Is Turtles in Time overrated?
 

Before you bring out the pitchforks, remember that "overrated" does not mean something is "bad", OK?!

I think the SNES version of Turtles in Time is the best TMNT game from the 80s and 90s overall, but I think a lot of people overrate it a bit. I remember even Screwattack calling it the best beat 'em up ever, which is a bit eyebrow raising. No way Turtles in Time is better than Streets of Rage 2 or the SNES Final Fight games.

It's a fun game and all but calling it a 10/10 game is a gross exaggeration, imo.

Thoughts?

My thoughts on this are the same as my thoughts have always been in this regard. Turtles in Time was just the latest in a slew of brainless, two button mashing Final Fight clones under a TMNT skinsuit with rainbow Foot Soldiers, of all things.

Overrated? Absolutely.

I like all of the classic beat 'em TMNT games plus Shredder's Revenge, but at the same time I've always been disappointed in how Konami and other companies almost always stuck to beat 'em up style games for the license. A little more variety would have been cool. I guess beat «em ups are cheap to develop...

I just hated that they gave up trying to do a real, original TMNT game after the first NES game. And then even AFTER they fiiiiinally were done doing beat 'em ups with TMNT, what do they try and clone next? Fu**ing Street Fighter with Tournament Fighters!

Unbelievable.

Obviously with it having been over 30 years since the last TMNT beat 'em up enough time has passed that, OK, sure, we can have a big over the top celebration of those games. It's fun. It even added little touches like an overworld map, somewhat like TMNT 1 on NES.

SNES Tournament Fighters was solid, imo. It's probably one of the best Street Fighter clones out there and it's not like they overdone it since we haven't gotten a TMNT fighting game ever since.

There's a fanmade TMNT game called Rescue Palooza with lots of characters to play as. I keep getting it recommended to me but am yet to try it.

As for 2k3 games... the GBA games are fine, especially the 2nd one. That one is not a Final Fight clone at all. I don't think any of the original Game Boy Turtle games were beat 'em ups though?

It was one of the greatest beat 'em ups of the 90's and stood the test of time over 30 years, so yeah. It's good for exactly what it is.

Over 30 years? Most of the TMNT games in the last 30 years have been beat 'em ups.
What about Mutant Melee or Smash-Up?

I just refer to the Final Fight clone model.

Well, TMNT (2003), TMNT (2007) (GBA), Re-Shelled, Arcade Attack, TMNT (2013), and TMNT (2017) would all fall in that model.

You sure? Just walking left to right (primarily) down a horizontal flat playground smacking bad guys with 2 buttons? Maybe so. I'm not familiar with most of those. I wouldn't count Re-Shelled as that's just a... smoothing over of an existing beat'em up, though I'd completely forgot about it. I remember the anger when it was de-listed and you couldn't get it if you didn't already have it downloaded.

I forgot about those tbh, but then again, I was thinking of traditional fighters, something those clearly don't seem to me. Smash-up is obviously a Smash Bros. clone.

That's funny because I thought most people were disappointed by Re-Shelled.

The only reason I was disappointed in Re-Shelled was that it was based on the Arcade version instead of the superior SNES version of Turtles in Time I had grown up with.

The Arcade version of the game is rather forgotten.

It does seem like Turtles in Time is a rare case where the console port is superior to the arcade version. The only console that almost always seemed to do arcade ports justice was the Sega Saturn.

It’s a fun beat-em-up, but that’s about it.

It’s not even a top TMNT game. I prefer The Manhattan Project.

Yeah dude, **** Cement Man lol

It sitll baffles me that Re-Shelled was exclusively based off the arcade version. I mean it was already a remake redoing everything from scratch including the music, there was no way to 'toggle' classic sprite mode or anything of the like, they literally could've made a best of with everything from both SNES/Arcade..


As far as Arcade vs SNES, here is the unpopular opinion but the Arcade version is better than the SNES one. The added sewer level? While a nice extra it's just reusing the original arcade's sewer level basically. The added villains? sure they're cool that's the only plus and the only reason people say the SNES version. But that's about it.

Arcade on the other hand has better graphics, animation and frames, it's 4 players, the soundtrack/sound is so much better, better physics, more challenging,Neon Night Riders is inferior, same with sewer surfin even if there is no boss, bosses aren't as easy, and have an actual 'defeated' animation.

Are we really going to say the SNES version is better because the end boss is Super Shredder instead of Shredder? That's basically it, changing cement man for Slash, adding Rat King makes it a better game?

I already said SNES Turtles in Time was superior, yeah.

I'd say TMNT Tournament Fighters was the best SNES from-the-ground-up fighting game. It wasn't adapting a pre-existing fighting game from the arcades.

It has a small but a dedicated competitive scene in Japan even. I've seen some of those matches on youtube many years ago.

I'm not sure if the Cowabunga Collection increased the size of its competitive scene with its online play or not.

There are two fan mods for Tournament Fighters, one just updates it and modernizes it adding a bunch of features and the other is similar but it's also a crossover game with Justice League characters. Technodromer OldManWinters worked on that one. Both are fun.

I love Turtles in Time and I agree with Cybercubed that it has stood the test of time. Just for fun I am going to list most if not all of the non beat em up games. Some may have beat em up elements without it being the main focus.

* TMNT for the Nes
* All 3 Tournament Fighter games
* Radical Rescue for gameboy
* Battle Nexus for the gameboy advance
* TMNT 2007 for home consoles
* TMNT 2007 for the DS
* Mutant Melee for home consoles
* Smash Up for home consoles
* Danger of the Ooze for 3ds and I forget
* Ninja Turtles based off the Michael Bay version for 3ds. It's a dungeon crawler.
* Tactical Takedown for all modern consoles (I think)