This text is intended to present the richness of Ninja Turtles video games – all those that use “some screen”. To approximate only, not to go into detail, our aim is not to describe every possible game that has come out, but only to outline the topic.
Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles as such debuted in the comic book form in 1984, not much later, in 1987 they hit TV screens in the form of the first animated series . For the debut in the form of a video game (about other games, including the paper RPG released in 1985, we write in this note) we had to wait another two years, until 1989, when a game titled “ Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles” was released in North America and Japan. The game was intended for NES (Nintendo Entertainment System), after a year, versions for personal computers were also released, such as Amiga, Atari ST, Commodore 64, ZX Spectrum, etc.
The purpose of this post is not to accurately describe each game, but for the first one we make a tiny exception and include a microgallery:
It will not be an exaggeration to say that after the premiere of the first game, the bag with them was simply ripped open. Another, in the form of a slot machine, also came out in 1989 (a year later it was transferred to NES as Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles II: The Arcade Game), also the first of the “hand held” (also named simply Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles) came out this year, the second, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles II: Splinter Speaks right in 1990.
In the same 1990, the first game directly designed for computers was released, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: World Tour (it is a coloring game), turtles also made their debut on Game Boy, in the game Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Fall of the Foot Clan. There was also a second arcade machine, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Pizza Drop.
The following years saw new games, both arcade machines and hand helds, new games for the previously mentioned systems, as well as for new ones, such as Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: The Hyperstone Heist for Sega Genesis, released in 1992. With time, however, their number began to fall, and finally stopped.
The brand’s revival in the field of electronic entertainment took place in 2003, with the premiere of the second animated series. That year, two different games were released with the common, standard title Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, one for Game Boy Advance, the other for PCs and the main consoles of this period, i.e. GameCube, Xbox and PlayStation 2. In the year 2004 Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles 2: Battle Nexus was released on the same set of machines, released in 2005 Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles 3: Mutant Nightmare skipped the PC, it was intended for for GameCube, Xbox, PlayStation 2 and new console, Nintendo DS.
The following years are a similar story, for a few years there were some new items, including the first game for mobile phones (Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles Fast Forward: Ninja Training NYC, 2005) or the first games in the system “Plug and play” which can be described as “consoles connected to the TV, with one game permanently saved”. Such Plug and Play titles are TMNT: Battle for the City or Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Mutants and Monsters Mayhem. There were also games based on animated movie from 2007, games referring to subsequent seasons of the series from 2003, etc., but in 2009 it all again stoped.
Another revival came in 2013, a year after the premiere of the third animated series. The passing years have again brought a small revolution on the market of “gaming systems”, which can be seen from the fact that two of the games released in 2013, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Rooftop Run and Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Mutant Rumble was intended for iOS and Androd. Of course, games have also started to appear on other systems, such as Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Out of the Shadows for Xbox Live Arcade and PCs (and in 2014 also available as part of PlayStation Network) or another game with the title
The games did not manage to get out of breath this time, 2014 is another strengthening of the topic, for the obvious reason, the premiere of the new cinema movie. For example, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Training Lair has been released for the Xbox 360 Kinect, another game with a title Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, for Nintendo 3DS, Android, IOS. The film did not dominate the subject, however, in the year of its premiere, the game Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Danger of the Ooze was also released for Nintendo 3DS, PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360.
Until today, various new games are slowly coming out, for example, for Android and iOS Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles Legends (what is worth mentioning here, is fact that in that game you can find turtle characters from different periods, i.e. comic versions, and from the 1987 series as well as from the 2014 movie), Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Mutants in Manhattan for PlayStation 4, PlayStation 3, Xbox One, Xbox 360 and PCs, or released in 2017, after a long hiatus in this segment, the arcade machine – whose name is again the usual and simple Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. For 2021, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Shredder’s Revenge was also announced, interestingly, it is based on the first animated series.
A separate category that we must mention are also various free games that Nickelodeon publishes on theis website – at this address you can find one of them: Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles Shadow Heroes, while looking around on the page itself you will find many others. Very varied, both in terms of gameplay and characters (versions/incarnations) of Turtles. Below is a mini-gallery of a few sample games.
A completely separate field are non-TMNT games in which they appear (or only one of them), these will be described in separate, dedicated to them note(s). Here we only mentions titles such as Smite, Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater 5 and Injustice 2. The same applies to games with Easter Eggs related to TMNT, such as Tibia, World of Warcraft, Streets of Rage 4 or Borderlands 2.
More information about the games can be found, for example, in turtlepedia.fandom.com, this this and this articles, you can also take a look at Wikipedia.
Author: XYuriTT
