

Various other criticisms include the lack of music from the TV show (ironically, the game's TV commercial included the credits music from the cartoon), the enemies being unfamiliar to fans of the series, and the box art having all the Turtles wear red masks (the box artwork was taken from the cover of the second printing of issue #4 of the original comic book, in which all the Turtles wore red masks). Some seaweed will drag the turtle to his doom.ĭespite this underwater level, the turtles cannot fall into the water in the sewers without being washed away (although this might be due to the currents in the sewers being very rapid). Adding to the difficulty are various tight areas with electric seaweed which will deplete health very quickly if touched. One particularly infamous stage is the dam stage, in which several time bombs must be deactivated within a time limit. One building, filled with enemies, is completely useless aside from getting a full pizza. One hole is actually not a jump at all, but rather can actually be walked over (although this is not made obvious).

Various jumps early in the game are made ridiculously difficult due to the ceiling being too low to make the jump easily, thus forcing the player to go through the difficulty of getting back to the jump repeatedly. Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles has been criticized for being unnecessarily difficult.

The game was featured on the cover of volume 6 of Nintendo Power magazine in 1989.The original arcade version of former was remade for Xbox Live Arcade in 2007. Two sequels were released on the NES, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles II: The Arcade Game and Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles III: The Manhattan Project, both beat 'em ups.
