Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Tournament Fighters (NES)

CAN YOU BELIEVE IT? SHREDDER FINALLY CHALLENGED THE TURTLES WITHOUT KIDNAP MANHATTAN OR APRIL O' NEIL! VERY NICE!

The NES version of Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Tournament Fighters is notable for being the last Konami release for the 8-bit platform, as well as one of the few competitive fighting games released for the system during the genre's post-Street Fighter II boom. In this version, the Turtles are forbidden from using their weapons in Shredder's fighting tournament, forcing them to compete unarmed instead.

Anti-Piracy#

As with most of the games Konami published after 1990, this game features a copy-protection routine. When you press Start at the title screen, the game checks for the string "© konami" in VRAM. If the check fails, a flag is set, making the final enemy (Shredder) difficult - if not impossible - to beat.

If you do happen to defeat Shredder, the game will then loop back to the beginning of the fight.

Regional Differences#

US	Europe

Even though Konami skipped over The Manhattan Project in Europe, they still released the NES version of Tournament Fighters under the Teenage Mutant Hero Turtles banner there. There was no Famicom release of Tournament Fighters this time.

Oddities#

The NES version of Tournament Fighters allows mirror matches for every character except Hothead, going as far as to include an in-universe explanation in the manual as to why it cannot be done.² There's a trick to circumvent this in "Vs. CPU" mode, though:

1. Start a match as any other character, then choose Hothead as your opponent.
2. End the match (it doesn't matter if you win or lose), then choose "rematch".
3. Select Hothead as your character and the CPU cursor will be highlighted at Hothead as well.
4. Simply choose Hothead as your opponent again (don't move the cursor to another character) and start the next match.

The CPU-controlled Hothead will have a different palette from yours, which suggests that the game was originally going to allow Hothead mirror matches. However, during the actual fight it will become obvious why it doesn't: due to their large sizes, the two Hotheads will cause a very large amount of sprite flickering.

Using the Game Genie code NNNEZPIE will allow Hothead vs. Hothead matches in "Vs. Player" and "Vs. CPU" modes, and NNOESYIE will allow all four players in "Tournament" mode to use Hotheads. With The Cowabunga Collection, an option was included to allow this.

References#