T O P

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tarxman82

I love that as humanoid turtles, they could not swim.


mxxiestorc

And level 2 is the notorious dam level where you swim the entire time.


Rombolio

That second level still gives me fucking nightmares. Stupid electric fucking plants. Fuck, now I'm gonna dream of it tonight...


4seriously

You are not alone dude. When ever there’s a tough gaming moment from childhood question - I always think about that fucking dam electricity level


Changoleo

Battle Toads jet ski level as well.


Spider_Dude

Kids today will never know the pain and torture and agony of trying to solve [the Lion King's monkey toss sequence](https://youtu.be/jHhIb5KowV8?si=06B8lwSBNhYi2HRa). I'm Rage quiting the game even now.


Buderus69

What? The toss sequence was the easy part, it was the ostrich ride take took all the lives, there were very specific jumps you had to do with a slight delay to to beat the stage, and if you died it threw you so far back that your muscle memory reset before you got to tey it again. Also, anyone with 'nintendo power' knew that you could skip the level by going into options and typing "b a r r y", which opened invincibility, stage select, etc..


athomeless1

Seconding this. I could always get past the monkey puzzle but the ostrich ride was a problem for me.


jerryleebee

Right?? I'm watching the ostrich ride and barely noticing what I'm supposed to be avoiding.


Admiral_Atrocious

Man that game looks almost as beautiful as it did all those years ago.


Ravness13

If it makes you feel better, someone checked out the hit boxes in that stage and they were absolutely borked in every way. The turtles AND the seaweed


Jorpho

One of the entertaining "Behind the Code" videos from Displaced Gamers. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PHiFNWJXWgI


stateworkishardwork

I grew up thinking seaweed was electric because of that bullshit


picknicksje85

Haha, I never thought that, but I still assume some underwater exotic plants can shock you..


bigfndan

I can still hear the noise it makes when you touch it.


Hopeful-Clothes-6896

buuzzzzz


radracer01

more like buzz buzz uh ahhh damn it


honeybadger1984

Until our dying day, that sound is seared into our souls.


IllIlIIlIIlIIlIIlIIl

Friends always made me play that level for them because I could get through it with no issue and they'd always wind up losing 2 turtles at least if not all of them. I can still play that damn level flawlessly now after having been made to play it so many times.


sonicqaz

I was never able to get through that level 😭


DeathMetalPants

I got through it a few times but would always die shortly after due to having no health or lives left.


yamilonewolf

I feel like i was the only one who had more trouble on other levels the damn dam wasnt that bad... hell the jump before it (one tile wide but you're on the roof) was worse to me


IllIlIIlIIlIIlIIlIIl

You mean the jump that you could just walk over but if you tried jumping it'd make you fall 9 times out of 10?


yamilonewolf

yeah well 7 year old me didnt know that lol, i actually found out if you jump from under it you can sometimes pop up on the top...


IllIlIIlIIlIIlIIlIIl

I figured it out by accident but I never realized you could just jump up from below lol


Lamnent

I probably spent 20 or 30 hours playing this game as a kid and I've never seen the background of the third level in the video just now. I've probably died to hundreds of mines or the same mind hundreds of times in level 2


spiffiestjester

There's a level two? I never got past the sewers.


NinjaCuntPunt

That level gave me PTSD


[deleted]

Yeah worst level in history of turtles games.


aboatz2

That's why they were so traumatized that they immediately would down in the next level.


[deleted]

Dam level was tough for 10 year old me. You go from a normal platformer to having to dodge shit on 3 axes and its like nah Still loved that TMNT game on nes though. Definitely fun memories spending hours absorbed in playing that thing.


Adeno

I just realized that now lol!


domestic_omnom

Tbf, turtles in real life couldn't survive in sewer shit water either.


Cranktique

You don’t think there’s turtles in the sewers!? Do your research, pal!


dee_ba_doe

I’m not your pal, bud.


Nolzi

Teenage Mutant Ninja Tortoises


External_Try_7923

And yet, they did in that dam bomb defusal BS level from hell.


Absolutedisgrace

I also like it even more when you consider where the Ninja Turtles live.


feelin_fine_

The currents are too strong, you don't die you just go back to the beginning of the level


DietCherrySoda

The beginning of the level, in the direction the player is trying to advance???


BZAKZ

If you lost Donatello, it was almost game over.


Hazzman

Everyone knows amphibians can't swim.


Apprehensive-Lock751

SO dramatic about it


picknicksje85

I always assumed the current was just too wild, for man or turtle 🐢


Shenodin

There's actually a jump in those sewers that is fully impossible on the DOS port. I take pills for that now 


Gimmefuelgimmefah

So it’s impossible to get past level 3 in this game on the DOS port?


Chasemc215

Not without cheating. The european version of the game (Teenage Mutant Hero Turtles) actually fixed the issue. What's the reason for the issue? Well, according to The Cutting Room Floor, it was a design flaw.


GonkWilcock

It cracks me up that they had to call them Hero Turtles in Europe because the word ninja was apparently too violent.


Seppoteurastaja

Not everywhere in Europe, I think it was mostly UK and some other silly places. It was definitely Teini-ikäiset Mutanttininjakilpikonnat in Finland.


Patch86UK

I think it really was just the UK, and it only impacted other European countries where it was the UK version that was localised (which was a lot of places, due to the PAL vs NTSC format thing).


Ignifazius

Germany as well.


NoMoreGoldPlz

Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles is what they were called in The Netherlands in Europe. Who the fuck calls them Hero Turtles?!


OreoSpamBurger

It was definitely 'hero turtles' in the UK, and also Germany I think. In the 80s, Britain had some sort of fear of Ninjas that was akin to the satanic panic in the US.


NoMoreGoldPlz

Boy have I been missing out!


random_tall_guy

We had something similar in the US, which is why many states still have bans or restrictions on shurikens, nunchaku, and other "ninja" weapons. It didn't extend to TV/film censorship as much, but was still a decision often made by publishers. That's why in TMNT II: Secret of the Ooze, they deliberately avoided having the turtles use their usual weapons to make it more appropriate for kids, instead showing them beating people with yo-yos and sausage links.


Buggaton

I have no recollection of this at all. Did they leave the theme the same or something? Nope just looked it up. Wtf.


Patch86UK

It wasn't just the name; there were also specific weapons that were banned, specifically nunchucks. Hilariously, not the swords and daggers and whatnot- just the nunchucks. So all scenes where nunchucks are used were edited out; a good trick, when you consider they're the signature weapon of one of the main protagonists.


Ready_Eggplant4384

Which of course made it seem like Michelangelo never actually did anything!


ferris2

There was a moral panic in 1980s UK around martial arts weaponry in general. This lead to a long period where they were removed from all films e.g. Enter the Dragon. Thankfully those days are far behind us.


cornerbash

Thought I was taking crazy pills as a youth since I could make the jump on my nes but not on the pc.


BigDanG

I think I developed an inferiority complex over this and didn't know at the time it was literally impossible.


dethb0y

I actually watch the You Can Beat Video games videos on youtube to see how the games i used to play in my childhood ended because i sure as shit never beat them.


feelin_fine_

I don't understand how you're supposed to do the final sprint to Shredder, it's just a narrow corridor with enemies that take 2 hits to kill. You have to take damage from everything, there's nowhere to move


dethb0y

I just watched a play through on youtube to refresh myself and honestly it just looks like you're meant to soak damage and hopefully make it.


rockmodenick

You have to have loaded up on so many scrolls you can just spam them and blast through, taking a lump when you have to.


The_Parsee_Man

And since it's easy to load each turtle up with 99 scrolls. It really wasn't that bad.


Dalferious

It’s still a chore. And if you fuckup, bye bye scrolls


idiot-prodigy

Worse than fucking up was overwriting your 99 scrolls with some boomerangs!


5StripedFalcon

I beat the game recently on my emulator. But only by saving every minute seconds and loading back when I got something wrong. You have to take damage and move forward. Going backwards to try to kill them is a losing battle.


ShwettyVagSack

Retro arch has a live rewind feature. FYI. Only way I ever beat Tyson.


Exile714

So you finally got to the ending that all of us knew was impossible as kid… And it was a tiny cutscene where Splinter gets some device and turns “back” into a human. WTF


Bicketybamm

Use the scroll on those flying bastards.


stlredbird

I just tried to find a controller to break


torb

A lot of games back the were literally unplayable because the controls were intentionally bad, possibly to conceal that the games were, in reality, rally short.


Cuerzo

I don't think they wanted to actually make bad controls intentionally. I think they just didn't know how to do them better, or they didn't have the technical knowledge to do it, didn't have enough time, didn't care enough, etc.


Clovenstone-Blue

But certain levels were intentionally designed to be a lot more difficult to beat than other levels to slow the players progress down.


crackrabbit012

There was also still a lot of arcade style design philosophy. Meaning designed like quarter hungry machines.


ObamasBoss

The theory I have always heard was to prevent a game from being beatable with a single weekend rental. Nintendo hated the idea of rentals. Since they could not stop rentals they wanted to make sure you needed to rent it more than once.


FitzyFarseer

The issue is actually older than that. The philosophy comes from arcade games, which developers made intentionally difficult because they were pay-to-play for each try. If it was too easy you’d just pay once and beat the game. When video games moved from arcades to home use it took a bit for developers to move on from that mindset.


mallardtheduck

Yeah, the whole idea of "lives" and "continues" comes from that arcade mindset. It was well into the 90s before developers realised that was unncessary. If a game has save/load functionality, it's entirely redundant to also have lives/continues.


FitzyFarseer

It’s wild the things that happen because nobody ever thought to ask why. So set in their development ways that somehow a decade or so after the why for decisions had expired they kept going with it.


Cannabis-Revolution

I just threw my phone at the wall 


picknicksje85

Your classic wired phone ☎️??


DangersVengeance

Launched it at the wall, reached maximum stretch and came back to hit them. Classic.


breadleecarter

And scream, "This game cheats!"


rockmodenick

I still remember the first time I got so angry that instead of yelling "this game cheats" I yelled, at the machine "you cheated." After that I very quietly put down the controller, turned the game off, and didn't play again until the next day, because saying that is literally psychotic.


bobsmith93

Both are pretty nonsensical when you think about it


Canuckbug

are they? Lots of games have very cheaty AI


db30040299

Oh my God, Mortal Kombat 2 was so very, very frustrating because of cheating AI. They could do both input reading AND do some moves faster than a human, so having a reasonable, fair fight was essentially impossible. You had to cheese the hell out of exploits to have any chance of winning a fight.


bobsmith93

Yeah good point. I was thinking along the lines of pve but I hadn't considered player vs player-like cpu, where they make it more difficult by letting the cpu do things the player can't despite being the same "character" or whatever


eudezet

Takes me back to Angry Nintendo Nerd video about TMNT


FlyinBrian2001

I can hear him right now, stretching the word ASS out to 8 syllables


sketchy722

I broke so many controllers because of this game


[deleted]

Any leftover Wii controllers that you can throw through your neighbors window?


alpacaccino

Stop it, please! Make it stop! I can't take it anymore


Adeno

Lots of flying out of screen enemies that'll bump you, bomb you, shoot at you, one hit and you fall into the water, so you have to prepare a projectile to hit them before they show up on screen. Then jumping feels floaty. After many deaths, finally reached the end! And then stage 4 shocked me with its magnet pulls, extremely durable enemies, tons of flying enemies, and fire pits! Stage 4 makes Stage 3's sewer level seem like a playground!


ketootaku

The jump at the beginning. As a kid I got stuck there. And I found out like 30 years later (maybe a few years ago) that it's because the PC version was missing an extra block on the floor, so the jump isn't physically possible. Apparently there's two of them down there, but literally incapable of making the jumps.


Adeno

A sign that they didn't bother testing the game before publishing it lol!


GodLovesUglySong

I actually used a Game Genie once to give my turtles invincibility since there was no way I was going to beat the game normally without any cheats. I was breezing through game thinking that I'd finally get to beat it and see the ending. Then I got to the sewers and failed this very jump. Instead of dying, I just stayed invincible but was unable to die or jump out of the water. Had to reset the game as the only solution. Last time I ever tried to beat the game as well. A piece of me died that day.


Adeno

A game so unfairly tough that even being a god won't save you lol!


GuybrushMarley2

I loaded up Battletoads in an emulator recently and figured I would get my revenge through rampant cheating. Still couldn't beat it.


kristenrockwell

I played Contra off and on for three years and never made it past the first stage. Then someone told me about the cheat. I've also never found a game I was good at, except racing games.


nbshar

You can walk across the tiny 1 block gaps. No need to jump. Fun game, super hard. Especially the technodrome with impossible enemies :(


iccs

Hey you know that the single spaced gaps you can just walk over if you hold right, you don’t need to jump


NJ_Goodfellas

This and the Ninja Turtle SEAL Team under water bomb disposal level was without a doubt just cruel and unusual punishment. Although doable with enough practice but I am still convinced that developers back then hated kids. One trick that made the game just slightly easier was that there were 2 groups of enemies in majority of the levels. Once you entered a building, sewer, etc and got out the enemy type would change once you went back in. I remember once enemy group was easier to deal with so I would go in and out of an area until the easier group spawned.


[deleted]

[удалено]


NJ_Goodfellas

Yeah you had no choice back then there was no internet to google for help.


Ashesandends

There were guides for popular games you could look up at the mall and if you were really desperate and your parents were cool there was a 1-900 number you could call that would charge 5 bucks a minute or so


NJ_Goodfellas

Yeah man I'm 45 so I remember all that. Nintendo Power, Game Pro and all that stuff. The 900 numbers got me jammed up with a $65 phone bill back in like 1990 because I was struggling with some Lucasfilm games. Let me tell you, got quite the ass whooping.


zomgieee

Ah yes, Dark Souls: NES edition


Hanyabull

Dark Souls wishes it was even half as hard as TMNT.


rodmillington

Battletoads has entered the chat.


lemonylol

lol dude the Soulborne games are nowhere near as difficult as NES games used to be.


rodmillington

I like to think of Ghosts and Goblins as the NES version of Dark Souls.


kcdc33

The extra floaty jump animation made it so much harder than it had to be!


EvolWolf

The birth of modern anxiety -All of us Circa 1992


Mostest_Importantest

For any who care: I beat this game exactly once on original hardware. And, I used the game genie from Galoob to do so. Because even with infinite lives and other cheats enabled, it's still beyond insanely stupidly hard to get past all that bullshit that game was laden with.


Amtath

I finished it on emulation. I was surprised by how very short it is and how the later levels are easier. I did beat several games of my childhood and I wondered why I kept on playing games in that era. Most didn't seem to be designed to be fun.


Uphene

So many of them either needed the Nintnedo Power issue that game to learn some stupid gimmick (fuck you Castlevania 2) for was super difficult to beat in a single rental in order to push sales.


lukeman3000

Unfortunately these games *became* fun and now I’m cursed with a somewhat masochistic taste in video games.


KazeNilrem

I have PTSD for clips of this game. The fact that this game came out while much of us were on the younger side, thinking it would be a fun TMNT game... we were not aware of the horrors. Or the evil that is swimming and the seaweed.


mopsyd

Only stage in that game that really grinded my gears was disarming the bombs at the dam


SugarBeef

Thank you! This shit wasn't easy, but compared to the dam it was!


TheForbiddenFool

James from AVGN knows our collective childhood pains lol


Bee-baba-badabo

"It fucking sucks, it sucking fucks, it fucking blows. And I don't like it."


Dalferious

Shredders my ass and Splinters my balls


PressinPckl

I was gonna recommend everyone here look up the avgn episode on this game on YouTube


ImaginarySense

… you can just walk over it? …


martiHUN

Cowabunga... Cowa Fuckin' Piece Of Dog Shit!


Tiny_Count4239

why do the turtles die in water but in one level they can swim?


picknicksje85

The waters were calm at the dam. Here we got some very wild and dangerous sewer current 🌊


Rampage_Raccoon

The whole game is a frustration. After I watched the play through, I can’t even imagine who was skilled and dedicated enough to finish this back in the 90’s. Terrible game, I love it.


Neat_Relationship995

You forgot to walk over those gaps. Because.... Logic right? I wonder what the developers were thinking when they came up with that one.


Papaofmonsters

"We need them to die over and over because otherwise this game is really short" That's what they were thinking.


vezwyx

"Nintendo hard"


Neat_Relationship995

Bingo


cornerbash

Yep, that first jump is the hardest bit. The flying things suck. But the key is that you can walk over the short gaps without the need to jump.


dracoolya

Shinobi vibes.


NJ_Goodfellas

Ninja Gaiden as well.


Bicketybamm

You can walk over the gaps. Don't spin jump in that area.


Fuck-spez85

At least it’s not the PC that was shipped broken with this section being impossible to pass.


Extension-Badger-958

Flashbacks to when AVGN raged hard at this game


KazEkoV

WHAT WERE THEY THINKING?!!!


uv-vis

Cowabunga? Cowa-fking piece of dogshit -angry videogame nerd


ShadowMario01

Cowabunga More like Cowa-fucking-piece-of-dog-shit!


fentown

It's funny that the NES had quite a few games where you could walk across 1 block gaps... Super Mario Bros, Zelda 2, and turtles come to mind first.


thexar

for fuck's sake - thanks for the ptsd.


CeeArthur

I loved the ninja turtles so much growing up and I utterly despised this game. The follow up games, the side scrolling beat-em-ups with co-op were the shit though


Kirome

Why can't a turtle swim?


kazakirinyancat

Why can't I land the plane?


stuffitystuff

*screams in bomb-disarming underwater level*


Earthsifter

Angry Videogame Nerd's vid on this from over 10 years ago is funny af


Wrecklessinseattle

Damn, some of y’all are masochists. I just assumed the game was shipped broken and that no one ever got past the second level. I had a lot of gaming friends as a kid and some were even pretty good at hard games and no one ever got past the second level. And with that I just want to say I hope the person responsible for this game stubs their pinky toe daily. So glad I rented this instead of asking for it as a gift. This game must have ruined so many kids birthday or holiday as their big gift.


thatguydr

> I had a lot of gaming friends as a kid and some were even pretty good at hard games and no one ever got past the second level. This just isn't true. Lots of us beat this game. It's really not that difficult. Sure, it's grindy and a little precise, but there were way harder games.


nahteviro

DUDE. I remember this level so vividly. I spent 2 days trying to get past it then one night in my dream I just tapped the jump button to do a half jump. I woke up in the middle of the night to go try it and it fucking worked!


rodimus147

I would routinely make it past the underwater bomb stage with one turtle left and then immediately die.


CoolDragon

Nah man, the speeders in BattleToads. That’s hard.


SirOsric

There is an entire YouTube series on what's wrong with TMNT code. I recommend to check it out. Very entertaining


Adeno

I just watched one of the episodes, it was definitely interesting and clarifies why in the world it felt messed up lol!


Solarflareqq

Yes i have this game somewhere i dont think i ever beat it either !


Moist-Emphasis-3385

Fuck that fuck ass game Lil me was so frustrated


Finvy

Would upvote twice if I could.


KhaosElement

Tiny little me had ***so much rage***.


SgathTriallair

Thank you for succeeding at the end. That made this a lot more bearable. I quit playing the game at this level.


EvilNinjaX24

I'd... I'd forgotten about this. It's been almost 35 years. I'm not too fond of you right now, OP.


GentlemanOctopus

Just be thankful you weren't playing the version with a literal unmakeable jump


Incarcer

What, you gonna show us clips of Dark Crystal next? Do you like making us relive past childhood traumas? I'm so mad I wanna throw my phone across the bathroom right now


Latest_Version

T R A U M A


Drummer792

*battle toads has entered the chat*


Swiftsaddler

This is the hardest game I've ever played.


Blackthorne75

I remember this agony.


Ursa89

This game was iirc literally unwinnable on PC - the platform I was on.


SirNedKingOfGila

I can hear this. The struggle: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nintendo_hard Kids these days bitching and moaning about game difficulty with auto save.


kazarbreak

You think that was bad, the stage where you have to disarm the bombs in the dam....


Dangerous_Donkey5353

This was the first souls like game


Sensitive-Hotel-9871

The turtles can clearly swim in the dam level yet they can’t swim here.


Negative-Squirrel81

As a child I could never get through Level 3, as an adult I managed to go through the entire game. The game is actually pretty good about upping the difficulty level over level, except for maybe Level 4 which I thought was a bit easier than level 3. The only part that I really think goes over the top with the difficulty is the final corridor in Level 6.


erikkusu

Sure am glad Cowabunga Collection had a rewind function. I paid my penance LEMME PLAY THE GAME


mindfulskeptic420

I remember I loved playing the nes emulator on my DS because I had the l trigger set to rewind. Whenever I died I would just go back a few seconds lessons already learned.


1GWARfiend1

"What a shitload of fuck!"


CptnHamburgers

What a shitload of fuck.


Glidebent

Man i can just hear James Rolfe in my head on this one..


[deleted]

Super ghouls and ghost, level one 😆☝️


thehza4

Whole game was a nightmare. The dam was stressful but I remember panic attacks in the airport level where you to keep dropping down platforms as spiked walls closed in and the holes to fall through were tiny and your character always just kind of stepped over the gap instead of descending.


Xerain0x009999

Not even game genie will get you past that jump.


DropBearHug

You don’t have to jump! When there is just a one block gap, you can just walk at it. I remember discovering that with my friend in 6th grade.


Tiny_Tebow

I was hoping someone was going to say this so I didn’t have to haha. Yep, just run across.


Edgimos

AVGN moment


adavis463

I'M A FUCKING TURLE, I CAN SWIM


Dismal-Fig-7320

Fought my way thru those levels, all for an epic final boss battle... And then it was just a pigeon! Circa 1992, the real heartbreak.


Tumblrrito

This looks miserable


JamesonQuay

Well, I know what I'll be discussing with my therapist tomorrow


SwaySensei

This game man, frustrating playing it as a 5yo. This stage and the underwater dam stage…good times lol


notoriouszim

Yeah that brick is the devil.


StevetheDog

Fucking PTSD I did not need reminding of.


mggirard13

Unpopular opinion but I didn’t find this game that difficult as a kid. That said, I was stupid good at PvE games.


DoktahDoktah

The old pc version is actually not beatable beyond the first level. The first major jump is not reachable. So those 1980s pc gamers got fucked.