How I Mutated from Boy to Man…
Just about every human culture has a “rite of passage” that symbolizes when a boy throws aside his boyhood status and attains the rank of manhood. Killing a stag… Bar Mitzvah… Driver’s License… blah, blah, blah.
I had my own rite of passage that eluded me for about ten years: successfully completing Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles for the NES. It was the logical choice. TMNT was half the reason I even got into video games in the first place.
One fateful night, a young, small town boy explored the halls of his local Wal-Mart, inexplicably drawn to a big, noisy television in the middle of the Electronics section. I assure you it was not an unusual occurrence, but there was something different about this TV, it had a remote control with a cable attaching it to black & gray VCR. Except it wasn’t a VCR, it was a Nintendo Entertainment System, in all its Americanized post-Famicom glory. The game was Super Mario Bros., and it was unlike anything the boy had ever seen. But regarding the whole “rite of passage” theme of this post, that’s irrelevant.
The next time the boy returned to the Wal-Mart, eager to give Mario’s mushroom kingdom another spin, he was surprised to see a new game on display: Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, and it was very familiar. Fate had played its cards and the boy’s destiny became clear. He really needed an NES at home if he were to satisfy his craving for sprite-based platforming games. Fortunately, Santa delivered that Christmas like never before. Under the ol’ Christmas tree sat an NES conveniently hooked up to my parents’ black and white TV. Two controllers, a bright orange Zapper, and the distinguished console itself were a sight that can only be described as timeless beauty. But we all know it is the games themselves that matter, and Santa didn’t disappoint on that front either. Back in those days, Nintendo was kind enough to include a copy of Super Mario Bros./Duck Hunt so no kid had to suffer the indignity of buying a system and then waiting until he accumulated $50 in allowance to finally buy his first game. The real icing on the cake, however, was a shrink-wrapped box bearing the glorious image of four pre-pubescent ninja terrapins wreaking havoc on robotic creatures. And the real reason they were all wearing red bandanas on the game cover was because Konami were letting you know that this game would not be conquered without the shedding of blood.
I have to hand it to Ultra Games (Konami’s ghost-publisher in the USA created as a legal loophole), since they could have pumped out a shoddy product and it would have sold like hotcakes anyway (such was the hold that “Turtle Power” had over our pre-Power Rangers culture). But the game sported surprisingly solid controls and crisp graphics (even if the enemy choices were indefinite… at best). There was only one problem… the game was primarily marketed at young kids, but it quickly proved itself to be one of the most frustratingly difficult carts in the entire NES library.
The difficulty derived from a number of variables. First, only Donatello was entirely capable as an offensive force. Leonardo was moderately useful, while Michelangelo and Raphael were (almost) entirely useless outside of serving as meat shields. Second, the enemy placement was as brutal as it was bizarre. The familiar Foot Soldiers and mousers were the easy baddies, while more bizarre creates such as jet-pack powered laser gunners, and robotic kangaroos awaited the player late in the game. Third, the game was notorious for tough jumps, often requiring you to walk over small cracks when your instinct was to jump as far as possible. Many players probably never got past the infamous dam level, or else got lost in level 3 driving the turtle van around Times Square, or maybe even gave up after repeatedly failing to make one of many tedious jumps. There were no codes to this game. Konami fully expected every kid in TMNT pajamas to man up and persevere through wave after wave of Shredder’s armada.
For nearly a decade, this game punished me routinely. Occasionally, I’d gather the skill to advance just a wee bit farther than I did before. Inevitably, I would fail to complete all the missions. But, sometime between my junior and senior year of high school, I acquired the resolve to devote myself to beating that game, no matter how many times I might fail in the process. And I failed, mind you. Oh, did I fail. But in those moments of failure, I learned that the game, like life, can only be conquered through learning from failure and never giving up out of frustration. The moment when I finally took down Shredder was a confirmation of that fact. I was no longer the boy who liked to abuse a cheat code, I was the man who wouldn’t back down when the odds were stacked against me. Beating Konami’s TMNT NES cart taught me that my potential was only limited by my ambition.
Magazine scans taken from Nintendo Power (May/June 1989)
