Summary
Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Mutants Unleashed has a whole scene dedicated to lovingly making fun of the infamously difficultNESTMNT game from 1989.
Although the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles have had their fair share of iconic video games over the years such as Turtles in Time, Tournament Fighters,and more recently, Shredder’s Revenge, they’ve also had a few stinkers. While Out of the Shadows and Re-Shelled instantly come to mind as notable disappointments, there’s one that easily stands as the worst of the bunch -the ’80s NEs game.
That game, which is annoyingly just called Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, has become known over the years for its frustrating difficulty spikes, strange level design, and a complete lack of balance between the four Turtles.TMNT’s infamous intro to console gaming is such a punching bagfor the series that even the latest Turtles game, Mutants Unleashed, can’t help but lovingly make a few jokes at its expense.
Mutants Unleashed Makes Fun Of The ’80s NES Game
One of the mostinteresting things about Mutants Unleashed is how it takes a surprising amount of influence from Personaand lets the Turtles level up their abilities by hanging out with specific people during the time in between missions. Each Turtle has a different friend they can visit to advance a questline, and Mikey’s revolves around a young podcaster named Volvy.
At one point in Mikey and Volvy’s link quest, the two decide to start a gaming channel and invite Master Splinter onto the show so he can show off how he’s “mastered” an old-school Sushi Sharks tie-in. This is, of course, a stand-in for TMNT on the NES, and leads to Mutants Unleashed making fun of everything wrong with that infamous game.
Mutants Unleashed also suggests that the Turtles call Splinter “Master” because of how good he is at playing the Sushi Sharks game, which is an interesting bit of lore that I hope carries through to the second movie.
While Splinter speedruns Sushi Sharks, he references the Dam level’s dreaded electric seaweed and says that the only way to get through it is to sacrifice Doug, the worst shark who has a useless weapon, a clear nod to Raph being the worst Turtle in the NES game. Volvy also makes fun of how strange the level design is, noting that it makes no sense for “rotating spikes” to be inside a fish tank.
The whole scene is full of similar jabs and nods to the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles' incredibly rocky first game and, beyond clearly having a lot of affection for it jokes aside, it shows just how far the Turtles have come in the gaming world. At least Doug isn’t as bad in the modern Sushi Sharks games as he was in the first one.
