4 out of 5

Label: Ship to Shore

Produced by: ?

I don’t enter into this with any nostalgia, as I didn’t enter console ownership until the 16-bit era, and when we played NES at my friends’ houses, despite my TMNT fandom, this thing was particularly unfun for clumsy-thumbed me, and so the hours went to Mario or Zelda instead. But I think that helps me out here: I’m arriving to this score with very little memory of its themes, and as a lifelong Turtles fan; that clearly gives me the utmost authority to weigh in and deem this set of tunes to be very fitting for the franchise! That maybe shouldn’t matter if the music is good – which it is – but I do like games’ soundtracks to give me vibes of playing the game in some way, and I remember enough of NES TMNT’s platforming (and the Fred Wolf cartoon that made it boys popular enough for this cartridge – setting aside the completely badass Michael Dooney Miragey cover) to doff my cap with all due deference to the Konami Kukeiha Club team for, once again, manipulating the minimal musical abilities of the system to eke out some really memorable bops. And why that’s a bit more notable here is because cartoon properties are often stuck mimicking the themes from their source, and there’s not really a trace of that here – KKC establish an adjacent “style” for their soundtrack (i.e. the base of these tunes would not have been out of place on the show), while also really striking out on their own, particularly with the later game music.

The material is naturally limited in length, with original runtimes mostly at minute-long runtimes before looping, but Ship to Shore do a good job of parsing out those loops before fading out so that it feels like we’re getting “full” songs for the most part, with the (nigh) exceptions being Stage Theme 2-A and -B, which are very short snippets that repeat almost to annoyance… it’s just under the line, but can get kind of noxious if you’re listening to the record multiple times, perhaps for review.

The mastering on the vinyl is a bit dim, and noise marks the beginning and end of sides, but the recordings themselves sound good, and the mastering can be overcome by bumping the volume a tad. If these were later-era recordings with more range, it might be more of an issue; I could take StS to task since modern VGM recordings have a kind of “premium” vibe, but… nah, it works. That said, I do wish there’d been a little bit more put into the packaging: reproducing the cover art and back-of-box description does the job well enough, it’s just another case of feeling like more could’ve been done.

Over on the cassette front*, the mastering is much better – except the B-side is significantly louder than A! – but I’m probably allowing for more leeway due to the fidelity dip, as this stuff kinda sounds better with a bit of grit. Similarly, the J-card is limited space for artwork, so going basic works okay here… except what is up with that budget Fred Wolf image for the cover…

Anyhow, let those criticisms speak to the quality of the soundtrack, as I still rate this highly despite some minimal quality ticks: if you do have nostalgia fueling you, I imagine I don’t have to convince you, but if you’re moreso a Turtles fan, this won’t just be a dusty collector’s item on your shelf – it’s a listen to return to.

I accidentally bought two editions, yes. My fandom will really be tested by whether or not I keep two editions.