This series will highlight rare games. Today I will chronicle the history and values of NES, SNES, and Genesis Teenage Mutant Ninja games of the late 80s and early 90s.
Reminiscing on the 90s
Remember the good ole’ days? Well, some of you young whippersnappers might not remember mine. But the 90s are what us 80s babies call the golden age of entertainment.
Everything was new.
New TV. New video game consoles. And OH, the games! No more Pong. No more Space Invaders. The 90s gave us color. The 90s gave us more realized graphics. The early 90s presented the world with an evolution of video games the likes of which we haven’t seen since virtual reality hit the scene. And how’s that medium doing?
DVDs (which haven’t evolved much to this day). The freaking INTERNET?! C’mon! I could go on for days.
So be jealous 21st-century kids. We had it all.
And we had the games that today’s adults seek out as collector's items, though many never played them (or were born) during their release periods.
In a new and ongoing series (don’t worry Indie Spotlight, I’ll be coming back to you) I’ll be spotlighting some of the vintage gems from the 90s and beyond.
Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles
This blog’s focus is on the cartoon series I favored most in my youth: Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. Oh, and for you comic lovers out there, (I guess there are a few roaming this site) I heard it was one of those too.
But Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, more affectionately known as TMNT, was almost as popular as video games as it was as a cartoon.
In the early 90s, TMNT spawned many of the most enjoyable versions of side-scrolling beat-em-ups that kids of my time can remember. From arcade units packed full of silver to home consoles with controllers worn bare, TMNT was a mega-hit source material for video gamers – whether fans of the comics, cartoons, or neither.
While many versions of the below games did start out as arcade units, I believe it's in the loving embrace of the home console that they really gained popularity. And their success shows through in the sheer number of versions and sequels TMNT put out in a mere five years. And I’m not even including the Game Boy versions!
1989 NES: Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles
1992 SNES: Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Turtles in Time
1991 NES: Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles III: The Manhatten Project
1992 Sega Genesis: Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: The Hyperstone Heist
1993 SNES, Sega Genesis: Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Tournament Fighters
1994 NES: Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Tournament Fighters
Outside of the 1989 NES release of Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, and the ultra-rare Tournament Fighters release as the NES was seeing itself out of home console relevance, most of these games followed the same formula, À la Double Dragon and Streets of Rage. From a side-scrolling perspective, you’d punch, kick, throw random objects, and jump kick your way through hoards of Foot Soldiers and iconic TMNT bosses.
Considering their simplicity, they were certainly a proper challenge, as many NES games of the time could be. And the replayability of each version holds firm all the way up to today. It wasn’t many months ago that I drowned a Turtles in Time arcade machine with tokens in an effort to beat it in one sitting. I’m sure I beat it dozens of times on the SNES as a kid.
Today, many of these games are vintage classics that hold some solid value in the collector’s eyes.
Check out GameValueNow for TMNT Values
Interested in what each of these beloved titles is worth now? Head over to gamevaluenow.com to find out. The highlight for many years of this 8-16 bit set of TMNT classics was certainly the NES version of Tournament Fighters. However, the original 1989 TMNT version (that one where they all wore red bandanas on the cover art, like in the comics) has overtaken Fighters in value, by a lot, in recent years.
