Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles II: The Arcade Game

Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles II: The Arcade Game is a side scrolling beat'em up released by Konami in 1989.

The Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles spring into action when their human friend April O'Neil is attacked and kidnapped by Shredder and his army of Foot Soldiers. Players take control of the mutated, pizza loving turtles as they fight their way through several scrolling platform beat'em up stages featuring many characters and enemies from the TMNT cartoon series and comics.

Originally released as a 2 and 4 player arcade machine and simply called Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, TMNT II would also later be ported to several home consoles between 1991-1992. Most ports retained the majority of the original gameplay but with more primitive graphics.

The first port was to the NES in 1991. This version features several distinct changes compared to the original arcade game, including two brand new levels (Snowy Central Park and House of Shogun) that feature several new enemies and two new boss characters designed specifically for the port. The rest of the levels were also extended with several subtle alterations.

In 1992 TMNT II was also ported to a number of home computers including Amiga, Amstrad CPC, Atari, Commodore 64, PC and ZX Spectrum. These were all similar in gameplay to the original arcade game and did not feature the exclusive content seen in the NES port.

A version of the original arcade game can also be found as an unlockable bonus in Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles 2: BattleNexus.

TMNT II was known as Teenage Mutant Hero Turtles II: The Arcade Game and Teenage Mutant Hero Turtles II: The Coin Op in Europe due to harsher censorship deeming the word 'Ninja' to carry too many violent connotations (the cartoon suffered similar censorship issues at the time).