Their cartoon was a staple of our Saturday mornings. Their weekly adventures were consistently the main topic of conversation in our school and playground get-togethers. Their likenesses covered our walls, our clothing, and our bedsheets. Their toys lined our rooms' shelves and dressers and stood as symbols of our devotion to their righteous cause. And their first video game coming to our favorite platform, the NES, was the biggest deal ever.
Those four radical dudes permeated every aspect of our culture and our society. They dominated our lives.
They were the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, and to us, they ruled the world. We were completely obsessed with them.
Yet for all of the excitement and enthusiasm we had for their current projects, none of it could come close to matching the level of elation we felt when news hit that our beloved half-shelled heroes would soon be coming to the silver screen! We'd never been more happy about a development!
We were overjoyed to the extreme because we were very much aware of what this news meant. We knew that (a) an intellectual property was understood to have reached the height of its popularity when Hollywood took note of it and decided to commission the creation of a movie adaptation of it and (b) consequently the property in question was about to reach its creative zenith.
So we were certain that the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles were about to ascend to the highest level and deliver to us what was sure to be the best movie ever made!
Now, we didn't know much about the movie's actual production (the only thing we heard was that the movie was going to feature live-action performances), so we were left to wonder about how the cartoon's subject-matter was going to translate to the big screen. "How are the Turtles going to look?" we obsessively discussed. "Will the characters and the script be faithful to the cartoon? Will the directors incorporate some of the comic books' darker elements? Will Shredder and Krang both appear as villains? Will the cast expand to include characters like Mechaturtle, Baxter Stockman and Usagi Yojimbo? And will we get to see a giant live-action Technodrome?!"
There were so many possibilities for us to explore, and we were always keen to present our theories and discuss them at length.
We couldn't wait to see what this movie entailed. And as the months went on, our excitement and anticipation for it continued to grow exponentially.
And indeed, we treated the March 30th, 1990, theater release of Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles as one of the most monumental events in the history of our lives!
I mean, here was a day that couldn't get any better. This was the day in which we were finally going to see our favorite heroes on the big screen! It was the day in which we were going to bear witness to the pinnacle in kids' entertainment!
"A day like this couldn't get any more special!" we thought at the time.
We went to the Fortway Theater on Fort Hamilton Parkway, which was always our default choice (mostly because it was right next door to D&L Pizza Royale, whose amazing lasagna pizza was the perfect capper to any movie experience). And let me tell you: The line to get in was huge. It stretched all of the way around the block! And that was bad for us because it guaranteed that we'd miss the desired afternoon showing and have to wait until after dark to see the movie.
So what we decided to do, instead of waiting, was head over to Loew's Oriental on 86th Street. We did so with the hope that the line to get in wouldn't be as long.
Unfortunately it was. A similar-sized mob was waiting to get into the place. However, since the Oriental was so much larger than Fortway and had a greater number of screens, it was actually able to accommodate crowds of that size. Even then, though, we were still lucky to get tickets to the first showing!
That's how anticipated the movie was.
So we got our tickets and headed into the lobby.
And that was when the unexpected event occurred. That was when it suddenly came into our lives.
Honestly, there were so many people packed into the lobby that I didn't even see it standing there at first. I mean, I did notice that there was a large amount of people concentrated in the lobby's northwest corner, which was where two or three arcade machines were always situated, but I didn't think that it signified anything important. "It's probably just a bunch of kids playing some Bad Dudes or WWF Superstars and killing some time before the movie starts," I thought.
I was up to date on the arcade scene, after all, so I figured that they couldn't have been playing any game I hadn't seen or heard about before!
So Mike and I got on line at the concession area and started chatting about what popcorn size we were going to get and which soft drink was best for this particular occasion.
And that's when we heard it.
At that moment, suddenly, the familiar Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles cartoon theme song began to thunderously blast its away across across the entire lobby and fill the entire space. Its reverberations were so mighty that they were able to overpower the deafening theater cacophony and reach the ears of every person in that lobby and do so with a purpose.
Instantly everyone's attention was drawn to the music's source: the lobby's northwest corner. And because, by that point, the crowd had thinned out a bit and enough separation had formed, we were able to catch of glimpse of what was generating the music. It was an arcade machine whose marquee read "Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles," and the action that was occurring on its monitor bore a remarkable resemblance to the action from the cartoon!
Mike and I couldn't believe what we were seeing. "Wait a minute," we shouted in unison. "There's another Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles video game?! Since when?! And why haven't we heard anything about it?!"
The game looked absolutely incredible, but unfortunately we didn't have much time to observe its action or wonder about how we missed its release. Because the movie was going to be starting at any minute, and we knew that we'd have to get into the theater room quickly if we hoped to get good seats!
There was no time to waste!
Thoughts of the game escaped our minds for the next hour and a half, but they only did so because we were so engrossed in the movie that we couldn't possibly care to think about anything else that was happening in the world. At the time, what we were seeing on the big screen was all that mattered to us.
And in the end, our verdict was that the movie was excellent. We absolutely loved it! We had high expectations for it, and it not only met those expectations; it blew them all away! And thus it immediately became one of our new all-time-favorite movies!
That's how much it impressed us.
It didn't give us all of the things that we hoped for, no. It didn't feature Krang, Rocksteady and Beebop, or Baxter Stockman, and the Technodrome was a no-show. But we didn't mind their absence because the movie gave us pretty much everything else we hoped to see: the Turtles interacting in a sarcastic, jocular way; lengthy, creative fight sequences; fun characters; and silly humor.
It delivered the essential elements in a highly impactful manner.
And it also had what we considered to be the moment--the event that instantly made the entire movie for every one of us: the surprise appearance of Casey Jones, which made every kid in the theater gasp loudly and then immediately turn to his or her friend and shout "Casey!" I remember how the theater continued to buzz for several minutes in following as everyone incessantly talked about the event and wondered how the movie studio managed to keep Casey's inclusion a secret (nothing in the trailers or commercials suggested that he would appear).
To us, Casey's appearance was one of the most memorable moments in movie history.
So yeah--we were amazed with Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. We loved everything about it. (We were so enamored with it, in fact, that we went to see it an additional four or five times over the next two-week period! It was one of our new obsessions.)
And while a terrific Turtles movie was an enormous delight on its own, there was, we knew, still something else for us to be super-excited about. There was another special treat waiting for us in the theater lobby: the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles arcade game that we saw earlier!
At that point, multiple people were still lining up to the play the game, but because the activity was much lighter than it was previously, we were able to find an opening and get a chance to experience the game ourselves. And I can sum the session by saying that we were in a state of total bliss for entirety of it.
I'm not exaggerating when I say that Mike and I were in complete awe of what we were seeing and experiencing. We couldn't believe what the game was accomplishing. We couldn't remember a time in which a video game had done so well to capture the spirit of the property that inspired it. It successfully replicated all of the cartoon's most important elements: the eye-popping character design, the sleek animation, the rockin' music, and the entertaining comic mischief.
It literally brought the cartoon to life! And that was one of the reasons why we were so blown away by it.
What was also great about the game was that it had four-player support! That meant that all four Turtles could be present on the screen at the same time! Four players could team up and take on the dozen or so enemies that were flooding the screen!
"What an amazing technological achievement!" I thought to myself during a moment in which four of us were playing the game simultaneously. "Even Double Dragon, Bad Dudes and Ninja Gaiden wouldn't be able to handle this amount of action!"
Four-player simultaneous play, we all knew, was a hugely important part of the experience. It's what made the game's action feel so authentic. Because teaming up with multiple friends and strangers and plowing your way through massive waves of Foot Soldiers, Mousers and Roadkill Rodneys was what Turtles action was supposed to be about. It was what we always wanted from a Turtles game. And this one gave it to us. That's why we found it so alluring.
To us, four-player cooperative play was basically a requisite. It wasn't a true Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles arcade experience, we felt, unless four people were standing side by side and jointly pounding away at the control panel. Because that's what Turtles action was all about: a team of four working together to take down Shredder and his evil forces.
So whenever we were planning to play through Turtles, we'd make sure to gather up four players before starting.
That remained the tradition all the way up till the end.
The game, itself, was simply outstanding. I'd always been a big fan of beat-'em-ups, and this one impressed me so much that it instantly earned itself a place atop my list of genre favorites. It was just so beautifully put together. It had everything that you could want in a beat-'em-up: It looked amazing. It had exceptional music and sound design. It controlled brilliantly. Its action moved at a brisk pace (occasionally there was some slowdown, but that was a very minor flaw and forgivable because of how ambitious the game was). It had a ton of fun-to-use fighting moves. It had great enemy variety. Its difficulty was never too unfair. And it was just an absolute joy to play!
Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles was a dream beat-'em-up. It was the perfect expression of the genre.
What was mind-blowing to me, also, was that we'd reached a point in which arcade games' sound hardware was able to sample music from TV shows and reproduce them in such high quality. I couldn't believe that the Turtles' machine was blasting out the cartoon's theme song. Not a digital or electronic version of it, no--the actual theme song, ripped directly from the show! "It's incredible that this is possible," I thought to myself as I was listening to it.
I loved that theme so much that there were times when I'd hang around a Turtles machine just so that I could listen to it a bunch of times. It was one of the game's most alluring elements.
Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles was the most finely crafted arcade game around. Its presentation was captivating, its action was incredibly engaging and satisfying, and its music and sound effects were utterly absorbing. That's why we were so hopelessly drawn to it.
It was an irresistible game. It had so many ways of capturing patrons' attention. Its music, in particular, was one of its best devices. It was like a tractor beam: Its powerful reverberance was able to reach across even the largest, noisiest arcade and cause people everywhere to turn in the direction from which it was emanating and slowly gravitate in that direction.
And if you located the game, you were sure to play it. Because you had to. Because you knew that if you didn't, you'd be missing out on one the best arcade experiences you could possibly have.
That's how it was for my friends and I. We never missed a chance to experience Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles' action. We played it regularly until the middle of the decade, long after Turtles' had lost their culture relevance. And we would have continued to enjoy it for years in following had life's events not conspired to split up our group.
On an aside: For whatever reason, I can't reconcile the idea that the NES and arcade Turtles games came out around the same time. My memories tell me that I'd been playing the NES game for least two or three years before the arcade game arrived, but that obviously can't be the case. So I don't know what's up.
It could be that my inability to see these events as concurrent is a signifier of just how different my perception of time was when I was a kid, or maybe it's that the arcade game is so much more evolved technologically, mechanically and gameplay-wise that I can't imagine a scenario in which it hit the scene only a few months after the NES game released.
I'm not sure.
"The game's title doesn't really matter all that much," we agreed. The only thing that was important to us was that the game was coming to the home-console market and that we would soon have more convenient access to it!
For months, my friend Dominick and I eagerly anticipated the game's release. We couldn't wait to bring it home and start tearing into it! We had some reservations, of course. We were worried that the NES wasn't powerful enough to produce a fairly faithful version of the arcade original (because we were aware of the console's poor history with direct arcade ports), and we feared that the game's having only two-player support would limit its fun factor.
But still, we felt that it was worth accepting a few small sacrifices if it meant that we could gain the ability to play the arcade game, in some form, in the comfort of our own homes, which was a dream scenario.
And when Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles II: The Arcade Game hit stores, Dominick and I quickly grabbed ourselves copies of it. We did so in our usual manner: We made our poor mothers go out and search for it! We sent them out on a cold, snowy December afternoon and tasked them with scouring all of Brooklyn until they were able to find a store that had the game in stock.
Luckily for us, they were able to find a place that still had multiple copies available. They bought two of them and then brought them back to our house.
We started playing my copy immediately!
At first, it felt surreal to be playing a version of the arcade game on a TV and in the home environment.
"I can't believe that this is actually happening!" we thought.
Sadly, though, the magic of that reality didn't last very long. After a couple of minutes, our excitement waned because it became clear to us that the game was simply too technologically inferior to reproduce the arcade original's best elements. It didn't have the same visual or aural punch; it could only render three enemies at a time, which greatly diminished the chaotic nature of the combat and made the action less lively and fun; and it took away a few of the Turtles' offensive maneuvers and thus made them feel less capable.
Also, it was too damn hard! I mean, we understood that Konami had to adjust and rebalance its difficulty to make it work on a platform that had completely different values, but there was no reason, we thought, for the company to go so far as to aim for an "NES hard"-level of difficulty! There was no reason to program the enemies to be so obnoxiously aggressive or to limit the number of times you could continue. Those changes were unnecessary, and they only served to make the action feel stressful rather than fun.
We appreciated that the designers added two new stages and some exclusive boss characters and did so because they wanted to give us more for our money, but we didn't feel as though the extra content was enough to offset the game's negative qualities. We knew, even early on, that it wasn't going to be enough to keep us coming back.
We didn't think that it was a bad game, no. We rated it as pretty good. It was just that we couldn't ignore how much it paled in comparison to the original work. It just wasn't anywhere near as powerful a game.
And we knew that if we were ever hankering for some top-level Turtles action, there was a much more reliable way to get it: We could instead run over to the local arcade and pop a few quarters into its glorious Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles machine, which would surely provide us the amazingly fun, satisfying gaming experience we were desiring.
And that's how it all went down. On a momentous day in March of 1990, a great movie led me to a special video game, and together the two of them changed my life for the better. They wowed me, delighted me, and provided me some of the most memorable entertainment experiences I'd ever had. And they helped to kick off one of the best times I've ever known. That's why they'll forever be intrinsically linked in my memories.
I don't play Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles much anymore (because playing it alone or over the Internet just isn't as fun as playing it in an arcade with friends), and I haven't seen the movie in quite a long time, but still I can say, happily, that neither's power has waned. Each one resonates with me just as strongly as it did way back in the early 90s. And I feel confident in thinking that both works will continue to resonate with me in the same manner until the end of time.
And that isn't some nostalgic force working to fill my head with overly sentimental thoughts, no.
That, my friends, is Turtle power.
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