Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Tournament Fighters - 1-2 player simultaneous. TMNT: Tournament Fighters on the Super Nintendo is a very good fighting game, among the better on that console. So this game is just as good, right? Or at least close? Unfortunately, no. TMNT Tournament Fighters for the Genesis is a somewhat disastrously bad disappointment. As flawed as Hyperstone Heist is, at least the core of the game is great fun. This game, however, is not so lucky. Tournament Fighters on the Genesis has subpar graphics, few characters, AI that is way too hard, limited continues in the story mode, very limited two-buttons-only controls with poor design decisions on top of that, and more. Instead of a great 6-button control scheme like the SNES game or better Genesis fighters, here you get one punch button, one kick button, and that's it. That's pretty bad, but worse, there aren't even really variants of each button! The Neo-Geo Pocket Color has only two buttons, but fighting games on that system play great, and how hard you push the button activates attacks of different strengths. Here, punch does your punch attack, kick does your kick attack, and that's it. You can't even combo attacks together, because they made the bizarre decision to have some invincibility after each hit to block that. The collision detection is poor as well, which doesn't help at all, and helps out the overly-difficult AI. There are special moves in the game, with a random mixture of activations taken from various popular fighting games without much consistency. The gameplay here is a mess, and totally ruins the game. In contrast, the SNES game is pretty much as SFII knockoff, with moves, graphics, and game systems very similar to that classic. It works great together. This game tries for something a little different, but fails badly at it.
The game does at least look good and sound okay, though. TMNT Tournament Fighters has pretty good graphics with a variety of weird sci-fi locations to fight in, eight characters each with a different look, and a cool, dark visual aesthetic. I like the graphics here, everything looks good. It's a different style from the SNES game, and that might look better overall, but it is competitive. The music is solid, though it isn't among Konami's best work on the Genesis. Games like Rocket Knight Adventures or Contra Hard Corps have much better music than this. I don't know if any of the music actually comes from the show, either, which is unfortunate. On another note, as in the SNES game, the character selection is a bit odd. You have the four turtles, April O'Neil and Casey Jones, and two random comic-book characters. The SNES game also has several comic characters filling its roster. Why those and not some of the other more popular characters from the TV show? Did they not have the rights? If so, that was a mistake, it'd have made all of these games better. It's interesting, but odd, that the SNES and Genesis games have different playable side characters, in addition to the Turtles. I do like that April O'Neil and Casey Jones are playable, as this is April's only playable outing in a '90s Turtles game, but it is unfortunate that April is in some random oversexed miniskirt outfit; it doesn't fit her character.I like the idea of playable April, but she should have been in her usual outfit, not this pointlessly oversexed one.
But anyway, the decent graphics and sound can't come even close to saving this disaster. There really isn't much good I can say about this game outside of its visuals; the gameplay is just too badly flawed, with the overly limited moveset, iffy special move selections, absurdly difficult AI that is so hard that until you've gotten good at the game winning even a single ROUND is a challenge, limited continues in a game in a genre which almost never has such a thing, bad collision detection in a genre that demands this be just about flawless, and more. Sure, there are worse Genesis fighting games than this, but I don't own those games myself; of what I have, this is the worst. Overall, TMNT Tournament Fighters for the Genesis is a bad, disappointing game. Don't bother with it unless you're a serious series fan. The NES version of TMNT Tournament Fighters might be even worse, but you wouldn't expect a good fighter from the NES, while the Genesis can do far, far better than this. Play the SNES game instead, it's very good.