Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles III: The Manhattan Project
The Turtles are on vacation in Key West when Shredder hijacks April's newscast, takes her hostage and lifts the entire borough of Manhattan into the sky. Konami's third NES Turtles game (February 1992) was built for the console rather than ported from the arcade, gave each turtle a special move, and let two players brawl side by side across eight levels.
By 1992 Konami had already shipped two Turtles games for the NES: the original and the home port of the arcade hit. The Manhattan Project was the third, and like the 1989 original it was built for the console rather than brought over from the arcade. It reached Japan first, on December 13, 1991, under the title Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles 2: The Manhattan Project, because the first NES game had gone out under a different name there and the numbering never lined up. North America got it in February 1992. It never came out in the PAL region at all; European players had to wait for The Cowabunga Collection.
The game plays like the NES arcade port with more moves. You pick any of the four turtles, each with his own weapon; the controls are still one attack button and one jump, but holding down and pressing B now tosses enemies, and pressing A and B together fires each turtle's own special attack, which costs a sliver of health unless you're down to your last bar. Two players can fight together with friendly fire on or off, a player who runs dry can borrow lives from the other's stock, and you get three continues. The eight levels run from the Florida beaches to the floating island of Manhattan, the Technodrome, Shredder's lair and finally Krang's ship, with a boss roster pulled from the cartoon and the toy line: Dirtbag, Groundchuck, Slash, Leatherhead, Bebop and Rocksteady, Shredder and Krang, plus Tokka and Rahzar from The Secret of the Ooze and a Super Shredder finale. A Triceraton is on the cover but never appears in the game, and reaching the options screen on the American cartridge takes a version of the Konami Code.
Electronic Gaming Monthly named it the Best NES Game of 1992, and Allgame's Brett Alan Weiss later called it "an excellent, well-rounded game." It was the last of Konami's side-scrolling Turtles brawlers on the NES; the console's only later Turtles title, Tournament Fighters in 1994, was a one-on-one fighting game and Konami's final North American release for the system. For anyone who rented it that year, The Manhattan Project is the co-op Saturday that the arcade port promised and the NES finally delivered.
Similar items
Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles Arcade
Konami's 1989 beat-em-up starred four turtles, infinite pizza, and quarter-guzzling boss fights. Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles Arcade was a four-player coin-op sensation: pick a turtle, bash foot soldiers, work through a story ripped straight from the cartoon. The 1990 NES port added new levels and Pizza Hut advertisements, securing its place in gaming legend.
Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (1990 film)
The turtles weren't cartoons anymore — they were full-scale animatronic suits in a 1990 film that upended what kids thought they knew. New Line Cinema's take was grittier and darker, pulling from the early comics rather than the toy-aisle sweetness of the animated series. Shot for $13.5 million, it became a sleeper phenomenon, earning over $202 million worldwide. The turtle suits were built by Jim Henson's Creature Shop — one of Henson's last projects before his death just weeks after the premiere.
Nintendo Power
Nintendo's official magazine and the pre-internet bible for stuck kids everywhere. Nintendo Power came packed with glossy fold-out maps, pull-out strategy guides, previews of games you couldn't afford yet, and the exact secret you needed to get past that one impossible level.
Battletoads
Rash, Zitz and Pimple, Rare's answer to the Ninja Turtles, in the NES game blamed for more broken friendships and controllers than almost any other. Nobody talks about beating Battletoads. They talk about the Turbo Tunnel.