Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (NES) - 1989

Do you remember the very first video game you ever played? I know mine! It was Super Mario Bros. Do you know the second? Ooh, I do! It was Duck Hunt. But can you recall the third video game you ever played?

Mine was Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles!

It was Christmas 1989... but also possibly 1990? I'm a little nebulous on this. I know that my mother has a photo from the Christmas morning in question, but I haven't been able to find it to confirm. Either way, that Christmas I received a Nintendo Entertainment System Action Set, which came packed in with Super Mario Bros./Duck Hunt, but I also got another game, which was TMNT.

Regardless of the year, at this point in my life nothing mattered more than the Ninja Turtles. I was the prime demographic for the show when it launched in '87. By the time '89/'90 rolled around I would've been watching the Turtles almost every day in syndication, had plastered my walls with TMNT memorabilia, and swam in a bucket full of Playmates Turtle action figures. The video game, however, couldn't have been further from my mind.

I was around 6 and I actually had no idea what a Nintendo was. I can still recall getting it for Christmas and having no idea what I was looking at. My parents actually had an Intellivision when I was really young, but it had stopped working, so they were familiar with the concept, but I was totally in the dark.

As I recall, the first game I booted up was, of course, Super Mario Bros. It took a while to get used to how to move - which included a lot of me jumping with my controller, like I was somehow tethered to Mario himself - but I eventually got the hang of it. The controls in SMB make it easy. They are so tight. Once you get used to the idea of pushing buttons at the same time and how gravity works in the Mushroom Kingdom, you're well on your way to mastering the game.

This is, unfortunately, not the case with Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. The controls were a little bit "floaty". It takes some getting used to, but I would argue that the controls for TMNT get a bad rap. They are a little off, but the same could be said for countless other video games at the time and not just on the NES.

Another thing that jumped out at me while playing TMNT NES for the first time was how batshit crazy it is! The first enemies you encounter have some familiarity. There are Mousers and Foot Soldiers, but also killer bees? After a few moments, however, one of the game's weirdest features will rear it's ugly head. The enemies in the game will swap randomly. The other sets of baddies you face are out of some crazy nightmare.

Do you remember when the Turtles faced off against the Human Torch? Or a chainsaw wielding maniac in a hockey mask? Yeah, me either, but they're in there! There are also giant mutant frog men, robots with flying heads, a creepy hunchback that turns into smaller creepy hunchbacks, and these Lovecraftian jumping leg things that cling to the ceiling, just to name a few.

Honestly, I appreciate the creativity with the bad guys in the video game. Sure, the programmers had a lot to work with, having access to already established comic and cartoon universes, but there's no reason the monsters and enemies they created couldn't have existed in any other TMNT canon. I mean, there's a character in the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles Adventures comics that is literally a flying, talking cow's head that slurps up/spits out its passengers and can cross whole dimensions of time and space.

You're my boy, Cudley!

I thought for years that the game must have been in development before the cartoon launched and that explained all the crazy bad guys that didn't marry up with the show, but that wasn't the case. The video game was certainly put into motion because of the fervor the cartoon stirred up and wouldn't have existed without it.

The game was developed by none-other than Japan's video game powerhouse, Konami. It was published by Konami in Japan, but under the Ultra Games imprint in North America and PALCOM in Europe, which was just a super hinky way for Konami to release more games in other regions than Nintendo would allow for at the time.

A quick note that the game was so popular in the PAL regions it actually got it's own NES bundle. Everything you needed to play Teenage Mutant Hero Turtles! Yeah, apparently ninjas are frowned upon overseas.

The game was released in Japan ahead of the Japanese dubs of the cartoon show, so maybe my theory about the progammers having to make up their own ideas holds some weight, but I'd say its just another case of Japanese developers doin' they thang.

The story is basically ripped from the cartoon: The Turtles find out that the Shredder has a "life transformer gun" (uh-huh...) and that they can use it to turn their master Splinter back into a human, so they're seeking out the Shred-dude to find it. Along the way they have to save April O'Neil from Bebop and Rocksteady, stop the Foot Clan from blowing up a dam on the Hudson River, save Splinter from Mecha-Turtle, find the Turtle Blimp at JFK Airport, chase Shredder to a hidden base, and finally face off against their enemy in the Technodrome. And eat lots of pizza along the way!

I think the first thing that comes to mind when I think about Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles for the NES is the box art. It was incredible. I had no idea at the time that it was ripped from the cover of the comic book! Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles Volume 1 Issue #4 featured cover art by the original artists/creators Kevin Eastman and Peter Laird (I honestly don't know who drew the cover). When it was re-issued years later, Michael Dooney re-imagined the artwork and took it to the next level. It was this artwork that was lifted for the game's box and label art and it's just so iconic.

If nothing else, the cover art confused every child that saw it. "Why are all the Turtles wearing red!?" Considering the wave caused by the TV series it is certainly surprising that they went with a comic book cover depicting the brothers in all red face masks, but that was how things were in the early comic books.

The player takes control of all four Turtles, each armed with their weapon of choice. This will lead you to a team hierarchy, whether you like it or not. Leonardo uses the katana, which are a great mid-range weapon that deal decent damage. Michaelangelo uses the nunchaku, which I would say makes him arguably the exact same as Leonardo, but sacrificing some range for speed. Donatello uses the bo staff, which while it is the most powerful of the stock ninja weapons is a little trickier to aim. Finally, Raphael uses the sai, which seem to be the least powerful and have almost no range. For Raphael fans, like myself, this sucks as Raph basically gets relegated to the "Turtle you're okay with sacrificing". I personally try to reserve Don for boss fights where his bo can get a few extra powerful hits in and for the most part I play as Leonardo or Mikey interchangeably, leaning on Leo since he's the first Turtle on the pause menu.

You can also collect sub-weapons. Most of them appear is random drops from enemies, like shuriken, triple shuriken, and the boomerang. You can select and de-select them with the... wait for it... select button. The most coveted sub-weapon is the Kiai - or as everyone else knows it - the scroll weapon, made famous by the greatest Nintendo commercial ever created, The Wizard! This bad boy was the most powerful and took up a lot of pixels for maximum effectiveness. You couldn't get this one from a drop, however. It was hidden somewhere in the game!

Another handy item you'll find along the way are the missiles, which you can launch from the Turtle Van. That's right, you get to drive the van! In the third stage you'll find it waiting for you on the overworld map. It protects you from Foot Soldiers roaming around the streets of NYC (just run them over!) and the missiles can break through roadblocks that keep you from finding Master Splinter. The last item that comes to mind is the rope, which you'll need to cross from rooftop to rooftop in a few places.

At the end of the day, even if you can master the controls and know where all the best weapons and items are hidden, this game is still so friggin' hard. If you've beaten Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles on the NES then you've earned a badge of Nintendo Honour, my friend. Most people I talk to can't get past the Hudson Dam.

Now, the NES wasn't the only place you could play this TMNT game. In addition to being available on Playchoice-10 arcade machines (essentially just arcade units with an NES in them), in anticipation for its popularity the game was ported to just about every PC platform available at the time. There were ports for the Amiga, Amstrad, Atari ST, Commodore 64, MS DOS, MSX, and ZX Spectrum. There is a lot of varying quality here, as some of these were written by one or two coders at most and under strict timelines.

I haven't played any of the PC ports of the game, but the MS DOS port was one of my most coveted games when I was a kid. Back in the early-90s my local K-Mart had a really cool video game section, which none of the other stores around me had at the time. In it, behind glass, was a copy of Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles for MS DOS in this beautiful big box and, boy, did I want it.

And, boy, am I lucky I never got it. From what I can tell it's easily the worst port of the game. The Amiga, Amstrad, and Atari ST versions seem to be the best graphically, and the C64 and ZX versions appear to be somewhat playable, but the MS DOS version just looks like hot garbage. The Pause Screen images are some of the most hilarious I've ever seen. April looks like some kind of insect woman.

Even better is that the QA behind the North American DOS version wasn't up-to-snuff and there is an impossible jump in the game. Some people have discovered a "no clip" code that allows you to bypass the jump, and some even more industrious individuals have written files from the European releases, which contain a fix for the issue, onto their NA copies of the game, but at the end of the day I doubt most people had enough patience to play the DOS version enough to give a damn.

So, like I said in the beginning, I think that Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles for the NES gets a bit of a bad rap, because its fairly difficult and has slightly wonky controls, but it is without a doubt one of my favourite video games. It's probably the nostalgia talking, but only a handful of games can really take me back in time and this is one of them. I think, just like with many NES games, with a little practice and patience it's just as playable as most games on the system. It's a bright, colourful, and interesting take on the Turtle Universe and I love it.

But, there's more! In the near future we'll be talking about the sequel, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles II: The Arcade Game!

Stay tuned,
R

Memory, Blog: The Fake Alien Abduction Show

Although my family had Cable TV when I was a kid we didn't always have all those really cool Cable channels. You know, the ones you still had to pay extra for? Do you remember that magic little black box the Cable company would provide you with to de-scramble the premium stuff? Yeah, we didn't have that. That is until I was in my teens.

Pure magic!

That glorious box provided me with more channels than I could even imagine. Sure, compared to today's standards it was a paltry serving, but to teenage me I was mind-blown. I now had access to a wide assortment of channels including TBS, which was chock-full of movies and all the Saved By The Bell re-runs I could handle, Family Channel, with loads of great Disney cartoons, Kids' WB, which fed my already unhealthy Batman: The Animated Series obsession, and UPN, which had pretty much nothing that I cared about.

On one fateful evening in the winter of 1998 I was channel surfing (man, I miss that) and I came across this schlocky "news report"-style show on UPN called Real Vampires... Exposed! It was basically a walk through the underground vampire scene in the 90s, where those so inclined wore a lot of black leather, drank each other's blood in neon-lit bars, and listened to industrial techno. I was half-interested in this show, but it was during this broadcast that an ad appeared for a new alien show that would be on within the hour!

You see UPN was claiming that they had acquired footage of a real-life alien abduction caught on home video and that they had experts analyze the tape. They were going to show the whole thing that night (January 20th, 1998 to be exact) and let you, the viewer, be the judge if it was real or not. The show was called Alien Abduction: Incident in Lake County.

I was a pretty TV savvy kid and I had my finger on the pulse of the comings-and-goings of the all the major networks, but I had always just passed by UPN, which in my mind only had episode after episode of Moesha. As my luck would have it I landed on the channel just before it began airing Alien Abduction and my excitement (and trepidation) was brimming.

I grabbed a blank tape out of the entertainment console, popped it into the VCR, and set the show to record, even though I had no intent on waiting until the next day to watch it. I was glued to the TV set for what would become one of the most spine-tingling television events I ever witnessed.

I just want to start by saying that airing Alien Abduction with Real Vampires... Exposed! (which aired in lieu of an episode of Moesha, I kid you not) one after the other could not have been an accident. The network execs were trying to create the illusion to the viewer that this alien video was the real deal without coming right out and saying it.

There was a lot of controversy surrounding this little one hour special. There are those who would compare it to the War of the Worlds radio broadcast by Orson Welles in 1938, although I think that's rather extreme. This was some seriously campy TV on a cable specialty channel.

That said, the presentation was setup to lead the viewer in the belief that this tape was legitimate. The producers had actual "experts" in the fields of ufology, like physicist Stanton Friedman* and famous skeptic Michael Shermer, speak to the tape (or "a" tape, more on that at a later date) to lend credence to its authenticity. Couple that with it airing back-to-back with a show exposing "real life vampires" and there were all sorts of folks who thought this tape was the real deal.

One viewing of the segments of the tape, however, and your innate "these are actors" Spidey-sense will tingle. It also didn't help that actress Emmanuelle Chriqui, who at this point had at least one film and several TV acting credits under her belt, was clearly one of the members of the "family". Then at the end of the show the credits roll and you can see that the MacPherson family were casted and the whole thing was a film by director Dean Alioto.

I never thought the tape or the show was real, of course, but I will be damned if I didn't love it. Like most alien shows, I watched this for the scares and it delivered! For me it was like a little mini horror movie. Even to this day the scenes with the aliens in them raise the hairs on the back of my neck. I used to watch that tape recording I made of the show every year or so and it always had the same affect. Unfortunately, that tape is lost to time. *sniff*

Now you would think with the bad acting and credit roll that anyone watching this show would immediately understand that this was just a TV ratings stunt, but the controversy surrounding Alien Abduction actually started long before this UPN special. This was not Dean Alioto's first brush with alien conspiracy, but I think I'll save that story for another day.

Hope you enjoyed!,
R

*Stanton Friedman sadly passed away May 13th, 2019 at the age of 84. He lent his research and opinions to countless UFO-related features of the years, so I just wanted to say rest in peace, Dr. Friedman.

Halfway To Halloween 2019

That's right, May 1st (or April 30th, depending on how you look at it) marked the halfway mark between Halloween 2018 and Halloween 2019, so all of us horror junkies are starting to get that spooky feeling!

I wasn't really sure how to best mark the occasion this year, so I started to think of some fun things to do to drag Halloween kicking and screaming into the cool Spring breeze.

Here are my findings!

A Scary Halloween Movie

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There's no reason you have to wait until Halloween to enjoy some of your favourite freaky flicks. If you're a horror hound, like myself, then you've likely been watching horror movies all year anyway, but the focus here needs to be on the upcoming season. So while taking in your 57th viewing of A Nightmare on Elm Street might seem like a good idea (and on any other day it is, good on you) maybe try something more autumnal? Night of the Demons, perhaps? It's tied to the season, but not so much as, say, Trick 'r Treat or Halloween 1 and 2, which are probably best left for September or October.

I typically find myself mostly interested in classic movie monsters during the Halloween season, so I think to get me into that festive mood I'll be taking in Dracula or The Mummy this weekend.

The big thing here is to make sure you do you. Whatever movies make you wish you were stuffing your face with fun size candy bars and washing it down with a pumpkin spice latte are key, even if it's Hocus Pocus.

Video Games Featuring Classic Monsters

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I'll admit this one is a little more personal, but I've definitely noticed a correlation between horror movies fans and video gamers. I think it's a timing thing. If you can name a kid that didn't have a Nintendo or Sega hooked up to their TV at the same time they were pushing scary movies into their VCRs, I think they're in the minority.

For me, horror-themed video games are an essential piece to the Halloween puzzle. September and October are usually the months that I take in my yearly playthrough of Castlevania: Symphony of the Night or Resident Evil, for instance.

These days horror games abound, but much like those classic creature flicks I crave around Halloween, I find myself thirsting (see what I did there?) for old chilling NES games during Halfway to Halloween. I think this year I'll play some Monster Party. It is chock-full of awesome little horror tidbits and crazy monster designs. I mean look at the cover art. It absolutely screams Halloween! That would be my kinda party!

Spooky Snacks

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It's kind of tough to get your hands on Halloween candy in May, unless your local pharmacy is just exceedingly bad and clearing off their holiday shelves, but you don't need bite size Mars bars to get that Halloween spirit.

Pumpkin spice may still be lying in wait for Autumn, but for me anything green, orange, or black can set the scene. Maybe some black tortilla chips and guac with orange soda? Too much? NEVER.

Heck, all it takes for me is breaking out the finest Halloween dinnerware and firing those everyday chips into a big orange bowl. Sometimes it's the little things, guys!

Halloween Decorations

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This one is a little out there, but bear with me. One great way to get in the Halloween mood is the simplest: dig up (I kill me) some of your favourite decs!

Now, don't go too overboard here. Maybe just one of your spookiest and simplest pieces will do the trick. For me, I almost always have a little skull candle-holder on my desk, so that can do the trick (or treat), but I might break out a light-up jack-o-lantern, just for the night. If you over-do it you'll find yourself getting sick of Halloween and no one wants that (if it's even really possibly, I have my doubts).

So that's it! If you're celebrating Halfway to Halloween this weekend, let me know in the comments or on Twitter how you're marking the occasion!

Happy (Halfway to) Halloween!
R

p.s. I noticed the typo, too, but I don't have my laptop with Photoshop handy, so it stands... for now. Consider it an Easter egg!

p.p.s Nothing to see here. Move along...

Marvel Universe Trading Cards - Series 2 (1991) Revisited

Much like my post last week, today we're revisiting my collection of Marvel Universe Trading Cards Series 2! Here's the video from the old post. I'll say again, this is a long vid of me going through each and every card, so make sure you've got your popcorn ready.

Series 2 has always been one of my favourites. I loved the vibrant colours of the borders, which were a big level up from Series 1 and their white borders around the cards artwork. It has a very 80s vibe to it, which make sense since the hangover of the 80s lasted well into the 90s.

The biggest improvement in this series were the Power Ratings, which picked six different attributes and ranked all of the character cards accordingly. There was Strength, Speed, Agility, Stamina, Durability, and Intelligence. This rating system would continue after Series 2 and became my favourite thing about collecting these cards.

Ever argue with your buddy about who would win in a fight: Spider-Man versus Daredevil? Well just compare the Power Ratings! My friends and I would pore over these cards and ratings and practically memorize all of them, so we could throw them out on the fly whenever one of these arguments reared its ugly head.

We also used to often "play Marvel", which meant we'd each pick a character and we'd act out our own scenes. So if we were playing and Ultron was facing up against Wolverine, knowing these Power Ratings and special abilities could mean life or death to an 8 year old.

As I mentioned with Series 1, there were different subsets in each series. In Series 2 we had Weapons, Legends, and Arch-Enemies. Arch-Enemies is really just a re-brand of Famous Battles,  Legends would essentially feature old and (at the time) dead characters within the Marvel U, and Weapons would give you the low-down on the different "tools of the trade", like Wolverine's claws or the Infinity Gauntlet.

There were five holograms in this set, as well. I managed to snag two this time: Doctor Doom and Fanastic Four vs. Mole Man. The foil on these cards actually went all the way to the border, as well, which makes them look even more impressive when you manage to snag one.

I hope these old trading cards are getting you amped up for the upcoming release of Avengers: Endgame. I know they're having that affect on me! Stay tuned for more! Next up we'll finally get caught up with Series 3, which I affectionately call "the cosmic set".

Excelsior!
R

Marvel Universe Trading Cards - Series 1 (1990) Revisited

Waaaaay back in 2014, around when I first launched Retro-Def, I figured a great feature for the site would be a look back at my Marvel Universe trading card collection. I ended up making two videos fairly quickly and then getting busy and forgetting to continue on with the series.

That's a real shame, because not only were these cards incredibly important to 7-year old me, but I think they're a really cool slice of the Marvel Universe in the 90s. With the recent passing of Stan Lee I've found myself flipping through my old card binders and I felt the need to share!

Let's start by revisiting Marvel Universe Trading Cards Series 1. The video I made in 2014 still stands, and some of the reminiscing you'll find here is in the video, but I'd say only the most hardcore fan would be interested in watching the whole thing. It clocks in at around 25 minutes and I go through each and every card.

Excuse the old website branding!

The Marvel Universe Trading Card series was launched by Impel in 1990. You might not remember the name Impel, especially if you weren't into trading cards in the 90s, but you may recall SkyBox, which was a re-brand of Impel in 1992.

The base set was 162 cards. The subsets included Super Heroes, Super Villains, Rookies, Famous Battles, Team Pictures, Most Valuable Comics, and Spider-Man Presents.

Wolverine as "Patch"

Most of these are self-explanatory, except for Spider-Man Presents. This particular subset featured Spider-Man attempting to interview some of the heavy-hitters in the Marvel U. They were like little mini-comics and I thought they were hysterical. I remember thinking the Spider-Man Presents: Wolverine card was one of the funniest things I'd ever read.

Each of the super hero and villain cards would feature a drawing of the character on the front with a unique backdrop like it had been pulled right from the pages of a comic. On the back you'd find all kinds of cool information about the character, like their aliases, how many battles they'd had, their win/loss ratio, some information about the character, and finally some trivia.

I have no idea who "Roughhouse" is...

One neat thing that was only featured in this particular set was that certain characters could appear multiple times, like Wolverine, who appeared in the super hero subset three times; once in his brown and tan costume, again in his blue and gold costume, and finally as "Patch", his secret alter-ego.

Features of this set that didn't carry forward are the Spider-Man Presents cards and the Most Valuable Comics. Each set would feature something unique from the others, but you could always expect to see super heroes, super villains, special teams, and cards that somehow featured big events and battles from Marvel's storied history.

See, it's hilarious!

This was my first foray into trading card collecting and I was only 7, so some of the cards in my set are a little roughed up on the corners, but they hold so much nostalgia and importance to me, it's hard to state. This was my gateway vehicle into comic books and super heroes. Growing up on an island, it wasn't difficult to get comics, but it certainly wasn't easy to get them all in order each and every month. Also, without any sort of archive of Marvel Comics, this was the only way to really dig into the historical events in the Universe and learn all the backstory for the characters.

I started buying these cards in a corner store in the summer of 1990, but eventually had to start going to a hobby store as I worked at getting the whole set. Every red cent of my allowance went into these cards. Each pack would contain 12 cards, so over time you'd amass a stack of what we called "traders". The hobby store would keep a box of their own traders so you could swap out your extra cards for a card you still hadn't found in a pack. They'd usually do a 2:1 trade to keep their stock high and some cards, which were harder to come by, would require more traders or you'd just have to buy them outright.

Danny Ketch Ghost Rider's rookie card - one of the rougher cards in my set

As I mentioned, there were 162 cards in the base set, but there were also five hologram cards, which were the holy grails. There was only one hologram per box, as far as I know, so they were hard to come by. I never did collect all the holograms for each set. I managed to get a few here and there, but buying them at the card store was usually highway robbery and not something my parents were interested in funding, so I would shoot for the base set and hope to get a few holograms along the way.

It was a crazy summer when I first found these cards and little did I know that I would spend at least the next four or five years collecting the different sets of Marvel Universe Trading Cards. I have some of my fondest memories buying, trading, and most importantly, poring over these cards and gleaning as much information as I could about the amazing characters and stories they represented. My friends and I would commit so much of the information on the cards to memory and have classic conversations about who would defeat who in a fight or who the most powerful bad guy was.

My lone hologram from Series 1: Cosmic Spider-Man

Well, that's it for Series 1. Next time we'll revisit Series 2 and then hopefully I won't forget and we can finally take a look back at Series 3 and onward!

I hope you enjoy this trek down memory lane as much as I did.

Make Mine Marvel,
R