Eight and a Half Bit

By the late 1980s, the side-scrolling beat-‘em-up genre had become hugely popular amongst gamers, especially in the arcades, so it was no surprise that some companies who held licences to existing products of other mediums attempted to take advantage of this and create video games that applied a popular license to a popular genre.

    A good example was the arcade title Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, which I talked about in Part 1, and this was far from the last video game to feature the Turtles in an effort to exploit their popularity: the arcades later received the sequel Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Turtles In Time, which was also released on the Super Nintendo, while some Turtles beat-‘em-ups exclusive to home systems included Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles III: The Manhattan Project on the NES, and Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: The Hyperstone Heist on the Sega Mega Drive, although the latter title borrowed heavily from Turtles In Time.

    And I am now officially sick of writing the word “Turtles”.

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