Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles
- June 05, 2003 00:00 AM PST
The turtles are back and they�re tired of toning down the madness!
In what promises to be the ultimate culmination of co-creator Peter Laird�s original vision of the TMNT, gamers once again don a color-coded mask and take up their respective Asian death-dealing device in order to hack and slash their way to the despotic Shredder. Konami, the company that created the original TMNT games way back in the days of the true O.G. (the 8-bit NES), has promised that this game will have all of the madcap action and perturbing grittiness that the original comic books wielded in such a popular fashion.If your first introduction to the Ninja Turtles was their FOX BOX series, here�s a little history for you: TMNT was originally a comic book created by Kevin Eastman and Peter Laird under the banner of Mirage Studios in November of 1983. While Eastman and Laird were pretty much just amusing themselves by parodying the rampant theme crossovers of the time, their comic struck a chord with readers and blossomed into a huge multimedia empire.
Unfortunately, Laird was never truly satisfied with the image the turtles garnered as wise cracking goofballs jonesing for pizza; however, he predicts that all of that will change with the release of the new game, the current animated series (note: not cartoon!), and action figures. The new look of the turtles is �more muscular, dynamic and heroic.� Their attitudes toward the world have also received a rebuilding in terms of deeper and more complex character development that relies less on cheap one-liners and scatological humor.
If you remember Konami�s original arcade offering of the TMNT that featured multiplayer capabilities and darn near revolutionary graphics (both of which inspired a whole slew of cabinets using the same basic engine�see The Simpsons arcade game, for example, also by Konami), then get ready to be totally and completely blown away by their new and improved version�and available in your very own home to boot. Just check out these screens if you don�t believe it, or if you�re totally salivating over the idea of radiation distorted genetic freaks painstakingly trained in the Japanese art of silent assassination. Whichever.
