|
And yet, when the sales numbers came in, the bandana-wearing, banana-cream-topping-pizza-eating teens managed to push an astounding four million copies of Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles into Nintendo Entertainment Systems (link). The popularity of the recent coin-op machine in arcades, coupled with the hype fueled by Nintendo Power when they crowned TMNT Game of the Year, made the Turtles' first Nintendo outing a must-have among video game and turtle fans alike. Then there was that little cameo appearance in a certain 1989 Hollywood movie.
These heroes in green drove up such demand that retailers couldn't keep them stocked on store shelves for the holidays, causing parents to scramble for months to find a game-pak to place under the tree in time for Christmas.
Based loosely on the 1987 cartoon, developer and publisher, Konami, didn't seem as concerned about faithfully adapting the show into a video game, and instead, created a side-scrolling adventure world of its own bizarre making—a crazier New York City where a Hudson River dam is threatened by submerged ticking time bombs, and Fifth Avenue/Greenwich Village is transformed into a labyrinth of mazes, teeming not with rich yuppie hipsters, but ceiling creatures called Roof Leapers (to be fair, it's a hard distinction to make), bare-chested lumberjacks, and self-engulfing pyromaniacs straight out of a Pink Floyd album cover.
We're just two lost souls swimming in a turtle bowl, year after year. I haven't even gotten into how much liberty is taken with the game's story. According to the instruction manual, Shredder's hideout is in the Bronx (uptown, baby, uptown!), and he kidnaps April in order to brain wash her into joining The Foot. Since when did this Irish Channel 6 news reporter find the time to learn the art of ninjutsu? The Irish fight anything but artfully. And you just know a Foot mask is totally going to wreak havoc on her hair over time. (She didn't just switch over to a sodium lauryl sulfate free shampoo for nothing, Shredder!)
Splinter has to check up on Oscar to see if he's been using the drink coasters. Let's not forget the incredible plot device of Shredder's "Life Transformer Gun" that can somehow turn Splinter human again. Say what?
Now if you expected a game about a kid's show to feature a kid's difficulty level, then get ready to clench your teeth and put on a sequin dress for the ride of your life. Unforgiving platforming jumps, infinitely respawning enemies, fucking flying robotmen, that goddamn damned dam level—this game separated the boys from the men, and smacked players around until they forsaken God and toughened up, or else retreated to a safer game like DuckTales. TMNT never held your hand, never asked how your day was, never pretended it cared. It threw you down the stairs at night and ordered you to tell your friends the next day that you fell on a patch of ice outside. It made me the survivor I am today.
In December of 2010, a seller on eBay listed three NES game prototypes, including one of Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. It was advertised that these games came from a long-time retired Nintendo employee, but as I stressed before on this site, I am always wary of unsubstantiated provenance claims, and so took the story with a grain of salt at first. Upon further investigation, I discovered that the seller works for a limited liability company located in Kent, Washington that specializes in estate liquidations. As you probably already know, Nintendo of America is headquartered in Redmond, Washington, and the distance between Kent and Redmond is roughly 20 miles. At around the same time that this was purchased, the seller was also offering very convincing Super Mario Bros. 2 and Duck Hunt / Super Mario Bros. / World Class Track Meet prototype samples. First party Nintendo prototypes are extraordinarily rare, as Nintendo has always been very protective of their own game properties, so seeing these other two titles worked in favor of the seller's story checking out. (FYI, Mario 2 went for $470, and the multi-game, $338—although I have a funny feeling that the winning bidder/s on both had much higher bids in reserve.) Why not go for the other two games? I don't have the luxury to throw down a thousand Washingtons right now for Nintendo prototypes, especially at this time of the year. If I give my family recycled Christmas cards with newspaper clippings for free Egg McMuffins again, I'm afraid I won't be invited back next year to the holiday festivities—and now that I have time to remember all of the stress and fights during last Christmas, I wish I had tried for Mario!
Regardless of the pains of family dysfunction and Christmas-cursed spiked eggnog, this TMNT game is on an official Nintendo EPROM board (NES-SKEPROM-01), so I'm relying on this specialized PCB that is generally only seen in prototypes as evidence of its authenticity. After the auction ended, I contacted the seller for more information regarding the source, and all I could find out about the mystery employee is that he worked for Nintendo of America from 1987 until 2007, and he now consults with video game publishers on launching new games. Although the seller said she didn't in theory have any problem telling me his name, she actually won't, because she doesn't want to get him into any trouble. Into any trouble? For lifting private, internal materials like in-house game samples? Please, look me in the eye and tell me you've never taken home a three-hole puncher or a stack of printer paper from work. If you can fit in your lunch bag, and it isn't nailed down or attached to a chain, employers practically expect you to steal it. It just so happened that this man was privileged enough to be surrounded by expensive, rare video game cartridges instead of Swinglines. (Disclaimer: As an unemployed kleptomaniac, I may not be the best judge on office demeanor.) Fortunately for us, this former Nintendo person has no moral qualms about selling his employment souvenirs anonymously with a third-party company on eBay for others to enjoy the fruits of his labor. 'Tis, indeed, the season for sharing (and pilfering)! Little baby Jesus smiles down upon us all. I continued to press the seller for a name, but all of my further inquiries, just as my stacks of returned furry fan mail to Paul Fusco, have gone unanswered. In all seriousness, I should say, she was very nice in her messages to me; it seems the problem is that this employee is not at all interested to oblige his identity, as she claims he doesn't want what he calls "gamer geeks" bothering him (not to mention the greater threat of lawsuits from his former employer).
Mystery date behind door number 1 is Ronnie. Ronnie's Turn-Ons: Free Office Supplies. Turn-Offs: Gamer Geeks. The
only possible clue to his identity lies on the back of the cartridge
where the name "Ronnie" is crudely scrawled in faded black
magic marker. I don't know about you, but I have never met a Ronald
I liked. I bet he has red hair and dirty fingernails and neck hair. After dumping the game and running it through GoodNES, it is the same as retail. Thanks, Ronnie. Now I know for sure there is no Santa Claus. Dick.
|
Competing
with the hot new releases of Mega Man II, Ninja Gaiden,
and Tetris, not to mention the premiere of the Gameboy portable
handheld system, who would have thought that the one of the best-selling
video games of 1989 would star four wise-cracking sewer turtles?
