5 out of 5

Label: Limited Run

Produced by: ?

It’s 1991. There have been five other TMNT games just on the NES, Gameboy, and SNES since 1989, and now here we are with a Gameboy sequel. Not only did many of these games prove to be pretty solid – at least, back in the days when we’d throw ourselves at our only gaming options for hours on end – but releases of the soundtracks from labels like Limited Run have proven that there was a ton of skill on all fronts on these things, wringing quite a bit of tune-age out of minimal bits.

Sometimes these TMNT scores – often (always?) by select members from the Konami Kukeiha Club – are a little derivative of the Fred Wolf theme, which is mostly what I’d expect, frankly; sometimes the scores lack their own identity. But then you also get scores like Back From the Sewers, which is firstly wildly impressive for a Gameboy entry – at a glance, the range had me thinking NES – and then secondly does the dream thing of nailing the Turtles vibe while also coming up with a unique spin / tone for the game.

Filling up the tracklist with everything (miss that “Pause” sound effect? Here it is!), LR’s vinyl mastering here sounds really excellent, bringing up the fidelity to, as mentioned, levels where this could easily pass for early NES stuff. But that’s also on the composers, of course, whose starting point is, inevitably, the theme, but immediately after that, we’re off to some pretty wild territory, with the A-side’s tracks having a kind of funky, playful bounce to them – I’d say the “typical” TMNT track is a bit more direct and goofy (think of that old cartoon score), whereas this stuff comes across a bit more patient, and then some of the fight / boss tunes really have some palpable tension to them. Even the theme gets a revisit later under this guise.

While the TMNT franchise was obviously still being marketed heavily to the youngsters, this score doesn’t reflect that: it passes as “maturity” for this particular corner of NES / Gameboy soundtracks, and really stands apart from a lot of its peers, not to mention a fair amount of interchangeable Turtles scores, and KKC creations.