^^ Lol,awesome rant. And I agree completely about the nes version of tmnt 2. Yeah,the graphics and sounds are inferior to the arcade version but that's like comparing a muscle car to an economy car. Sure the muscle car looks sexier and would smoke the economy car in a race,but they are both good cars. And while we're on the subject of TMNT games,the first game for the nes gets a lot of unfair hate in my opinion. Sure,it's not the greatest game ever,but it is a great game.

And Tom,where's the 10,000,000 point screenshot for TMNT 3? What the heck man? Lol.

Well, it's possible to max out the score at 999,990 on TMNT 3, but I think you have to beat the game to do it.  On one life, that will be a tall order.

Just out of curiosity, how many lives did it take you to beat the game for your world record run?

Weather permitting,I'll be playing tonight,but man it looks pretty rough where I'm at. It looks like night time right now.

Apparently so. I just beat the game without continuing and I only had 945,200 going into the Super Shredder fight. I'm pretty sure that I didn't leave 54,790 points on the table along the way.

My best performance actually wasn't the scoring record, but my SDA run where I no-deathed the game.  On my scoring record, I'm pretty sure that I died a few times, I just forget how many.  In all, I've no-deathed the game once and have had several one-death games.

My main trouble spots are Shredder, Krang, and Super Shredder.  I rarely die anywhere else.

I'd probably say Krang is my worst spot. Super Shredder isn't that difficult, but he usually kills me at least once because I don't have much life left over from the Krang fight. I haven't been able to no-death the game yet. I have a bad habit of overusing my special move to take out the bosses as quickly as possible, which leaves me open to getting killed in one hit so it usually takes me 2-3 lives to beat the game.

Yup, you hit on the key problem with Shredder.  Both Shredder fights happen just after another boss battle, leaving you weakened.  I actually favor using special moves against every boss, so I always have to fight Shredder with one life bar.  He's easy, but the need for perfection makes it tough.

Biggest issue with boss battles in general is that there's usually no way to use normal attacks against them without getting hit.  Special moves may cost you life bars, but at least you're briefly invincible.  With Raph and Mike especially, it's simple to use your special to plow through a boss and get out of harm's way.

I've been using Raphael since his torpedo special move works well on the bosses, but I keep having to get in close to use it or I risk getting hit from behind and killed when he stops (which is what keeps happening). This game is really stingy with the pizza too. What are there, four slices in the entire game? It's crazy that it gives you a slice between Slash and Bebop, but you don't get any pizza (or just a new life bar) before either Shredder fight.

Back from vacation now and I will be working on getting the leaderboard updated over the course of the next couple days. There were some great scores for Yoshi last week and a lot of great competiton. Hope to see more of that this week On another note, I got my girlfriend horribly addicted to Yoshi last week

I was able to play this for a little while on my laptop despite the power being out all night. I agree about the bosses Tom. Many of them just seem cheap. Been trying to use timely jump kicks instead of special moves on the bosses,but it takes forever and they seem to be able to get in cheap shots more than I'd like. Hopefully the power will be back on when I get home from work so I can really put some serious effort into this game.

Can you stick this to the top like usual? It keeps falling down the page.

119,500

Unfortunately, I don't have the power to sticky the contest threads (that's a mod power).  I think one of the mods forgot to do it this week.

Somebody fixed it. Hopefully we get some more people playing, it's Thursday and we only have four scores posted so far. This is a really fun game, but it doesn't seem to be as popular as the second one.

32200

Beat'em ups have never been my game of choice so here we go.

Yeah,it's pretty sparse but we'll get a handful of last second posters like always. Is there something I'm missing about this game Doug? I just don't find it that fun. It seems kinda tedious. It seems most enemies are ultra cheap and most of the boss battles are basically "abuse your specials until they die". And the foot soldier who throws sand in your eyes is beyond stupid. Not only that,but the sand takes off health. I could understand throwing sand to blind you then punch or kick you,but to just throw sand up is goofy. Why not have foot soldiers in the next level throwing buckets of water on you? Or foot soldiers armed with deadly pillows.

40,000

It's no Turtles in Time, but I think it's as good as the second game. You do have a point on the boss fights though. There really isn't any strategy beyond what you said about using your special attack until either they die or you do. I never noticed that the sand took off health. I thought it was just a way to stun you so that they could attack. Deadly sand in the eyes does sound kinda stupid, but then again it is a game with mutant turtles so I can give them a pass.

Lol,true. I guess I'm finding it tough to get to some of the bosses without my health being somewhat depleted from all the cheap hits. All the foot soldiers act like inmates as they all want to grab you from behind. The thing that sucks about the specials is how they leave you open to attack,so if you have 1 bar left from abusing your special,then one mistake equals death. At least Bebop's fight is easy if you use Leo and park yourself at the edge of the grill of his vehicle. He'll never hit you.

I think I actually like this game better than the second one. It's got some flaws, but I feel like the controls and moves are a little more refined. I've been having a lot of fun with it this week, anyway.

On a related note, one thing I like about these weekly contests is that I feel like I've learned to play these games better than I did as a kid. I could beat most games I played back then, but never took the time to really learn them thoroughly. TMNT 3 as an example, my brother and I played through the game in a couple days' rental through pure brute force / button mashing. But thanks to replaying it for this competition, I have a much better understanding of how to play it well and not just swinging weapons wildly.

The throw move really comes in handy when there are foot soldiers behind you. It doesn't give you as many points as if you kill them with your standard attack, but it can bail you out of a jam without you having to use your special. Have you tried playing with Raphael? His special attack seems to come in the most handy for boss fights because of the long range which helps keep you from taking cheap shots from behind and he's borderline invincible while doing it.

I used him a few times yesterday. He's my favorite turtle,but I hate that he has the shortest ranged weapon. I'll definitely be playing more tonight. Hopefully I can get to scene 3 without dying. I always seem to botch it up somewhere. Plus I try to kill everything with the standard attack for 600 points,which can be riskier than throws and jump kicks.

That's the main reason why I'm sticking into the weekly contest. When you play a game with a aimed goal like getting best score, you really take the time to understand the game to perform well. Sometimes, it's cool to just put a cart on and play freely, but I also find a lot of enjoyment trying to master a game the best I can in a single week.

I think what is tempering my enjoyment of the game and this week's competition is only being able to use one life. As cheap as the game is,it makes it very frustrating and tedious. Replaying level 1 has become a complete chore. I believe this week's competition would have been a lot more fun in my humble opinion had it been play to your last life like in the Double Dragon 2 comp or even to game over. I'll probably start playing this just to beat it and hopefully it will become a more fun game to me,but as it stands,this only one life rule is killing the fun for me.