Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles 2: The Arcade Game (NES)

In my first year of blogging, I made a post about Turtles in Time and I placed it in the top 3 nostalgic posts of that year.  I still hold that this was a fantastic game but truthfully, I was primed to like it.

Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles was a big franchise in the late 80s and early 90s, and of course this meant that they got their own games.  The first TMNT for the NES was a game that I felt was pretty bad.  I played it a bit at a friends house, but it never made an impact. 

Later, the arcade version would come out that would redefine the TMNT game franchise.  When the arcade game got ported to the NES, it was aptly named 'Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles 2: The Arcade Game'.  The characters were larger and more cartoon-like.  The controls were a lot smoother and the game was a lot less punishing than the first game.    I still own this game, and it is easily one of my most played NES games.

The game was really fun, but more importantly, laid out the bare bones that eventually led to the highly refined fourth iteration, Turtles in Time.

Sunset Riders

I loved the old side scrolling games, but this one took it in a direction that not many othIers have tried. Sunset Riders was a cowboy western inspired game for the SNES that I adored. The one problem I found with the game was that it was hard. Really hard! This was because it was a game originally for the arcade and it shows. Despite that, I would play through the first few levels over and over.