Forgotten Videogames: Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles The Hyperstone Heist
Some games are better than you think. Welcome to WatchMojo.com and today we’ll be taking a look at 1992’s all but forgotten arcade-style beat ‘em up “Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: The Hyperstone Heist.”
Based on the 80s cartoon series, the game’s plot begins with April O’Neil reporting from Ellis Island. There, she witnesses Manhattan Island and the Statue of Liberty suddenly shrink and disappear. Shredder then announces over television that this was only a demonstration of his new powers, granted by the Hyperstone from Dimension X. With Shredder yet again set on taking over the world, the Turtles must fight their way to their nemesis and stop his latest plan.
Developed by Konami, this lesser-known Ninja Turtles action game is one of the few to never appear as its own arcade cabinet. This is due to being exclusive to the Sega Genesis, while the insanely popular fourth game “Turtles in Time” had already been sucking up quarters for an entire year, and was simultaneously released for the Super Nintendo to massive fanfare.
Further taking away from the game’s luster was the fact that it was an obvious reworking of “Turtles in Time”, but with inferior colors and raspy digitized sound effects, which resulted from the technical limitations of Sega’s hardware.
Despite Hyperstone Heist featuring similar gameplay, it made several major modifications. These included having the dash maneuver assigned to a single button, while it eliminated your ability to throw enemies at the screen. It also featured fewer levels. However, these five stages were longer, and significantly more difficult to complete, do to its much more aggressive and faster moving enemies.
And breaking with other Ninja Turtles games based on the 80s cartoon series; it surprised fans by including Tatsu, Shredder’s right-hand man from the first two live-actions films, as a stage boss.
Despite gamers thinking that The Hyperstone Heist was a simple clone, it has come to become recognized as its own terrific Ninja Turtles adventure, and one of the best Genesis games to ever appear on the platform.
