeball is much higher. Fourth, swimming controls executed badly. There is also invisible water flows. He tried to fix it by giving turtle much more controllable swim and add let bubbles to response with water flows, so you could see them more clearly. As a kid I got through second level many times. You can find legit easy stable strategy. But I stuck on next third level. As adult I so what is a whole game but I just stuck at Technodrome at last level. I saw before how unfair this corridors but I don't got through them myself.
This game was hard, but not that hard. I beat it dozens of times as a kid. It's pretty easy til the end when u go underground looking for the Technodrome. And then insane hard once inside. The trick was to fill Raph & Mikey with the scrolls (99) & use Leo & Donny to get to the end. U can't plow forward button smashing. In the Technodrome especially. Those flying pink guys will kill u fast. The scrolls get u thru. When u get to Shredder, just stand on the platform to the right & keep hitting him with Donny or anyone with scrolls left. He'll keep falling left, then jump back up to the top just to repeat til he's done
When I was a kid, I thought that the Atari 7800 version of Impossible Mission was, well, impossible. Cut to a few decades later and I learn that, yes, it actually *was* impossible, due to a glitch which would randomly place necessary items in completely inaccessible locations. Vindication!
Not sure if you did it as a challenge but most levels that you enter from the top down view respawn all the pizzas/weapons. So you can literally farm and regain health/weapons, just in case anyone tries this insanity. The final hallway is so badly programmed that if you take even the smallest step back you get overwhelmed by several enemies respawning. That and ofc the shrinking aspect so you have no room to dodge/duck attacks. Well done though! I haven't beaten it w/o save states, furthest I've ever gotten is the airport level as a kid.
I gotta say, I actually loved this game as a kid. Yes, a big part of that is probably that I only had like 6 games. Still though, as an adult I think this game is really neat. It's got a meaningful overworld with secrets and enemies where you can explore, broken up by short sidescrolling action segments. You can later get vehicles in the overworld too! I also really liked the turtle swapping mechanic as a kid. I thought (and still do) that it was cool to have to manage the health of your turtles. It's a very neat idea to have optional stages to go through which will reward you with a full health fillup on one of your ailing turtles... Or maybe you'll lose somebody on the way! Also killing enemies feels good. It's got a good noise. And yeah, the game is seriously flawed. It's worth mentioning that I've definitely never beat this game, but I took that for granted... You can't beat ANY games as a kid. All that said, I think it's got a ton of interesting ideas that basically nobody will revisit because an AVGN episode made this game persona non grata.
I had a roommate who grew up rather poor in the USA deep south. He and his brother collected chicken eggs on a farm to buy their own Nintendo. They only had enough for one game so they bought Turtles. They played it and only it religiously through their childhood. I brought out my old Nintendo one night and not only did he beat the thing, but I dare say he speed ran it. People would come over just to watch it.
Thats crazy. I wish I was that skilled at some of these games. Father was wealthy so I had most games and all systems. But I never became pro at any, just good at all.
I had a friend who was pretty good at NES games, but when it came to Contra he could speed run it--WHILE DRUNK
@@SteveBroBro "I fear not the man who has practiced 10,000 kicks once, but I fear the man who had practiced one kick 10,000 times." -- Bruce Lee
I love stories like this. Growing up back then seemed like every kid had TMNT1 on NES but no one I knew could get past the map after the Dam level, let alone reach the technodrome or even sniff Shredder’s farts so to hear finally how there were actually kids back then who were able to beat this game is incredibly vindicating.
@@hairball178 Contra is actually a great game to speedrun without thinking too hard about it - you mostly just have to memorize all enemy spawn points.
Man it's so impressive you just went through the whole game for a soft lock
As a kid I killed shredder and then the game softlocked when I jumped on the platform to finish the game. I was TERRIFIED to jump on the platform again after working my way back. It was nice to see that I wasn't alone in my suffering
@@BestTheGuy He didn't use save states he reset when that happened.
@@BestTheGuy It implies he was playing on an emulator you can see he plays through from the start each time.
@@BestTheGuy GPB is more then capable of beating TMNT without save states.
happened quite a bit on old consoles. even the SNES. i remember the first time me and my brother beat TMNT arcade on Super, the damn thing froze on a white screen.
Here's a bit of turtle tech and tips for those of you who want to try to beat this yourself:
- Donatello does more damage when he's at half health and under. It's a bit risky, but he chews through bosses like no one's business.
- Spend some time practicing the jump mechanics at the beginning of the game until you have a good feel for it. It'll make the later stages a lot easier to deal with.
- Use either a full health Mikey or Raph to damage boost through the bs seaweed section of the dam level. You're on a tight timer here, so whatever time you can save helps.
- If there's a pizza at the start or end of a sewer, that infinitely respawns, so cheese the crap out of that.
- Sub weapons drop on a counter, so be careful when blasting through waves of enemies because nothing is worse than losing your stock pile of Scrolls to a sub weapon drop you had no chance to react to.
- Finding the technodrome is the hardest part of the game because its location is randomized depending on when you hit start on the title screen. If you're good at timing, it'll be in the same location every time. There are only a few locations it can be, but backtracking is a pain in the butt.
- There is an infinite captured turtle bro location right before shredder, so as long as you're good at getting back there, you have as many shots at the final boss as you want. (Note: You can only recover one turtle per life, but that turtle will always be there)
I also never beat this game until I was an adult, but now that I have, I enjoy it a lot more than the other turtle games for the NES as far as single player goes. Good Luck!
Don't forget to stock up on KIAI Scrolls! I think it was in the 3rd(?) level you can stock up on 99 of them and they make the rest of the game a cakewalk! That final hallyway with the laser guys they come in super clutch!!!
Cheese the pizza, you say?
@@_APG_ A guide to this game as a child:
Step 1: spend 2 hours maxing 99 scrolls per turtle
Step 2: accidentally pick up throwing stars
Step 3: get grounded for swearing after picking up throwing stars
Step 4: try again after getting ungrounded
Step 5: die to the stupid lava jump
Step 6: die trying to get the impossible pizza in the spike room
Step 7: give up and play Megaman 2 instead
Legendary tips comment!
Dang I really could have used this advice 35 years ago bro
yeah everyone got destroyed on the water level and even if some kid got good enough to get past it, they would die shortly after because of how much they lost on the water level. at least, that's how i remember it.
I was the first in my school to beat the dam. I even worked it into a science. Most people make two mistakes, they rush it, there's actually plenty of time to get all the bombs. Second, they don't realize how much control they have in the water. If you hold down you won't ascend that much so you can swim with precision, which you need with the seaweed section. Most people just try to speed run the dam and that's not the strategy you need. Be the turtle.
That seems to track with my memory.
I don't know you, But yes. You are 100% correct.
The water level was not that hard you just had to memorize the path through the dam underneath when searing the water I mean. I beat it with ease plenty of times often without losing any energy with plenty time to spare it was the technidrome and the randomness involved THERE that was the problem
I never had an issue with the dam, even as a kid. 🤷🏻♂️
That soft lock ending got me good, can't believe you went back to do it again. Ggs Poo (and WeSkillNow) thanks for the video!
Who is WeSkillNow?
I would have been done lmaooo! He technically beat it, he had the bragging rights after that. Had to get the Ghost n Goblins 2nd loop experience.
@@keneo.7627editor
That happened to me right after I beat shredder the game froze, I didn't get the end credits but I beat the final boss
oh the infamous Shredder 0 heath soft lock I saw that glitch quite a few times.
Didn't know TMNT had a secret Ghosts N Goblins-esque "beat the game a second time" soft lock feature to get the true ending.
Yes. Infuriating.
The sound effects in this game have always sounded so satisfying to me.
The snes one was awesome as well
They're really juicy
I poured SO MANY hours into this game as a little kid. I got to Shredder once, and he destroyed me.
Thanks for the nostalgia!
As a now 40 year old, I'm an advocate for these kids gaming now are lucky.
3 lives (and if lucky) 3 continues.
Ruthless times.
You got really good at the first level. 😂
True. Yeah, sure, that final boss might take dozens of attempts, but at least you didn't have to play the entire game every time you lost more than thrice.
Splinter human form is something I never could have been ready for
Unintended consequences
Yeah that was a plot point in the series, not the book
The funny thing is.... he could do that whenever he wanted
Splinter is a human!?
Haha what am I missing
@@trevorstevenson4038 in the 80s cartoon, and Archie TMNT comics, he was a human that turned into a rat after touching the ooze
Idk what was worse, seeing splinter change back to human form or seeing mike Tyson in that jockstrap. It's been an emotional childhood nostalgia crushing day. Congrats on beating turtles I think we all barely made it past the dam as kids.
I borrowed this from a childhood friend and they never wanted it back oddly enough. I still have it. RIP CJ
Damn this guy killed his friend for a copy of tmnt nes
They probably wanted to get rid of it.
The Simpsons: Bart vs Space Mutants will haunt me forever.
My god, Poo. Your patience is next level.
When I was a kid I would borrow this from a neighbor. Never knew you could change turtles at any time. It made it much more difficult but still managed to beat this one. Battletoads just destroyed my love for gaming and everything other than the damn bikes was so good.
I'm dying with laughter. It was hilarious your reaction splinter when he said he was turning human ahahahha
The sewer jump is indeed impossible on the PC, however there is a warp glitch on the roofs in the city level where you can use the ropes, and that takes you to the start of the airport. The game is beatable from there.
They also fixed it in the European release of the DOS port.
As someone who played this as a kid and fell victim to all the pitfalls you went through, this was hilarious to watch. I didn't beat it till I was in my 20's. Bravo
Now do Astyanax or Little Nemo next!
YO THANK YOU SO MUCH
Little Nemo, the toy train level destroyed me as a kid but i beat the game about 2 years back, i got my revenge
That was a great game! Beat it as a weekend rental when I was 10-11 years old. Hadn’t thought about Nemo in Dreamland in freaking years!!
@@SonofSol1 i love that level!!!
Watching this game attempted to get beat still makes my gut turn 30 something years later.
My biggest gripe with this game is the lack of a save spot. Just, diabolically difficult.
Omg.. i LOVED playing this game when i was a kid. Thanks for the nostalgia my guy
Same, I keep thinking he is wrong about it being bad. Its janky, unfairly hard, and HIGHLY lore-inaccurate, but the music and gameplay never made me dislike it for killing me.
I watched this live when you streamed on YT! Been a fan for years, but don't have ready access to Twitch. I mentioned Nemo's Dreamland in the YT chat, hard AF NES game. I did beat this as a "kid", I'm 39 now and played this as soon as it came out. I didn't beat it till I was a teenager. I don't think I ever beat Nemo. GG!!!
This game haunted me as a kid as well. Finally beat it on the NES in my early 40s. Here’s how: take Nintendo Power’s advice and grind for 99 scrolls in level 3; that’s 99 scrolls for each turtle. If you survive level 4, the difficulty is pretty manageable until you reach the hallway before Shredder. That’s probably the hardest part of the whole game.
This game was the first to truly piss me off to no end as a kid.. 😅
I played this game a lot as a kid. I remember I made it to Shredder ONCE with 1 bar of health and insta-died.
Also fun fact, this game runs at 30fps, instead of the common 50/60fps for NES games, just to give it twice the time to calculate all the crap going on before a new frame is drawn to screen.
And it STILL has flickering and slowdowns
Once you know all of the tricks to beating this game it's actually very low difficulty, just a matter of putting the time in to learn the game. The infinite pizzas by entering an exiting a room over and over and farming scrolls at the end are the main 2 things.
Yeah, there were plenty of NES games I never managed to beat as a kid, but this wasn't one of them. Once you learn the pizza and scroll locations and level layouts, it's smooth sailing. The dam is still hard, but that's what Raphael and Michelangelo are for.
@@23Scadu One might say that level is dam hard?
I'm going to play devil's advocate here, because as you get closer to Shredder in the technodrome you have enemies that are VERY tightly packed together and that take multiple hits to kill. You can't retreat, because doing so will cause them to respawn (or worse, duplicate) when you start going forward again. You can't go forward because they fly around dealing heavy damage on contact.
The only way I managed to beat it is by swapping between Mikey and Raph and just eating the damage where needed. I saved Don for the final battle. It's many things, but easy is definitely NOT it. Not impossible either though.
Also, farming scrolls is great but it only takes an enemy to drop cheap shurikens in front of you for you to lose the entire stack. That can be immensely frustrating when you're saving them up for the technodrome.
@@Crystan True, that room is pretty annoying. but yeah if you have plenty of turtles to tank the damage it's not too bad
@@Crystan Also, compared to some of the other difficult games on the system I'd put it pretty low on the list
This game is very tough. As kids, me & my friends always died at the Technodrome, until we finally made it to Shredder.
Not impossible, but a straight-up fun game: Crystalis.
The key to this game is understanding what is actually different about each turtle and when/how to use each of them. Yes they do all have a use, not just Don.
Leo has medium damage, range, and speed, but his swing hits all 3 "zones" in front of him - it will hit enemies slightly above him all the way down to the floor. He's a decent default option because he's okay at everything, but he's never the best at anything either.
Donatello does the most damage and has a long reach, but he attacks slow and only hits straight ahead, he won't get anything up or down. Those are pretty significant drawbacks in a lot of stages, so he's mostly only good against a single large enemy like bosses.
Raph has short range, but he does good damage so he can take out a lot of things in one hit that Leo can't, like the dragonflies. And he's quick, so he's good for places that enemies fly at you. If you can get used to the short attack, I think he's the best all around option for most of the game.
Mike is kinda bad. He's got short range and mid damage. The only thing he has going for him is he's fast, but that really isn't that good in this game. You use him for difficult jumps where you don't want to risk losing anyone good, or to hold onto scrolls for the end so you don't accidentally pick up something to replace them.
The pizzas respawn. You can refill every turtle's life over and over. Ok, I think you knew this...
That ending absolutely broke me. Your reward? An absolutely cursed image. You're welcome, 80s kids!
Took me 35 years but I finally beat this damn game. Not trying to advertise but I did record it and upload it if you want to see my hell in beating this damn game.
Nothing wrong with advertising greatness 😂 I'll watch after this 👍
@3LeagueSos thank you. This game was painful for sure. I love TMNT though.
I beat this as a kid. Level 3 actually cost me more than 2. The secret to beating the technodrome was this: I would spend a few hours in the previous level collecting 99 of that wave weapon for every turtle, then spam the heck out of it! With some trial, error, and luck, you can run all the way through to shredder.
This is the way.
Made it to The Technodrome once when I was ten back in 95. Thanks for doing what I was thought was impossible.
Glad you got to enjoy the OG TMNT. Skunky would be proud.
6:02 I hear people incorrectly refer to a vcr as "vhs player" all the time, but I think this might be the first time I've ever heard anyone say "vcr tape".
Same, I always called them VHS tapes that need a VCR to watch them. That said, it's not wrong to call it a VCR tape as well (I think lol)
i just called them VHS and thats it
It is a VHS tape! Must be a regional thing
I see people spell "hear" incorrectly as "here" all the time.
Beating this game as a kid made you feel like a God, just as Ninja Gaiden and Metal Gear did too.
This game brought back my ptsd from gaming in the 90's
The low health beep is doubly traumatic for me, because my tumble drier has the _exact_ same alarm. Same tone, same rhythm. There must be a TMNT fan working as an engineer at Miele.
Ryukhar did a really good waljthrough explaining hiwnhard this game is and how to beat it its really insane the forthought u need to actually beat it
Try "Legacy of the Wizard". Now that is a wildly confusing and hard game, especially being so cryptic like "Milon's Secret Castle" with fake blacks, fake enemies, and fake treasure chests lol
You should go for Bionic Comando next
Awesome game!
This is the most impressive gaming feat I've seen Poo do
Battle of Olympus was my favorite NES game growing up. I got super far into it, but never beat it. You should give it a shot.
I actually just gave that a try again. It was still very imaginative and cool, but I decided I'll have to pick it up with a walk-through some weekend because it is totally unclear. I think it is on Switch Online or something or I wouldn't have thought to try it again.
Great game but I think you need a walkthrough
Always died right before the door to Shredder. Needed Game Genie to enter and beat him
The low health warning sounds like Darude Sandstorm.
Foreshadowing.
Reliving some childhood trauma
As far as unbeatable games from childhood - Super Pitfall. I'd love to see you tackle that abomination!
OMG!!!!! That game is the thing of nightmares ♠♥♦♣☢☣⚠🚸
This is the one game that has taken me many years to get really good at. The hardest spot has always been the underground at the foot base if you navigate it wrong. However, the technodrone maze you can memorize to get to the shredder and there are several tricks to get to him. But I could always get to the end but having enough scrolls to cakewalk the end was the biggest pain in the ass.
This was very fun to watch! ♥️
Once you get inside the technodrome the game falls apart, I can consistently beat this game but I know it inside out, it being one of the first four nes games I got when I got my system in 1990. Once you get good enough to get to the final corridor consistently you want to move very slow and keep some body with the scroll weapon that you can switch to to quickly take out the space men as you figure the area out.
Fester's Quest!
The North American version. Not the fixed European one, either.
OMG.. SO Fn unfair!
All final bosses and game ending bosses should be you and them just staring at each from opposite corners when you beat them
Bionic Commando
So the amount of determination and stubbornness you possess is indescribable :D
Good job of battling through that several times over!
It’s very difficult, but this game can be beaten.
You just have to memorize the layout, conserve your turtles, and remember where the weapon scrolls are.
Congrats! Thanks to this video I finally saw the ending. I owned this game as a kid and managed to get to the final boss a couple of times, but with very little health and no special weapons so he always beat my ass. It was so frustrating to start over that I gave up. Now that you put the itch in me again maybe I'll go and torture myself trying to beat it
As a 40 year old man, I have an irrational fear of seaweed because of this game.
This was the first game I used my Game Genie on as a kid to help beat... the code I used was the "no energy taken from seaweed level" code. The roadblock for me beating this game was that level took so many lives/continues from me that when I did get to end game I didn't have "bullets in the clip" left until that code
With this and the Simpsons Space Mutant game you have unlocked core, thirty-year old memories. This game especially I spent many hours on.
YESSSS. Truama of my childhood. I managed the bomb water level but there was a "simple jump" at one point which didn't seem to make sense 😂
I couldn’t beat it as a kid but I certainly righted that as an adult.
This overworld music is a core memory for me. I went thirty years without hearing it but it would come to mind anyway
Dude. Your dedication is incredible. I watched all of your retro videos. Fantastic work. 🤘
Beat this game back in early 90’s
Your perseverance is admirable. Ghosts and Goblins was always hard as all get out back in the day.
For the Mouser fight, you can just stand in the middle and hit the mouth with Donatello from standing. The eye lasers won’t hit you and you’ll kill the small enemies as they drop. It’s 100% free.
Play Fester's Quest on the NES! TMNT and Fester's Quest are the two games I'm most proud to say I beat way back in 1991 when I was 9 years old. Give it a go mate! Also, congrats on beating TMNT. Hearing your primal scream when you took down Shredder actually brought me back to when I did it 33 years go. You work HARD to beat this game and feel VERY rewarded when you finally do.
The NES game I thought was absolutely impossible as a kid was Alien 3. Hard time limit to rescue hostages on every stage, ever increasingly complicated mazes to try and find the hostages, and Ripley runs near the front of the screen making it impossible to react to enemies in front of you. I would love to see you play it.
As a kid, I barely got past the dam level. As an adult I eventually beat it. That hallway of death at the end actually has a trick to make the spacesuit men despawn. Once you know that it gets way easier. Also, Shredder can be cheezed by standing on the top platform and just using any attack when he jumps up. He will fall off and let you keep doing that.
The whole game can be really tough, but its a lot easier when you know some of those tricks. Anyway, good job finishing it. Especially after the game over at the very end followed by the bug where Shredder didn't die.
I got this game after it was released. I was 10 or 11 at the time. The satisfaction of beating the game was a great feeling. TMNT was one of my favorite cartoons at the time.
I beat that game multiple times after I figured out what you had to do, it was still very difficult, especially once you got to last level. But I bet once I got use to playing it again, I could beat it again because once I find the particular sewer to farm it would make it so much easier.
I got this for Christmas as a kid. After playing for about an hour I came downstairs to get something to eat. My Mom excitedly asked, "How's your new game?". I responded, "It's pretty good but I just can't beat this dam level!"
And I immediately got in trouble for swearing...
I've never seen past the giant mouser before, thanks for going through this pain so we didn't have to.
Good stuff my man! This game was the scourge of my childhood.
I can blow through this game in less than 45 minutes with no Game Genie. I used to get stuck in level 3 where you drive the turtle van but once I figured that level out, I was always able to get through it easy. I didn't have benefit of a chat or Google to figure it out back then either.
This series is addictive! Your reactions are priceless!!
That soft lock would've sent me into a blind rage. Kinda in awe that you played it all again. Respeck.
Holy SHEEEEIT this game kicked my ass when I was a kid. The dam level, the street travel trying to avoid the vans, it was pure hell. Never came close to beating it.
24:10
Sandslash was fighting the Ninja Turtles way before Pokémon came out.
Ahhh yes the era of NES games. Only 20 min of actual gameplay but its balls to the wall hard. Nice vid man!
This game brings back memories... of feeling of frustration. So glad we live in an internet age now, so we get to see the ending while others can suffer while playing through it multiple times 🤣
Yes. This game was super hard. Thanks to you I can finally see the ending. A game that was super hard and made me insane was Skate or Die. I was going nuts when I died because the the title screen song.
I’m fascinated that you found this really difficult. I clearly remember beating this several times when we got it back when I was a kid. Granted, navigating around the sewer grates took a bit of a good memory, but using Donatello or Michelangelo made this fairly straightforward. Maybe I just better skills as a kid than I do now, though.
By contrast, I have never beaten Super Mario Brothers. 😂
I've been enjoying these videos a lot. And as a fan of TMNT, this was super fun haha!
So many memories with this game. Some of my earliest video game memories are of my Dad beating this game and Mike Tyson's Punch Out! legitimately. Also getting extremely high scores in Burger Time
Hot tip: Pizzas respawn when you leave the screen and come back. Use ones near transitions to full heal your team.
No, Don has the best color, but Leo has the best weapon but his reach is a Lil shorter than Don's, but he can attack quicker.
For reach it is:
DON
LEO
MIKEY
& RAPH.
I beat this one too. Cold.
No game genie, no codes.
I didn't even know anyone besides myself who got past the dam.
Save the scrolls for Raph for the final bosses.
If you want extra security, give all turtles scrolls.
Level 3 is where you can fully load all the turtles.
Honestly a game you might enjoy for the difficulty is Goonies II for the NES. While I do remember beating it as a child (5-ish years old), it was done through copious usage of passwords. It's actually surprisingly difficult and has a ton of secrets you can very easily miss.
My best friend from highschool...we bonded in afterschool detention..discussing hiw hard TMNT was..then went to his house and played..and eventually beat the game..still friends 35 yrs later..and occasionally discuss hiw stupid hard that game was
That was a crazy hard game... As soon as you make it through the water and those bombs, it just got absurdly hard
Seeing you play through old, difficult games sounds like a treat.
I had a friend who lived across the street, back in the late 80's early 90s. I remember his older brother (who lived in the converted garage) was playing this, there was like these 4 kids and his older brother watching him try to beat it, but he could never beat the water stage.
One youtuber (Displaced Gamers) hacked and checked of those hard games. He tried to fix Fester's Quest, for example.
This game run on 30 FPS by design. Because of how long it takes to check all ingame logic, the graphics only updates every 2 frames. Outside of it, he also displayed why water level is hard. First, seaweed hitbox are much smaller, but don't make sense how it was actually placed. Second, how finicky collision was for turtles. Collison of turtle depending on where you looking. Third, rotating spikes have collision bug - actual hitbox of every spikeball is much higher. Fourth, swimming controls executed badly. There is also invisible water flows.
He tried to fix it by giving turtle much more controllable swim and add let bubbles to response with water flows, so you could see them more clearly.
As a kid I got through second level many times. You can find legit easy stable strategy. But I stuck on next third level.
As adult I so what is a whole game but I just stuck at Technodrome at last level. I saw before how unfair this corridors but I don't got through them myself.
This game was hard, but not that hard. I beat it dozens of times as a kid. It's pretty easy til the end when u go underground looking for the Technodrome. And then insane hard once inside. The trick was to fill Raph & Mikey with the scrolls (99) & use Leo & Donny to get to the end. U can't plow forward button smashing. In the Technodrome especially. Those flying pink guys will kill u fast. The scrolls get u thru. When u get to Shredder, just stand on the platform to the right & keep hitting him with Donny or anyone with scrolls left. He'll keep falling left, then jump back up to the top just to repeat til he's done
That water level was the most anxiety -inducing moment in video game history. Wait, was that "Boy and The Blob" in the intro??😮
When I was a kid, I thought that the Atari 7800 version of Impossible Mission was, well, impossible. Cut to a few decades later and I learn that, yes, it actually *was* impossible, due to a glitch which would randomly place necessary items in completely inaccessible locations. Vindication!
Not sure if you did it as a challenge but most levels that you enter from the top down view respawn all the pizzas/weapons. So you can literally farm and regain health/weapons, just in case anyone tries this insanity.
The final hallway is so badly programmed that if you take even the smallest step back you get overwhelmed by several enemies respawning. That and ofc the shrinking aspect so you have no room to dodge/duck attacks.
Well done though!
I haven't beaten it w/o save states, furthest I've ever gotten is the airport level as a kid.
I gotta say, I actually loved this game as a kid. Yes, a big part of that is probably that I only had like 6 games. Still though, as an adult I think this game is really neat. It's got a meaningful overworld with secrets and enemies where you can explore, broken up by short sidescrolling action segments. You can later get vehicles in the overworld too! I also really liked the turtle swapping mechanic as a kid. I thought (and still do) that it was cool to have to manage the health of your turtles. It's a very neat idea to have optional stages to go through which will reward you with a full health fillup on one of your ailing turtles... Or maybe you'll lose somebody on the way! Also killing enemies feels good. It's got a good noise.
And yeah, the game is seriously flawed. It's worth mentioning that I've definitely never beat this game, but I took that for granted... You can't beat ANY games as a kid. All that said, I think it's got a ton of interesting ideas that basically nobody will revisit because an AVGN episode made this game persona non grata.
That was f'n hilarious, man. Loved every minute. Thanks for the laugh!