The return of the heroes in a half-shell.

As a young twenty-something in the arcades I already had to deal with a lot of annoyance being surrounded by hordes of screaming, runny-nosed kids while trying to enjoy my video game hobby (read: habit) in the late 1980s.  When I discovered the huge four-player Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles machine things got worse.  Now I had to play one of the coolest games around at the time with said kids.  Never mind the flack I took from the non-gamers my age who clearly thought there had to be some dishonorable reason that I would spend so much of my free time in a place filled with children.

The consoles (well, console, because the only one worth owning then was the NES) offered little help.  I loved the turtles and had been reading the original comics since Eastman and Laird printed their first one (the early indies - way before the turtles became the corporate whores and cutesy kiddy things that wound up on TV and in the movies), but the games that were eventually released for the home market were certainly less than stellar.  That remained true through the last generation of games as the 2005 release Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles 3: Mutant Nightmare was just that; a nightmare.  Would a decent turtle game ever be released for any system?

The turtles have been shellshocked out of the limelight for some time now, but that will be changing as this year will see the release of TMNT, an animated motion picture that, from the early trailers at least, looks like it may be pretty cool.  Of course there will be a game released in March for all the systems to cash in on the renewed interest in the pizza munching heroes in a half-shell.  But, will it be any good?

What we've seen of the game so far provides a certain level of promise.  The game follows the storyline of the film, so far as we can tell, but includes some early flashback style tutorial levels which play out as Splinter (the turtles' rat Sinsei) narrates stories of the reptillian quartet's early adventures.

Each turtle possesses unique moves and abilities; certain battles will be easier for one turtle than another to complete.  Also, a larger focus has been placed on turtle acrobatics (if anyone back in high school journalism class had told me I would one day string those two words together I'd have hit them with a dictionary) than ever before.  The turtles perform an impressive array of flips and jumps and are apparently adept at running up walls and swinging from poles like everyone's favorite Persian Prince. 

TMNT releases March 20 (not long before the film) for most systems and we'll have more information as soon as we can get our mitts on a playable copy.  Until then we'll spend our time eating pizza and listening to the unforgetable anthem Turtle Rap by Vanilla Ice over and over again.