Author Topic: 2022/08: Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Tournament Fighters (SNES) - Will Mallia  (Read 11240 times)

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Offline JonLeung

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For this month's "Maps Of The Month" featurette, I wish to draw your attention to Will Mallia's Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Tournament Fighters (Super NES) maps.

Channel 6 presents "Tournament Fighters", a televised fighting tournament.  It happens to feature aliens and mutants and even... Shredder?  Is it part of some evil plan?  The Turtles will join the tournament to prove they are the strongest.  Or, in the "Story Battle", Karai and the forces of the Shredder Elite have kidnapped April O'Neil and Splinter, so the Turtles will fight through anyone that stands in the way of their rescue attempt.  Either way, prepare for some of the best 16-bit fighting action based around licensed characters, ever!

Interestingly, there are three completely different versions of Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Tournament Fighters - the NES, Super NES, and Genesis games are nothing alike, despite all being developed by Konami.  (Will Mallia also mapped the NES version and zagato blackfist mapped the Genesis version.)  They are three separate stories taking place in unrelated settings and therefore have exclusive arenas.  Aside from the four Turtles themselves, the rosters are almost totally unique per game.  The only exceptions are Casey Jones, who is playable in the NES and Genesis versions, Shredder, who is in the NES version, but appears as "Cyber Shredder" on the Super NES, and Karai, a boss character who is playable in the Super NES version with a code, and the 2022 Cowabunga Collection rerelease of the Genesis version.  If any other character is your favourite, you're only going to find them in one game.  While the rare NES game is one of the only fighting games - and among the last few games overall - on the 8-bit platform, the Genesis one may be the first fighting game to have instant replays, and the Super NES version is one of the earliest fighting games to have a "super meter" with its "Ultimate Attack gauge", and the only one to feature online play in the Cowabunga Collection.  All three of them would be of some interest to Ninja Turtles fans.

So to recognize the effort put into mapping this tubular tournament, Will Mallia's Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Tournament Fighters (Super NES) maps will be known as VGMaps.com's Maps Of The Month for August 2022.
« Last Edit: August 07, 2022, 08:18:40 pm by JonLeung »

Offline pitnicker

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All good information, except: Samurai Shodown and Art of Fighting predate TMNT:TF with their super meters.

Offline JonLeung

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All good information, except: Samurai Shodown and Art of Fighting predate TMNT:TF with their super meters.

That's what I get for watching Matt McMuscles's Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle Tournament Fighters Retrospective (relevant part at 12:44), where he THINKS it is the first game with a super meter, but not reading the comments or checking on that in any other way...  I will rewrite that portion in a bit...

But thank you for the nitpicking, pitnicker.  I don't mind being corrected because that means I learn something...

Also, at 14:53 in the same video, he THINKS the Genesis version is the first fighting game with stage transitions.  Is that part true?
« Last Edit: August 07, 2022, 08:25:52 pm by JonLeung »

Offline pitnicker

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I can't prove him wrong on that one, the earliest transitions I remember were from MK3 which came later.

Also while I'm here, the MotM entry for June 2018 (THPS2 on GBA) links to Mystical Ninja on SNES (the previous month's winner) instead, and April 2017 (Brain Lord) links to LoZ on NES (same situation.) Not sure of how much of an impact this would make years later, but I saw a nit and picked.

Also also, someone needs to hack your April Fool's maps into Metroid Zero Mission and Oracle of Ages or something, half the work's already done for them.