Beat starting as Leo, and I remember playing this as a kid, likely 2 player with my cousin. I did the 1st level at normal speed and was impressed at how much better this game was than #2. The enemies no longer got stupid invincibility frames so I could kill them with 2 quick normal attacks, or a jump kick followed by normal attack. The only special attacks I did were by accident, as I fundamentally dislike the concept of spending health on offense. The throw attack was great, killing foot soldiers in 1 hit and hurting anything hit by the flying corpse. Though I did not figure out it was down + attack until a few levels into the game, and there were plenty of times that I did it accidentally. With a much slower animation than the normal attack and it not being able to throw most non foot soldiers, it was bad to use it by accident. Leo got wrecked by Rocksteady, so I slowed the game down to 30 frames per second. Even with that, the boss was brutally difficult and I lost a life. Mikey finished him off and beat the surfing and sub stages. Mike eventually died, either fighting Slash or Bebop. Then I used Don. I forget where he died; I definitely had Raph for the sewer and on into the Technodrome, then was using Leo again for Krang and Super Shredder. I used up all of my lives, keeping Leo towards the end and accidentally switching to Don for the very last life.

This game was brutally difficult and took a lot of save state scumming. The regular enemies in a level could easily wear me down to 25-50% health, and the bosses had way too much health with very difficult to avoid attacks. I did like how the bosses had tells for their move sets, and different strategies for each instead of always jump kicking. Some bosses punished air attacks and some had periods where they were vulnerable to normal attacks. The melee stone warrior was a regular enemy that punished jump kicks and was easy to out range with normal attacks. Like the previous game I loved the enemy variety, especially the huge variety of foot soldiers. It was especially impressive how each level had unique animations for bringing the foot soldiers on screen; knocking signs down, jumping out windows or doors, coming out of vans, floor hatches, swimming, drop by helicopter, manufactured, and teleporters. A lesser game would have used the same animation each time or just had them walk in from off screen. Unfortunately the environmental objects that could be knocked into enemies did not make it into this game, and the turtles were mechanically identical other than special attacks. I could see playing again while using more special attacks and optimising which special attack is best for each boss.

This was likely the best beat em up on the NES, really only held back by the difficulty. Too bad the difficulty settings were hidden behind a cheat code. It should have had some stat differences between the turtles but the game was an overall massive improvement from the previous.

8.2/10