Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: The Hyperstone Heist (Genesis/Mega Drive)
While Nintendo systems would receive fairly faithful ports of the two arcade brawlers Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles and Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Turtles in Time, the first game developer Konami would ever release for the Sega Genesis took a different approach in bringing the beat ’em up action of the Turtles to the system. Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: The Hyperstone Heist is not a new game nor is it a straight adaptation, instead almost being more of a remix of those two arcade titles with a few new extras added in. While this likely was meant to make it feel like a new experience, it almost feels more interesting to play it after the other two titles to see what recognizable pieces came together in this unique yet familiar brawler.
Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: The Hyperstone Heist does hew closest to Turtles in Time in terms of how it plays and its structure, although it already gets off on a better foot than it in terms of explaining why the turtles are heading out to face their long time villain Shredder. Rather than merely capturing the Statue of Liberty, this time Shredder uses the power of a special gem from Dimension X known as the Hyperstone to shrink the statue as well as all of Manhattan as start of a plan to take over the world. Shredder openly taunts the turtles on live T.V. after this supernatural display, the four teenage mutants from the sewer leaping into action to track him down. Time travel is completely omitted from this game’s story though, meaning technically the turtles are traversing New York to try and locate Shredder, and while players will recognize a very familiar stretch of street from Turtles in Time, the path to saving Manhattan actually leads to some interesting repurposing of old places.
Without time travel the game can’t say you’re on an old fashioned pirate ship, but recontextualizing it as a ghost ship does allow them to use the setting along with its hazards like loose floorboards. On the other hand, Shredder’s Hideout with its Japanese aesthetic feels almost wholly unique to this game, but it might also take some inspiration from Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles II: The Arcade Game on NES that had a similar albeit different level. It culminates with a truly brand new boss though, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: The Hyperstone Heist keeping fans of the TMNT games guessing on what might crop up despite it leaning most on elements from the Turtles in Time arcade game.
One unfortunate element of Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: The Hyperstone Heist is the Sega Genesis only allowed two players to play at once, meaning you’ll only to be able to take two of the four hero turtles into action. Still, Donatello, Leonardo, Michelangelo, and Raphael have different weapons to make them stand out while still playing similarly enough that you won’t have to learn how to fight anew if you swap out your turtle after a Game Over. Donatello’s staff and Leonardo’s swords feel more effective than the nunchucks and sais of their brothers, but all four are fairly capable when it comes to dishing out basic attack combos, running attacks, aerial strikes, and a very satisfying grab attack where you slam an enemy back and forth to potentially batter their back-up. You won’t get the impressive throws towards the screen featured in Turtles in Time but you do get some of the fun quips turtles make when they take specific types of damage or fall down holes, but what sets the turtles apart truly is their special attacks. Press A and B at the same time and a turtle will unleash a move unique to them. Leonardo and Michelangelo excel here with weapon swings that cover most of the area around them, Donatello instead getting a forward kick while Raphael is left with a short range spinning kick. Special Attacks do have a condition attached though for their increased strength and range, landing a hit with it dealing some damage to your turtle as well. This makes choosing when to use it more meaningful, but it also isn’t something you’ll need to completely avoid, mainly because Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: The Hyperstone Heist isn’t a very difficult game at all.
Most of the enemies you encounter in this five stage adventure are going to be the Foot Clan’s ninja robots, many of them packing unique weapons like sickles on chains or shurikens but it’s fairly easy to approach most and begin whaling on them to prevent them from making use of them. The screen never gets too packed with danger meaning there are periods where the enemy forces are fairly manageable, but to make up for some of the breezier battles there are peskier foes like the rock soldiers who are tougher, can come charging onto screen to catch you unaware, and often pack a big bazooka or similar weapon to really punish you if you don’t split your attention between them well. Hazards can deny some battlefield space as well to give enemies a chance to attack. There are a few levels where you find yourself surfing on hoverboards too, enemies going by quickly and easy to get hit by should you try to strike them, and with dangers in the water too you will have to remain active even though these sections don’t feel like they’re likely to harm you all that much. In general, the turtles can take a beating and keep fighting, pizza pick-ups common enough to keep you healthy while reaching score thresholds for enemies defeated keep adding extra lives to your tally. It isn’t too hard to get to the game’s ending without a single game over despite the game giving you a few continues just in case, but the pumping music and snappy fighting keeps you energized while the enemies put up at least some resistance so the short experience can still be engaging.
Bosses are done very well in Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: The Hyperstone Heist, packing a punch but also playing surprisingly fair. With bosses from both arcade games this game takes inspiration from and a run-in with the new face that is Shredder’s right hand man Tatsu, you might think they’d trend towards how they function elsewhere, but Hyperstone Heist has a few ideas in place to make boss fights more tactical. Most of them will allow you to land a combo of a certain length before they try to break through it, damaging you if you get to greedy. Learning how many times you can hit them before needing to retreat gives you a way to preserve health, but lining up your strikes can be risky. Many bosses like Tatsu have long range attacks that can pepper you if you’re being too cautious or if you’re instead running in carelessly, but you can also turn them against the boss by striking flying knives to harm them instead. Other bosses have patterns to pick up and periods of vulnerability to exploit, the selection of bosses here such a strong mix of fair but tough that it can string together a set of rematches without it feeling like an overwhelming attempt to take you out. While there’s definitely room for more complicated and engaging bosses in a brawler, for the kind of play Hyperstone Heist features, its bosses feel like an excellent fit.
THE VERDICT: Snappy combat, fair but fun boss battles, and an interesting mix of elements from other games in the series makes Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: The Hyperstone Heist an effective mix of old ideas with a few new ideas and the right tweaks to make it a fun if short beat ’em up romp. The low difficulty makes clearing it achievable but it doesn’t drag it down thanks to the enemies not being complete pushovers, this brawler being a short but sweet bit of two player ninja fighting action enjoyable even for those who can’t make a game of pointing out the remixed ideas taken from other turtles titles.
And so, I give Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: The Hyperstone Heist for Sega Genesis/Mega Drive…
A GOOD rating. When it comes to unique successes, the boss fight design ethos on show here is definitely Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: The Hyperstone Heist’s biggest success over the games it borrows ideas from. A brawler boss fight can sometimes be mindless attacking either because there is no strategy or the boss has no actual trick to overcome their cheap attacks, but here we find bosses with proper triggers before doing their rougher attacks you’ll want to avoid while not adhering to that design so much it leads to homogeneity. Some bosses instead ask you to find the safe break in their attacks, and even moves like the knife throws and area covering flames have some counter or indicator they’re coming so you can respond properly. The overreliance on Foot ninjas is pretty much standard for a TMNT beat ’em up though and leads to some combat blending together, but the shifts in style like the surfing sections or brief incursions of something new like the rock soldiers mean you aren’t too easily tearing your way through each stage. The short length does mean it was likely a bit of a shame to clear it so easily back when it was new, even with a Hard mode on offer that tries to make things a touch tougher, but it’s still an enjoyable time despite raising an interesting question. With so much of the game already remixing elements from the other TMNT games, why didn’t it throw in more? The boss rematches particularly feel a little unnecessary when there were still foes to be borrowed from the arcade games, Rocksteady’s constant companion Bebop oddly absent for example.
If it was even more of a remix by pulling in more bosses, areas, and baddies from the previous turtles games, it’s possible Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: The Hyperstone Heist could have bulked itself up enough that it neither felt too short or too easy. Still, what is on offer is certainly entertaining, the turtles still needing to do a good bit of smart fighting to take down bosses and clear crowds even though you aren’t likely to fold too often when figuring out what’s dangerous or how you can overcome a boss’s tricks. Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: The Hyperstone Heist ends up in a nice spot because of its approach to combining and creating ideas though, not really replacing the other ninja turtles games but still feeling interesting enough that is worth a look. Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: The Cowabunga Collection definitely makes it much easier to avoid having to choose between this game and those that it borrows from, and it even better allows a player to see the fun ways it alters ideas or comes up with its own. People on Sega who were getting their first introduction to the turtles and Konami certainly didn’t miss out on what made their brawlers fun though thanks to the smart touches that Hyperstone Heist makes in prioritizing a good time over a long time.