by: Ramsey

The most recent Ninja Turtles cartoon has come to an end, and a new one is set to begin soon on Nickelodeon. There's little information about it, but considering the normal programming that comes on Nickelodeon, I'd say that is NOT AT ALL a move in the right direction. Whatever problems the first couple of season of this past show might have had, I felt it did some things rather well. It took itself much more seriously, but still allowed for plenty of moments of humor. It also remembered one important thing that the original show tended to forget: the "Ninja" portion of the title. They struck from the shadows, fought hard, and disappeared back into the night. Like any ninja should.

Whatever my complaints about the original cartoon, also, I still definitely enjoyed it. And it certainly led to great video games. The video games were perfect for it: they showed the turtles pushing straight through lines of enemies without a thought as they approached the hiding, not particularly frightening, "big baddies." Not so dissimilar from what you'd see on the show.

Strange then, that they would choose to do pretty much the exact same thing for the new show. Not that I really disliked those PS2-era games. I only played the first one, but I actually did enjoy it a lot, and would have been happy to play the others. But it was much more fitting for the original show than this one. Seems strange that it would be this way.

When looking through a very old issue of Nintendo power, I saw an article about the (then) forthcoming first Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles game. You know, the top-down game with the occasional really poor side-scrolling portions. I was somewhat surprised to learn that the game engine being used for the game was the one from the original Metal Gear. That's actually very interesting, considering what Metal Gear would become later, and considering what TMNT could become.

Maybe instead of another generic beat-em-up for the Ninja Turtles, we could see a game where they have to sneak around, climb over objects, dive under obstacles, and generally ninja their way around instead of just fighting straight through. Or, all things considered, probably they could make it so you can choose whether to fight your way through or sneak around, with only a handful of levels requiring one or the other option. I suppose I'm suggesting a game much more along the lines of Arkham Asylum, with less emphasis on gadgets. Maybe not even that. Too make each turtle different, you could have Donatello using a lot of gadgets, Raphael plowing right through, with Leonardo somewhere in the middle of those two. And I don't really know what to do with Mikey. I can't think of everything.

In fact, the more I think about it, the more I'm surprised this game doesn't already exist. I mean, a ninja game, about a group of ninja? Seems obvious, really. But I guess game companies felt that relying on convention was a lot easier than trying to break some ground. Maybe that's all beginning to change?