Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (1989 arcade) and The Simpsons (1991 arcade)

[JaySevenZero]

Here's where you can contribute your thoughts and opinions for Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (1989 arcade) and The Simpsons (1991 arcade) for potential inclusion in the forthcoming podcast.

A friendly reminder that where the feedback for the podcast is concerned, we love it - but keeping it brief is appreciated. We do want to include a breadth of opinions where appropriate, but no-one wants a discussion podcast that’s mostly reading out essays. Better to save yourself time and cut to the chase if you can.

[Pconpi]

My arcade experiences in the early 90s usually occurred at birthday parties at large entertainment centers that had mini golf, bumper cars, batting cages, and arcade machines. It would be a rush to see who could secure a spot at the most popular games. Street Fighter II, Mortal Kombat, NBA Jam, X-Men, and both Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles and The Simpsons were the sought-after machines. The Turtles and The Simpsons were some of the coolest franchises to an 8-year-old kid and part of the fun was the fight over which character you got to play with three of your friends. For the Simpsons everyone wanted to be Bart while the Turtles offered a bit more nuance to the selection. Were you motivated by wanting to use Michelangelo’s nunchuks or embodying his party lifestyle? Do you and your friend both want to be Leo but it is his birthday so you must settle for Raphael? I don’t remember much about the gameplay or levels or even how far we progressed. What I do remember is because this was a few years before the four player Goldeneye and Mario Kart 64 days, getting three of your friends together to roam the streets, beat up foot soldiers and eat pizza was a pretty rad experience, dude.

[Necromas]

I was born in 89 so I think I missed most of the heyday of arcade machines, but I still have very fond memories of playing both of these games many times in the late 90's at any opportunity I had to go on a field trip or birthday party at a place that had an arcade.

The one I spent the most time with was the Simpsons game. One location had the machine stuck in a mode where any time you put a quarter in, all four players would gain 10 extra lives, so I would line up with 3 other kids and we'd spend an entire evening playing from level 1 all the way to the finish on just one stack of quarters. I can still remember the rush I felt when one of my friends and I would manage to pull off a two-player combo move, or when we'd finally take down a hard boss after countless deaths.

But looking back on these and comparing them to any beat-em-up from later generations, the games really are pretty bare-bones with pretty basic attack options and as you progress the harder enemies seem more focused on whittling down your lives count than offering up new and interesting experiences.

[duskvstweak]

I wish I had more childhood memories of actually playing both of these games! But, if I was near these machines in the wild, there was always a line. It didn't matter if we were at a roller rink or an arcade, getting a spot on the these games was part of the challenge. When I did play, it was a rush, just having a turn! I wasn't allowed to watch the Simpsons until the late 90s, but you couldn't escape their cultural impact. Honestly, seeing the Simpson's game intro was exciting!

[shadowless_kick]

one of the best things about growing up in the arcades of the 80s and 90s was the innocence and mystery of a pre-internet world. games just appeared magically with no warning, no hype, nothing. every trip to the arcade came with the possibility of an earth-shattering, pocket-emptying discovery.

one Saturday in '89, I went to a friend’s birthday party at the “Frosty Putter,” one of the many mini-golf/arcade establishments around the city. walking in, I looked beyond the welcome counter to the games room tucked into the back of the building, and positioned squarely in the center of the space was a brand-new Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles cabinet...

now, I knew the drill; these kinds of parties always followed the standard sequence: golf first, then pizza and presents. tokens last. always last. before then, mini-golf and pizza were never things I needed to endure, but that was before a freakin’ Ninja Turtles arcade game! came into my life. priorities shifted.

when the time finally came, it was love at first credit. I didn’t mind that they’d gotten Mike’s mask color wrong on the cabinet artwork or that the model portraying April O’Neil looked strangely off somehow. it was like playing the cartoon, and everything from the gameplay to the visuals and sounds went straight to the pleasure center of my Turtle-fanatic brain. it was everything I would’ve wanted from an arcade Turtles game, had I dared to dream of one before then. it felt like a reward for all the fans who forced themselves to enjoy the infamous NES game, whose best feature was its box art. this was the game we wanted, and it was pure magic.

along with my first sighting of Street Fighter II, that initial TMNT encounter at the Frosty Putter remains one of my most indelible arcade gaming memories.

[BlueWeaselBreath]

As a kid who was born a decade too late to experience the so-called “golden age of the arcade,” the Simpsons and TMNT arcade games are, for me, the pinnacle of arcade gaming. In my nostalgia-tinted memories, arcade games never got more fun than this. Every Friday in elementary school, our after-school program took us to the skating rink, which was full of great arcade games, and The Simpsons was one I visited every time. At the time, it seemed exactly like I was playing a cartoon due to the faithful visuals and detailed animations. The sound design combined with the clicky bounce of the buttons made it so satisfying to beat up hordes of cartoony thugs. I even remember that one special day where a couple of teens had put so much money in, they had gotten all the way to Mr. Burns, one of the only times I ever saw the game’s final boss—I think they ran out of quarters before they beat him, though.

I can’t remember if they had a TMNT game in the skating rink, but the cabinet certainly was everywhere else in the States during the early 90s. Any Pizza Hut, family restaurant, Chuck E. Cheese, or turnpike rest stop had to have this arcade cabinet, and an entire generation of youth likely has a Pavlovian reaction to that descending tone leading into the Turtles theme as the light bursts from the sewer; the sound would cut through whatever other noise was happening in the vicinity, over and over again as we pressed the buttons during the demo, convinced we were having some effect on the action, unless our parents deigned to throw us a quarter or two.

The soundtrack was killer. The different-colored Foot Soldiers completely blew my mind because they only came in purple on the TV show (which was my only exposure to TMNT at that time). The way you could slap them up against the wall and have them slide down—the whole experience felt alive.

The NES version of the game was one I rented a few times with my friend, and at the time, it felt exactly like the arcade, minus a few animations. Of course, it’s nowhere close in actuality, but they did a really good job with the port, and even threw in some exclusive levels and bosses too.

It’s ironic that at the time, the care and attention put into both The Simpsons and TMNT arcade games made them feel constantly fresh through the entire experience, anything BUT monotonous—while returning to these games today, one of the first things I notice is the repetitiveness of the gameplay. But the games still bring me immediately back to that joy of being a grade schooler every time I start to play them. And every time I’m in an arcade these days, surrounded by ticket jackpot machines, dozens of driving games and shooting games, and that one game where you hunt deer, I tell my kids that back in my day, in MY golden age of arcades, games used to be side scrollers where you’d control some of the hottest cartoon characters of the decade, walk left to right, and beat the stew out of dozens of enemies, over and over again.

[Seph]

I remember these two games well. Alongside Final Fight, Cadillacs and Dinosaurs, and Alien vs Predator, whenever my family took a long weekend at Butlins these were what kept me entertained up until I inevitably ran out of change or had to go do something outside for some reason.

At that age I almost worshipped the Konami logo as they seemed to be the ones to adapt my favourite shows as a kid. Only Ghostbusters evaded them and to this day I still wish for a classsic Konami side scrolling version of this franchise.

Looking back as a fan of the show, The Simpsons is really weird. There's a few familiar characters and locations, but I still never understood why they didn't take full advantage of the licence and use actual characters as the bosses. But it was incredible fun, looked fantastic and in my eyes is a classic of the genre, albeit one designed to drain your wallet.

TMNT is definitely the better of the two in my opinion. This is how you make a licensed game! All the characters are there and the challenge isn't as tough as The Simpsons. I can't remember the last time I played this, but the key word again is fun. Throwing around Foot Soldiers like, well, foot soldiers was one of the highlights of my young gaming life.

It was years after these holidays when I finally managed to finish them. Living in the Wirral at the time, there was an indoor activity centre called Adventure Land that had a lot of fun climbing-based obstacle courses, trampolines, bouncy castles etc, but they also had a small arcade section where you could play the games for free, which included TMNT and The Simpsons. So me and my cousins used this opportunity to play through both games on different visits. In my opinion, this was more exhausting than all the climbing and jumping about.

[Hunter30]

I've played The Simpsons for a total of perhaps five hours, and yet it's no exaggeration to say that it's been one of the most influential video games in my life.

When I was around seven or eight years old, I spent a happy holiday on the English south coast. I can't recall where for sure, but I think it was one of the Sussex towns, maybe Brighton or Worthing. What I can remember is that there was a games arcade, which to my young self was an Aladdin's cave of wonder and adventure. The cabinet that most captured my attention, and the one that had me begging my mum for "just one more pound", was The Simpsons.

Looking back, it's hard to know why this particular game held such allure for me, as while I was aware of the TV show through pop culture osmosis, I don't think I'd ever watched an episode at that point. Whatever it was that drew me to it, I was hooked, and on each of the several visits we made to the arcade during that holiday, I practically had to be dragged away.

Faced with her son's new addiction, I think my mum must have decided that it would be economically viable in the long-term to invest in something that didn't swallow a pound every five to ten minutes. And so it was that on that holiday she bought me my first ever console - a Game Boy. The rest, as they say, is history.

I most recently revisited The Simpsons on a trip to Arcade Club with some mates in 2019. It's sad to say that the magic had largely faded, and even with four of us teaming up on the controls, the repetitive gameplay and characters' limited repertoire of moves meant our interest quickly waned.

In terms of quality, I've played many, many games that surpass The Simpsons. But in terms of importance, it will always be right up there for me.

[Marlew]

The first time I saw the Turtles arcade game was during a family day out on the glorious riviera of Rhyl. I was absolutely berserk about the series at that point, wearing my Raphael baseball cap every day for months until it wore out. I was blown away by the graphics and sound effects, like all the other slack-jawed kids crowding round the cabinet. It was like a playable cartoon and I begged my mum to let me have a go on it. I jumped into an ongoing game, hammered the buttons gleefully, and then died at Rocksteady.

We didn't have the money for me to be credit feeding and I didn't want to go back to my mum too quickly so I just stood at the cabinet until the other kids took down the boss. Conscious that I wasn't actually playing and it was a bit sad to have my hands on the stick and buttons, I gave up the spot when the next level started and regretfully ambled back to my mum and little brothers, looking back with longing. I talked about it for the rest of the day.

Years later, I finally played the whole game through with a couple of mates at Arcade Club. I can't remember how long it took but it felt like bloody ages and wasn't too much fun after the first couple of levels. The personality of the character animations and the evocative sound effects did give me a Proustian rush but once we got past the familiar stages, I realised that nostalgia had done much of the heavy lifting. As a happy snapshot of my childhood, it means something to me but it's not a game I plan to revisit.

[shadowless_kick]

Frosty Putter: Chicago, USA
I could totally see someone guessing it was in the UK, though.

oh, and Brian was right; ice cream was indeed a big part of the menu!

[OneCreditBen]

22:19

Managed to get a clear live with Bart.
Will try and get Homer/Lisa done at some point!