More often than not, these cool moments just remind you that the game isn't as fleshed out as it ought to be. TCRI billboards and burrowing mousers are nice details, but the environment isn't snazzy enough. Leo's stages don't have enough alternate routes, Raph's stages provide too few opportunities to use his climbing abilities, and Michelangelo's and Don's stages don't have nearly enough jumping sections. Most players will run through the game from beginning to end in under an hour. If you replay levels in order to collect the 20 crystals you need to unlock the last motorcycle bonus game, it may take two hours. The lack of a two-player link feature is also painfully obvious, since the best TMNT games in the past have allowed multiple players to team up with one another.
Four of the 17 stages are minigames. Here, Leo is piloting a tank in the sewer.
Owing to the fact that the environments don't offer much to look at, the graphics come across as blah. The character designs are great--each turtle has the proper skin tone, weapons, and accessories--and the animation is smooth, but it's hard to be wowed when you're standing in front of a brick wall fighting enemies that don't fight back. The audio fares a little better. Much of the music sounds identical to what plays during the cartoon on Fox, and the variety of sound effects is a good mix of punches, thuds, and, slaps. The game needs a few more speech samples--such as the familiar "dudes" and "cowabungas" that the turtles exclaim during the cartoon show--but there are a couple of "whoas" and "ouches" here and there.
While devoted fans may be able to look past the game's shortcomings and enjoy Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles on the Game Boy Advance, most players would be better off skipping this one.
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