Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles 2: Battle Nexus

Written by Chris Reiter  on September 22, 2004

Hands-On Preview: What's green and hasаsomething largeаon its backside? A severelyаdiseased hunchback! Ha-ha! I made another funny!

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Most of us growing up in the late 1980's I'm sure remember the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. The immensely popular cartoon, starring the four radioactively transformed hipster turtles, spawned entire series of action figures, clothes, feature films, and of course video games. I was one of those people, and one of the show's greatest fans. Yeah, I wore the shirts, the shoes, and the underpants. I cried out in shopping malls when I didn't get the awesome new figures. It was a different time then...and being "hip" meant you had to have the "green." Why the show was ever canceled was a big mystery at the time. For whatever reason the Turtles have been hiding in their sculpted bodies, they've recently popped out of their shells in a return to television, and once more to the video game scene as well. We were at E3 sneaking through Konami's booth like Solid Snake when our knockout gas wasn't affecting any of the gamers hogging up all the Metal Gear Solid 3 glory. So instead, we visited the totally vacant Turtles lot...er, that is to say, um...here's a hands-on look at Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles 2: Battle Nexus, dudes!

Their names are Leonardo, Donatello, Raphael, and Michaelangelo. Named after some of history's most revered artists by a studious rat of great martial arts talent, the four warriors became his disciples against the deadly Shredder and his ninja army of Foot Clan. And so, this is the premise anyone who's anyone that knows about the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles already knows about. This leads up in part as to why the Turtles continue to face evil: because they're the good guys. This also adds to why they are entering other phases of beat-em-up from the once popular hit TV series, and now are remerging from what was lost and now again has been found.

For the first time in a long time, the Turtles had broken out from the shadows last year when Konami announced they were releasing a new Turtles game based off of the new TV show. The game was met with poor results, however. So, after listening to some user complaints, Konami's coming back again this year with another round of bodacious Turtle power. The game, like last year, will allow players to select amongst their favorite Turtle stars, only this time four-players can get involved instead of two. What's also different is how each of the four Turtles will actually be utilized based on their personas in puzzle parts throughout the game. With Donatello's smarts you'll be hacking security clearance, where with Raphael you'll enable his strength to do heavy block lifting.

While I didn't get much time with the game, the setting was on top of a mountainous blizzard path. The idea here was to combat things like the Foot and baddie robots, while avoiding falling icicles and leaping over gaps in the rising cliff. The action was fast, the controls were easy enough to learn, but the camera would have to be the biggest fault. It would lose the center of your pals when you were to rush ahead, and also was easy to mask incoming dangers. But, I'd bet (or at least hope) Konami has noticed any little inconveniences like such already.

Assaulting enemies and activating special moves, the game itself wasn't any prize winner to look at. Though Turtles 2 does carry over a cel-shaded technique like its former entry did, of what I've seen the game at the time wasn't terribly special in appearance. But who knows...that could have changed in the last months since E3's time. Aside from the blizzard area I mentioned, we didn't get to peddle through any of the remaining parts of the game. However, the Turtles will get to tackle a number of different beating grounds, including alleyways and the interior of a spaceship.