DS Daily: Now you're playing with Turtle Power

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DS Daily: Now you're playing with Turtle Power

Posted Mar 23rd 2007 9:00AM by Eric Caoili
Filed under: GBA

At the height of their popularity, the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles franchise could do no wrong. With a hit television series, two movie blockbusters, and an extremely profitable line of toys, it's no surprise that their success continued with their video games. Who can ever forget fighting over the pizza in the arcade game's second stage? As the novelty of crime-fighting reptiles faded with the early 90s, however, so did the quality of their licensed games.

After spending over a decade on the fringes of relevance, the green crusaders are poised to finally make a comeback with a new film premiering today and video game releases for nearly every platform. And while the Nintendo DS tie-in hasn't won many hearts with its 3D rhythm-game-on-rails concept, the GBA title is picking up a fair amount of buzz as an old-school, 2D brawler. Some are calling it the last great game for the GBA, while many others are comparing it to River City Ransom's classic gameplay.

So is it time to break out the old action figures and the Technodrome set again? Do you have any plans to check out the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles GBA game or see the new, computer-animated film? Are you cool, but rude; or are you a party dude? Please, do let us know ...

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1. I'm definitely going to the movie tonight after work. It's been a loooong time coming...

I think I'm going to check out the GBA game some way or the other. I've already tried the DS game and its pretty... bland. I didn't pay for it yet, and I'm not planning on it. The GBA game could be cool, it could be close to the old arcade games. The first one just came out on Xbox Live Marketplace and I scooped it up right away! :D

Posted at 10:17AM on Mar 23rd 2007 by Sunny

2. The DS game sucks. Get some homebrew and play the original NES one. That, my friends, is a game.

Posted at 11:34AM on Mar 23rd 2007 by Gil

3. For the record I just tried the PSP version and its pretty much the same as the DS game, except that it looks better and has the bigger screen (plus a few full motion video clips from the movie. No audio, though.)

Posted at 12:30PM on Mar 23rd 2007 by Sunny

4. Vindication!

Just a few days ago there was a poll on this site asking whether people still cared about the GBA. I was in the minority of voters who still care about GBA releases, and went so far as to write an impassioned comment defending the system.

Now the perfect example of why the GBA is still a viable system comes out. This game in a sense reminds me of Astro Boy from a few years back. The PS2 game was another crummy 3D game, while the GBA version was completely different, a classic fun side scrolling action game with unique controls.

I can't wait to get my hands on this game, and have fun with it for a few hours. I also hope that it is not the "last" great GBA game. I would like to see a future in which after the GBA is definitively comercially dead, Nintendo will make the dev-kits available to young programmers and schools, who can hone their game-making chops on this system.

The continued success of the GBA goes to show that graphics are not the most important thing in a game. It's the gameplay itself. I bet the developers of the GBA version of TMNT had free reign to design the best game they could, since the expectations for sales and quality were pretty low. They weren't trying to reinvent the wheel, just make a good action game, which DS developers sometimes forget about, as many of the games are very gimmicky in their use of the dual screen, stylus, microphone etc.

Posted at 2:27PM on Mar 23rd 2007 by Bradley

5. Bradley, the old school brawler gameplay for the GBA version could have just as easily ended up on the DS, and it would probably would have looked better and sounded better. The DS can do everything the GBA can, plus more. It's really the stupid developers fault for making a crappy DS version of TMNT, it's not the DS's fault. Perhaps if the GBA would die, the DS would end up with more old school traditional games.

Posted at 3:34PM on Mar 23rd 2007 by Loban

6. Raphael is cool but [b][i]c[/b][/i]rude.

Posted at 5:40PM on Mar 23rd 2007 by Wayne

7. I have the gba version and it hella fun compare to the DS version. It has been lomg time coming since there was good turtle game... I highly recommend people to purchase the gba game compare to the other version, the only thing that sucks is that its only 1 player no co-op. Also it has some rpg element in that you can upgrade your defense, attacks, etc.

Go get it now!!!!

Posted at 6:57PM on Mar 23rd 2007 by Ken Seang

8. Blah. It sucks when something has the potential to be so awesome but it gets screwed up. If this was released on the DS it would probably have co-op and I would buy it immediately. But now I'll have to pass. Hopefully they'll make a sequel to it on the DS.

Posted at 4:32PM on Mar 25th 2007 by NeverSage

9. The GBA version is a must-buy. It's quite possibly the best 2D brawler I've ever played/

Posted at 11:53AM on Mar 26th 2007 by friedriches

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