A small boy walks down a street in New York City. As he crosses the street he drops and breaks his glass bowl. Inside that bowl was his four pet turtles. Storm water rushes down the side of the street carrying the pets to the sewers, dropping them into green ooze.
A rat, already affected by the ooze, begins to realize he must help the defenseless turtles and gathers them into a can. Dragging the can with the turtles the rat finds a dwelling within the sewer to live. As time passed the rat seems to grow larger and smarter and the same happens to his adopted turtle sons.
Calling himself Splinter, this self-educated rat, decides to train his sons in the martial arts. He gives the turtles the names of the great renaissance artists, Leonardo, Donatello, Raphael and Michelangelo. Fighting for the greater good, these ninja fight crime in the night and remain invisible during the day.
The game opens with cut scenes from the FoxBox series' opening credits. For the Game Boy, the graphics and animation is very well done. The characters in the side-scrolling action are easy to make-out and the additional vehicle missions add some fun adventure. The look of the character cutouts during the scenes with back-story is very clean and looks like real still animation from the television program.
The game control is awesome. There is one jump button and two attack buttons. The ability to be able to use combination moves works from the start, instead of needing to be trained, as in the GameCube version. You can perform combo attacks if you hit a button so many times in the row. If you need a little height to your jump, use your special move atop your double jump to add inches and help you make it to a ledge. You can even charge your attacks up to three levels for more devastating maneuvers. However, if you charge for too long, you will run out of breath.
I love games with enemy life meters. I like knowing when the guy I am smacking around will faint, that way I can taunt him before he does faint. Each time you play the game with each turtle, a little more the story is revealed. In addition, the game reveals a secret code you can use on either the Game Boy Advance or GameCube once you solve the game with each character at least once at each play level.
With all the levels, secret codes, mini-games and all four turtles, you will not run out of fun very quickly. This game reminds me of Final Fight One and if you liked that and enjoy the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, this game is well worth the coinage. It makes the ten-year wait time between TMNT games well worth it.
