 SNES DRUNK! Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles 2, the arcade game for NES is a triumph of common sense. The first game, as many of you know, is widely known as one of the most absurdly difficult platformers ever made, with all sorts of awkward jumps and annoying enemies with a counter-intuitive layout. There is no freaking way anyone could objectively recommend playing the first Ninja Turtles game today, unless you have a boatload of personal nostalgia from playing it as a kid. But seriously, all anyone wanted back then was to just Just play as Leonardo, Donatello, Raphael, and Michelangelo, fight Bebop and Rocksteady, Shredder and Krang, see the Technodrome, and just kick ass. Thankfully, that's all Turtles 2 The Arcade game sets out to do. It's a straightforward multiplayer beat-em-up that's fast-paced, and gives you all that you want if you're a fan of the TV show, so in that regard, this game is nearly flawless. Yeah, you're sadly not able to switch between Turtles in the middle of gameplay, which was what I think just about the only redeeming quality of the first game. But still, Turtles 2 The Arcade game is a no frills kind of a game. You walk to the right, wreck anything in your way, and the stage ends when you fight a boss. The usual punch-kick stuff is here of course, mash A and B together for a special attack, and you'll be doing that a lot because this game is pretty hard, even with a second player. I appreciate that though, it seems like a lot of the older beat-em-ups, you can just jump kick your way through the entire game if you really wanted to. But here, the bosses, and even the foot soldiers here, don't let you abuse that. So while this game is at its core a button-mashing beat-em-up, you do have to pick your spots and tread carefully, or you'll pay for it. I have to mention one minor touch I really like is that the game keeps track of how many enemies you've gotten rid of. Even when I'm getting weary of the beat-em-up grind, it's nice to see I'm actually accomplishing something. I prefer this to a vague point system like in Final Fight. Now make no mistake, as an arcade port, this comes nowhere near the original arcade game. That game supports up to four players and is one of the best arcade beat-em-ups ever made. That considered though, the NES port looks as good as you could expect, the music is terrific, and there's actually a couple extra levels and bosses, like the robot samurai. And as I've said like three times already, this is one of the best co-op games on the NES. So yeah, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles 2 the arcade game is way, way more playable and approachable than the first Ninja Turtles game. It was back then and it still is today. And if you can't get enough of this game, there's Ninja Turtles 3 The Manhattan Project, a game that was sort of forgotten because it came out just a few months before Turtles in Time, but it's pretty good in its own right, even though the visuals can be very flickery, plus personally, I just like the gameplay a lot more in the second game. You can't go wrong with either though, and their cartridges are less than $20 each on eBay. Go check them out.