NES TMNT Fustration

[Kuta]

Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles has recently become available on Virtual Console on the Wii. There has been a lot of talk about how impossibly difficult the game is to play. So I came accross this video showing one gamers complaints about the game;

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XjUz8IT0CYg

Pretty funny I thought. :biglaugh

 

[dibz]

Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles has recently become available on Virtual Console on the Wii. There has been a lot of talk about how impossibly difficult the game is to play. So I came accross this video showing one gamers complaints about the game;

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XjUz8IT0CYg

Pretty funny I thought. :biglaugh

Hah, I still own the original to this game. I remember it being pretty hard when I was younger too, don't think I ever beat it. Decently fun though, but not as fun (for me) as TMNT 2 for the nes.

 

[mtxblau]

It seems the person's gripes were that the game was too hard.


Boo hoo.


The game itself isn't based on the cartoon but the comic that preceded it, which is why Krang wasn't in it (if I recall correctly).


The only complaint I had about the game was that Shredder was stupidly easy. You gear up to take on an impossible bad guy (the technodrome was a pain in the ass) and that boss battle lasts less than thirty seconds.


You can't please anyone, I guess. The other TMNTs were fun, but they were clearly based on the cartoon and not the comic. The comic wasn't nearly as hokey/jokey (kind of like the Tick cartoon versus the comic).

 

[dibz]

I think this also falls in to the difference between many older games and newer games. Games just aren't as hard as they used to be, and in my opinion, often not as fun.

I'm not saying an impossible game necessarily makes it fun, but hand-holding games that make me want to hug a teddy bear really make me lose interest in many current games.

 

[Amon]

I recently just bought all the nes TMNT games off of ebay dont think I will get them for the wii as wll. With regards to your post dibz...That is so true, games aren't as hard as they used to be. Take Sonic games for example. Sonic the hedgehog 1 for genesis vs Sonic Adventure. Sonic the hedgehog 1 is a lot harder than Sonic Adventure. One time I used my feet instead of my hands on the controller and was easily able to get through the first level. Not that good of a score mind you but I still managed to do it easily.

One thing that bugs me about video games these days is the repeatitiveness in games these days. Ohhh lets have you finish the same level with 5 different goals and call it 5 different levels!!!!!!!! At least they started changing the termanology over to different missions now instead of levels even so quality over quantity

 

[dibz]

I often think similar things in regards to my previous post for games for new games that get pounded for being hard, and really aren't that bad. Like the MegaMan games, I loved those. Didn't care much for X7, but X8 seemed to fix a lot of issues X7 had. Still not as hard as the old games, but is hard as nails compared to other newer style games.

 

[mtxblau]

Fearing sounding old but I do miss the good old days where absolute perfection is what was required to finish a game. I mean, that makes sense! You hone your skills until you're the master, at which point you beat the game! That's why it was ok to have a lame ending to an otherwise great game.


As Amon said it's all about repeating the same level but giving you a different goal. In the good old days, there was one level, one objective and if you were good enough, you beat that objective.


One of the complaints from the kid in the video was about a timer and obstacles. What?!


I feel like games made these days, if you repeat the same scene more than three times, it's considered 'too hard' or the learning curve 'too steep'. That too speaks about game design - games these days don't enthrall a player enough to want to get to the next chapter/story/stage. Lord knows there are quite a few games that I gave up on simply because I lost the desire to finish it. Who wants to do the same thing over and over again, except in a different landscape?

 

[ExCyber]

It seems the person's gripes were that the game was too hard.

Boo hoo.

It's not that it's too hard, it's that it's hard for completely stupid reasons, like braindead enemy regeneration, bad control, constraining level designs, bad control, bugs, and bad control.

 

[mtxblau]

It's not that it's too hard, it's that it's hard for completely stupid reasons, like braindead enemy regeneration, bad control, constraining level designs, bad control, bugs, and bad control.

I can see the regeneration thing, sort of. Having played it through, there are certain areas you can simply avoid because it's not required to finish the level. For instance, when he was in the building and was complaining that he had to use donatello to kill enemies upstairs - there were quite a few of those buildings. However, you didn't have to enter it. Is that bad level design? Depends on who you ask. In the halcyon days of Nintendo gaming, you had to replay a game several times to beat it, to learn its nuances. Those types of buildings did serve a purpose in the game - if one of the turtles 'died', you could go to these buildings where you'd find them tied up in a chair.


I still don't know what the gripes are with the controls. It's something you master? The controls were consistent throughout the game, and they were responsive. I could see annoyance with them if they were like Jet Grind Radio's, where those were extremely touchy / unresponsive in the boss battles.


Realistically, the biggest gripe I had was fighting the technodrome. The td was only double the size of your sprite, which made no friggin sense at all. That was a bad design, obviously.


I guess I don't see it. Compared to other NES games, I think its worst crime is that it was formulaic. The ending sucked (IIRC). It's not like the TMNT arcade games, that's for sure. But is it a horrible game? I don't think it is.

 

[dibz]

Honestly I think "horrible control" would be said by many newer games referencing older games. If they think it sucks in TMNT, I'd just laugh and hand them one of my many half-working 7800 controllers. I swear those damn things worked half-way when they were new.

 

[Nadius]

As a kid, I just chalked up TMNT as being one of those games that was just too hard. The game wasn't bad because of it. The NES had plenty of these games.

There really was no such thing as bad control, because as I think MTX was saying, any type of game with whatever type of control scheme, you learned to master. Back then, for me, I had to learn to master a game because it required it. Sometimes it might've been more work than fun, but it sure was rewarding when it all came together.