I had played this game on a few occasions, but thanks to the wonders of ROMS, I been rediscovering a lot of the old games I used to play back in the early 90's and late 80's, Also as time passed by I been rediscovering the joys of my talents and hobbies, and starting to illustrate and one my loves had been video gaming because it was a form of escape but also entertainment.
I loved TMNT as many kids in the 80's and 90's did; my first exposition wasn't the cartoon itself but rather on a corner store o tienda del barrio, the owner had in the table the first two issues of the original comic and I was mesmerized, because the 6 years old me loved the super action and gore inside the issues - about a year later I saw the cartoon and even if it was different it got my attention.
You have to think those days we didn't had Internet at all, the only medium of information we had were related to Club Nintendo and any other PC Magazine; but one day when I went to a play date on the house of a friend, he suddenly had this game of the Turtles and I was fascinated because it was the first time I saw one in my life, and it wasn't until age 35 that I would play for the first time the og arcade game, and still the love of the franchise makes me smile.
The game wasn't like the cartoon, it was more close to the comic books than anything and as the comic books the game is brutal, for 3 decades I been thinking how the developers (Konami) could do something as difficult within only 2 Megabyte cartridge - opposite to today as the ending of 2020 where games go up to 20 Gigs and more, a lot of them don't contain the level of difficulty that this game has, this is as precursor of Dark Souls on is own splendor.
You as a gamer have to think that now we have a system or forgiveness within gaming, that let players go unscathed or at least learn form the mistakes, that system wasn't on early gaming, I guess the first time ever was with the Konami Code which is a beautiful accident, but let the players enjoy the gaming by "cheating' and probably the best way to enjoy this game is with save states, you could say it doesn't have the same satisfaction as defeating on an honest way but some games they don't really need to play to suffer, but play to see the little tricks the developers used to make it difficult whenever the resources where scarce.
The Hudson River level is the most popular one, but overall the entire game is difficult, and is difficult not only because of the level designs but rather on how wonky the time reaction on the controllers was, you could die so easily by hitting by accident the pad and swimming against the electric weeds but also any jump could kill you, the enemies respawn quickly just like Ghouls N' Goblins and you couldn't breath.
It's a nightmare to play it but it's incredible because it has a lot to offer and tells a story whenever the consoles were still young and developing in to bigger games but it contains a story and it doesn't flank with the pace.
The music is vastly different in the game from the television, but also it match more the tone of the comics rather than the happy setting that the cartoon offered for 7 seasons before it turned more grim - there is also something more charming within on how dark this game soundtrack is because you can feel the frustration within the levels but also it encompass the grim vision of Eastman and Laird work with the early comic books of the Turtles.
I am trying to situate how this game being one of the first marked a generation, but at the same time it's a product of is time - there was no other reference for the Turtles back then before the sequels that adapted a lot of the visuals from the cartoon and became more funky and playable rather than the first home console game.
The curiosity with this release it was that inside the game we have the Turtles with their respecting Tokustasu in which it marks somewhat their personalities but leadership, albeit on the box it goes with the red bandanas for all of them, but the most weirdest thing was the localization in Japan where they turned April in to Splinter's daughter.
The more I see the game and research about it, I think it was misunderstood at his moment because of the mixed reviews, but at the same time I think the game itself was one of the first games produced and developed by Konami whenever franchises were relative an unexplored territory on the video game real and is interesting because if it wasn't for games like TMNT that were a peak of his time and X-Men just to name two we wouldn't have too much of third party intellectual properties that were developed on other mediums before going to video games of being developed exclusively for the consoles instead of bringing an adaptation.
Nostalgia is truly a weapon with a sharp edge, I always remember fondly the first time I saw the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles and it was in the house of a former friend who had the original comic, I was seven years old and I was impressed by the graphics and illustrations but not too much by the dialogue because my English level wasn't there to understand the witty dialogues of the first issue, but the idea of the turtles as a product got stuck in my head.
With the rise of the show and the Turtle-Mania as many kids in the mid 1980's through mid 1990's I had a hefty collection of the Turtles merchandise, minus the original comic and a few figurines it was the video games who totally got my attention, because I could be Donatello inside the New York City where the turtles lived.
It wasn't until mid 1991 where I finally had the chance to play TMNT first game in the NES, again it was in the house of a friend during what we can call "winter time" in Cartagena - Colombia, is just a long summer that it rains no stop.
It was just some form of magical time for my 6 and half years old self, as the turtles where in vogue and it was the first time we were playing the first game. I always remember my first reaction and it was being mesmerized that it was an action packed game with tons of enemies, some of them that I didn't even knew they existed on the comics and others that I had seen on the show.
After a few hours playing and being stuck in the first part of the game, we were trying to decipher what to do and how to kill the enemies without ourselves being killed was probably one of the most interesting aspect of those days while playing the game; a week later I went back to my friend's house and I found it he was still trapped on the part, a few hours later we ended up in the dam and after that we never really played the game again.
Fast forwarding to this week (1/7/2019) and nostalgia kicked me in the stomach when I found my old games among the stuff I haven't touched in years and my surprise TMNT was there, again nostalgia can be a weapon with a sharp edge but it let me appreciate the game in a new light.
The game-play it's actually quite cool, from the soundtrack to the fights, the game knows how to captivate and with the difficulty level high the game itself can take a while to complete.
Towards the controller reactions versus the in-game enviroment, the game sucks, there is a small delay especially when you are swimming i.e. dam level and when doing jumps, some areas of the games especially the ones inside the buildings which give the platform sequences can be problematic to execute precise jumps because there isn't enough space and you as a player you tend to fall quite often.
The bosses themselves can go from easy to extremely difficult but all of them have one big foil and that is Donatello, a long range weapon can act extremely effective against almost any menace in the game, making much of the bosses extremely easy versus the hard difficulty on almost every part of the main scenario.
(4/20/2016)--- There is something melancholic about Active Worlds, is almost as being transported to another time in which the idea of a virtual world was an scenario almost impossible to achieve, but yet this world appeared and it was and still perfect to interact with.
As time passed and due financial struggles the game essentially ended in oblivion but yet it seemed to survive with only a small portion of the thousand players it once had.
There are still some active worlds who essentially where left abandoned with no more owners, there are some others who still have some members who visit but there are no more story lines, they are there to have some fun. Some of the worlds show the magnitude of the projects one time the users developed and how the communities bloomed. It gives a glimpse of how gaming was almost 25 years ago, as it offers some retro value on the looks but also on the environmental sounds.
On the first week of April of 2016, because of Youtube gamer VineSauce (1) podcast about the game bring the attention of some of the people who saw his video got an idea about finding the user who VineSauce thought was an NPC that went by name of Hitomi Fujiko, and from that point it became a trending topic that spawned several videos and got the interest of people about this old almost forgotten game.
Whatever the actions of VineSauce where a mere publicity stunt or he was completely oblivious due programming of certain BOTS (Wikipedia, Bots) to act as humans, it would be extremely suspicions to not analyze that the so called NPC could be an Administrator from the specific world who knew someone was going to be doing a podcast of the game and decided to go along with the story; and is good to know that administrators have the capabilities to track any user in the map they administer.
AWMyths
In theory the podcast is just a perfect Creepy Pasta material, it is creepy and is so amazingly designed to tell a narrative about a forgotten game that essentially is abandoned. Abandoned seems to be the perfect adjective as anyone who go within certain times won't find any users, not even on the Alpha World.
Probably that is the most probable scenario that happened to Vinny, who arrived and technically there was nobody when he was transmitting to his viewers and the Hitomi user who was watching the transmission decided to join in and just go with the mood of the story. Part of the story tends to be quite suspicious because some of the worlds, especially AWMyths the one he chose has been plagued with glitches in which the users won't be able to go far away as the world will send them back to the starting point. From that point it makes me wonder if Vinny was aware that the enviroment was having (and still having) technical issues,? this making the gameplay problematic but assuming that he didn't knew that probably just feed his psychosis that there was just desolation.
AWMix07
A reality within the game, in which any player can experience is to go at high hours of the morning and find nobody but then go in the afternoon and meet with some of the players. The users of the virtual worlds are generally nice people around, some of them are students as well a few are seasoned users who had been using the world for decades.
There is a sense of loneliness when traveling around the different worlds, as there aren't many users within each world and mostly BOTS are the ones who were left behind but some of the scenarios are just fantastic as the people who play the game.
AWMyths
The scenario that VineSauce entered AWMyths is one of the most complex ones, outstandingly beautiful and incredibly retro. Is almost as navigating into a forgotten game such as Hexen (Hexen, 1995) but with no enemies and just an open world that it seems to have no end.
There are plenty of details, between hidden scrolls that tell the history each creator gave to their worlds, up to small Easter Eggs of forgotten pop culture reference, the game offers an incredible charming experience. Exploring the full extension of the scenarios can take days as they are as wide as what we have in Earth; but, knowing every little detail or any treasure you can find gives an positive experience.
One aspect to think about the scenarios (mostly to players who arrived after the downfall of the game) is how much the creators invested and why essentially left their creations abandoned? It gives a beautiful insight to a world that slowly is dying but that still exist. It even gives an idea on how Earth could become when we are here no more.
House of Jazz
If you want to visit Active Worlds, click here and the registration process is actually quite simple, then you will proceed to download the browser that enables the navigation through the different world.
Enjoy.
Gallery:
References:
https://www.youtube.com/user/vinesauce
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Video_game_bot - Wikipedia Bots.
