3 out of 5

Label: Limited Run

Produced by: ?

I respect the heck out of this concept – putting the more robust arcade version of the soundtrack on one side of a cassette; the more slimmed down NES version on the other – but this particular TMNT soundtrack suffers from being partially too dedicated to the Fred Wolf show’s themes, and partially too “Konami Kukeiha Club.” It leads to something of a wash where all of the tunes are definite bops, but they exist in a realm of split familiarity of sounding like one thing or another thing, and never quite their own thing. Putting the versions together, while definitely ideal, unfortunately tends to highlight this: as the NES version has to follow the arcade themes, and then is further locked down by the constrained technology of the system, things are even further removed – an echo of that familiarity.

I don’t want to be harsher than this already sounds: KKC worked on a billion titles because they mastered a particular 80s / 90s sound that could be milked for a lot of different iterations and genres; for a TMNT beat ’em up, the team definitely took notes from the cartoon themes and did a lot of impressive scales and fast-paced jams, so this thing is never without a toe-tapping beat, and definitely a small handful of surprises, when a song will find a jam that really lands. But these are over quick, and then we’re back to variation #10 of the Turtles theme song. And then being less critical of the NES approximation, it’s impressive as heck that they were able to squish these songs into fewer (I’m supposing) channels, while also carving out some tunes that were a better fit to those limitations.

Just from a bang-for-buck perspective, each side of the tape is pretty filled up, and the scores are definitely different enough to merit listening to both. However, out of all the early Turtles games, the arcade version is probably the one I played the most – it’s the one for which I have the most relative nostalgia for its tunes. (Or at least the first half, since I didn’t get to the second half of the game too often.) However, even with that nostalgia, it’s never rated super highly in the pantheon of memorable game themes for me, mostly for the reasons stated above – like, it’s fun hearing the cartoon song come out of this arcade machine, but that charm fades. It’s interesting having these feelings revalidated however many years later.

The cassette from Limited Run sounds good, and is mastered consistently, though as with the other releases, there’s nothing really notable about the artwork – LR went more for matching looks for the series than unique packaging.