With the release of the TMNT movie, plus the Saturday morning cartoon that started airing again a few years ago, it's no surprise that the Turtles have suddenly become popular again, after their initial surge around the 80s. Hey, I was a Turtles addict back then when I was a little kid. Well Microsoft decided to join the Turtles bandwagon for the movie's release, and put on Xbox Live the old arcade classic. However, are the arcade Turtles still as good as people remember?

As a fan of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, I certainly remember plunking down some quarters in this arcade classic, always choosing to be one of two Turtles – Donatello or Raphael. Don't ask me why those two, because they are practically opposite of each other, but perhaps that is me in a nutshell. Anyways, in the game you picked to play as one of the four Turtles as you set out to tackle the enemies and save your girl April. Of course, standing in your way was wave after wave of Foot soldiers, mousers, and bosses like Bebop, Rocksteady, and of course Shredder himself.

Of course though, one of the big things about the arcade game was that, much like the series, in which there are four Turtles, you could actually have four people playing at once, each one controlling a different one of the Turtles. For whatever reason, the idea of a game allowing four people to play as the Turtles really hasn't been seen since. And with either local multiplayer or Xbox Live multiplayer, it is easier than ever to hop on, gather some people together, and adventure out as your favorite Turtle (or the one you get stuck with cause you are the last to the party). Xbox Live multiplayer is especially fun, as you can chat with each other thru the headset and it feels just like the arcade, though confined to your living room couch.

Combat in the arcade game is as basic as it comes, as you have exactly two buttons: an attack button and a jump button. Each button is relatively self-explanatory, though you could combine the two to perform jumping slashes or kicks, depending on what the special move of your character was. In combat you'd hack and slash your way from one enemy to the next, with very little changing along the way, though there were possibilities for some environmental damage, such as attacking a parking meter and sending it flying towards an enemy or either chopping up a fire hydrant and hurting the enemy with the resulting spray (don't ask why water hurts them – witches I suppose). Enemies range from mousers who chomp on to you to your regular Foot soldiers who punch, though there are others with swords, shurikens, boomerangs, and guns to name a few. And then of course you did that fighting over and over with the same enemies all the way to the boss, which were classic staples of the cartoon series.

The graphics and sound aren't up to snuff either, as the Turtles and enemies look very dated even when compared to other games coming from that generation of gaming. The Turtles look okay, but some of the bosses aren't that great, and some of the other images such as April look terrible. The game isn't animated terribly well either, as there are only a few various animations which are used over and over throughout the entire game. And as for the sound…I honestly don't remember the sound work being this bad. The music is okay I guess, though it doesn't exactly sound pitch perfect or anything, but the line deliveries are the worst, with the single worst example being April's cry of "Help meeeeeee!" And yes, if you play the game, you do see that many Es used in her scream. You've also got terrible shouts of "Cowabunga," "Who turned out the lights?" and "Tonight I dine on Turtle soup."

Was the game really like this when I was younger and I was simply blinded by my love for all things Turtles? Did I waste however many dollars on that sucker and I was a fool? For whatever the reason, I've outgrown my love of the Turtles, and the game is simply okay by today's standards. There are bound to be people out there just in love with it as they were back then, but in today's world the game seems like nothing more than a nostalgia trip with repetitive gameplay and okay graphics and dreadful sound. I do applaud Microsoft for releasing an arcade game like this and hopefully it will continue the trend. I recall classic Avenger and X-Men games that were like the Turtles game that I'd make room for on my 360, even if it was only to find out they weren't as good as they once were.

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