Throwback Thursday Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Turtles In Time

Throwback Thursday Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Turtles In Time

Robert Knuckles

“Another Arcade Classic”

Back with another Throwback Thursday game and that’s Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Turtles in Time. Last week I talked about Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles The Arcade game and today I’m going to talk about it’s sequel Turtles In Time.

Turtles In Time was released in arcades in 1991. Some of the arcades featured two joysticks for players to pick their turtle where some featured 4 joysticks where players had to put their quarter in certain slots to play as a certain turtle.

The Story in Turtles In Time is pretty simple. April O’ Neil was reporting live until Krang took the Statue of Liberty. The turtles set out to get the Statue back and fight the evil Shredder and Krang but as they go on their adventure Shredder throws them in time portal hoping they won’t be able to return home.

The gameplay in Turtles in Time follows its predecessor but with a few tweaks. It’s still a side scrolling beat em up game where players get to the end of the level and fight a boss at the end. Turtles are now able to slam the Foot Ninjas on the floor left to right. The Turtles are able to throw the Foot Ninjas on to the screen pretty much breaking the fourth wall. Players have the ability to run and do sliding attacks. There’s also a Pizza Power box where the Turtles do a spinning special 360 attack killing enemies in one hit. There are some pretty interesting levels in this game. Players will travel in the Dinosaurs, Pirates, Old West and Futuristic worlds.

Turtles In Time was rereleased on the SNES in August 1992. It was called Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles IV: Turtles In Time. It featured two players but a couple of changes were added. A couple of sound animations were changed. Sewer Surfing featured The Rat King as a boss, Technodrome is the next level after Sewer Surfing and players have to fight Shredder in a machine but can only hit him by throwing enemies at him. Cement Man is replaced by Slash who is freaking annoying. Bebop and Rocksteady return as bosses and players fight Super Shredder as the Final Boss

This game is also unlockable in Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles 3: Mutant Nightmare with complete different music. Turtles in Time was remade in HD for the PS3 and Xbox 360 as Turtles in Time Re-Shelled but we won’t get into that…

Turtles in Time is another classic arcade. People can make the argument that Turtles is better than it’s predecessor and I don’t blame them. I feel as though Turtles in Time is a bit shorter and could’ve added a few more levels. That’s my only grip with the game but I still love this game. I actually played this game on the SNES first. I was always thinking if this game had an arcade version that’s up to four players and I was right. Like I said when you play a Ninja Turtles game it’s a rule to have four player co-op. You can still find this game somewhere in the arcades. I wish that players could download the original on the current game systems but only time will tell.