What happened to TMNT: Hyperstone Heist???

OK I posted this in the review thread for the game, but no one responded.

I just got this game after wanting it since the 90's and obviously I'm disappointed. I saw the arcade games when I was little and loved them, but that was decades ago, so I don't feel extremely biased from the arcade.

OK so the first fatal flaw is the lack of throwing enemies against the screen. Not a game-breaker but it was the most memorable gimmick from the arcade, and the Genesis could have done it easily...

Then there are the water levels with everyone walking on water. There's no excuse for such lazy programming! Heck Sonic 1 had water-splashing effects, so there's just no excuse for the Turtles to walk on water with no splashing.

The Gauntlet: Normally I don't care about such boss-stages, but what makes the Gauntlet terrible is that you're fighting everyone u just killed a few minutes ago! (Even the stage before the Gauntlet.) There's also nothing new at all in this stage. The Gauntlet seems like a hack-job of all the bosses thrown into one empty stage.

The storyline doesn't make much sense and when u beat the game, Shredder jumps off the freakin' banister, then a lame "cut-scene" of the Hyperstone (basically just a bad drawing of the stone), then a horrible drawing of the Turtles flying in a blimp, or something.

What happened to this game? Why does it seem like an unfinished, poorly-made hack?

I wonder if something similar happened here, to what happened with Street Fighter II. (Nintendo got exclusive rights to the title SFII: Turbo, hence Genesis lovers got SFII:SCE, a long time after the SNES game.) I wonder if Nintendo got exclusive rights to the screen-throw, for example. Maybe they got exclusive rights to the certain bosses that are missing from Hyperstone Heist. Maybe the stages too, which would explain the stages being so scrambled and lacking in Hyperstone Heist.

Well, what is it??? :daze:

It was among Konami's very first Genesis games (along with Sunset Riders) and Sega had just contracted some former Konami employees to do some Mega Drive exclusives for them (Treasure of Gunstar Heroes fame)

The Storyline most likely is different in the original Japanese version (titled "Return of Shredder", not "Hyperstone Heist").

Throwing enemies towards the screen was a gimmick from the SNES version, not the arcade version. And I agree that it should have been included. It does not require any special hardware to reproduce. It's just regular animation made to look like 3D. Personally I think the reason why this particular feature is not included could be explained if you consider that it is very unusual for Japanese companies to port the same game to several platforms. From my personal observations there always seems to be something unique to each port, even if the hardware itself is practically identical. (Part of that may be due to the lack of access to the game's source code and original graphics though)

RE: Street Fighter II CE vs Street Fighter II Turbo - The rumor goes like this: Sega needed SF2 to stay competitive against Nintendo in North America and they wanted the best version so they negotiated for the Championship Edtition (SNES had the original World Warrior). Meanwhile Capcom released Turbo in the arcades and ported it to SNES. Sega did not want to end up with an inferior version thus Special Championship Edition was born.

^So in the arcade, there wasn't that screen-throwing move? I swear it was there, but like I said, it's been decades since I've played the Turtles arcade games (at Chuck E. Cheese's and the rollerskating rink). But if that move was NOT in the arcade, at least I feel better about the move missing in Hyperstone Heist.

RE: SFII - Hmm interesting rumor. I thought I always heard that SFII:SCE was basically a port of SFII:Turbo from the SNES, with some small changes, plus you can put the speed much faster than on SNES, or any other SFII game EVAR. :cool: I thought the changes in title, etc. were because Nintendo held exclusive rights to SFII:Turbo...

The throwing people at the screen in the arcade game I've got it downstairs it's my fav game. Maybe you mean that level in the snes version where you fight shredder and you have to throw his own men at him to hurt him that ws a snes thing and wasn't on md. Maybe that's what you meant the throwing looked ace on arcade tho!

From the SNES version??? I was under the impression that Turtles in Time (SNES) and Hyperstone Heist (GEN) were two entirely different TMNT games.

And don't feel too bad, OP, I too was quite spoiled by the SNES's graphical capablities and didn't fully understand how the Genesis's graphics tricks (such as dithering) worked when I first got into Genesis a few months back.

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From the SNES version??? I was under the impression that Turtles in Time (SNES) and Hyperstone Heist (GEN) were two entirely different TMNT games.

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And they are, but some idi people still refer to them as to different versions of the same game.

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Originally Posted by Estil

From the SNES version??? I was under the impression that Turtles in Time (SNES) and Hyperstone Heist (GEN) were two entirely different TMNT games.

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Well AFAIK they're both based on the arcade game; only Turtles in Time is a very close port, while Hyperstone Heist is missing a ton of things and its levels are scrambled up...

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Originally Posted by Estil

And don't feel too bad, OP, I too was quite spoiled by the SNES's graphical capablities and didn't fully understand how the Genesis's graphics tricks (such as dithering) worked when I first got into Genesis a few months back.

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^Ha thanks, but I'm NOT spoiled by the SNES, as I've barely seen one, aside from friends' houses. :D So that's not my problem; but I DID love the arcade game when I was young, so I guess that spoiled me, so that Hyperstone seems especially lacking compared to the arcade... ALSO the Genesis can do so much better than the graphics of Hyperstone; It could have easily had the screen-throw move, and water splashing effects, etc.

You mentioned being spoiled yourself by the SNES and not understanding the Genesis' graphics tricks at 1st; it sounds like maybe u need to play some of the Genesis' best-looking games (if u feel the Genesis is lacking in graphics). SOME games' graphics are less-than-impressive (especially early games, when the 8-bit NES was the only competitor). BUT some games show what the Genesis is capable of! Some best graphics IMO: Sonic 2 (which blows away Mario World IMO), Lightening Force, Gunstar Heroes, Street Fighter II:SCE (the FASTEST version of SFII ever AFAIK), Vectorman, Ranger X, Rocket Night Adventures, etc. I'm waiting for Pier Solar to arrive from China, but the graphics look amazing. :cool:

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Originally Posted by -RT

And they are, but some idi people still refer to them as to different versions of the same game.

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^Ouch. lol

No they're not the same game, but they're based on the same arcade game, which makes them fair enough to compare to each other... especially that TiT is a close port and Hyperstone is severely lacking...

When it comes to these two 16-bit TMNT games I'm glad its 2010 and I can afford a SNES. Back growing up, Turtles in Time was one of those SNES games that I always wanted.

I really don't see much difference between Hyperstone Heist and Turtles in Time. Both of them are equal quality games for me.

My fav is NES TMNT3 Manhattan Project anyway :)

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Originally Posted by masterturk

The throwing people at the screen in the arcade game I've got it downstairs it's my fav game.

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Oh, my bad. I don't have much experience with either the SNES version nor the arcade version.

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Originally Posted by Ecco

I thought I always heard that SFII:SCE was basically a port of SFII:Turbo from the SNES

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Good point. It is indeed rather obvious that all console ports are based on one code base - the SNES variant of either WW or Turbo (see 256x224 res which is the same in all ports).

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Originally Posted by Estil

From the SNES version??? I was under the impression that Turtles in Time (SNES) and Hyperstone Heist (GEN) were two entirely different TMNT games.

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They are. But Hyperstone still feels rushed and reeks of recycled elements of TiT.

Which double stings as this was Konami, a Triple A developer, not someone shitty like Acclaim or THQ.

Supposedly, Nintendo had one-year exclusivity contracts for SFII and TMNT: TiT throughout 1992. There of course was no SFII released for Genesis until well into 1993, and HH was released in late 1992, so it had to be drastically changed from TiT to keep it from infringing on that contract. Hey, at least Genesis owners got their Turtles beat-em-up fix. The franchise was already declining in popularity by late '92, so no use waiting until that contract ran out.

As for SFII, once the exclusivity contract ran out on that, Capcom and Sega formally (literally, there was a press conference and all, and even a cover story on "Game Players" featuring Sonic and Mega Man shaking hands) announced their partnership, primarily to bring SFII over to the Genesis. It was going to be a port of SFII: CE, but once Sega caught wind of Capcom's plans for releasing the newer Turbo on SNES summer '93, they got all up in Capcom's shit my nigga for real! For one reason or another, Capcom scrapped work on the Genesis CE port which they were developing from the ground up for the hardware (the nearly-finished results can be seen in the "SFII Turbo" beta floating around the intarwebs), and spent the summer of '93 porting over SNES Turbo to Genesis, relabeling the finished product as "Special Champion Edition".

Rep plz. :D

At least they did a good job on the Music. Hyperstone Heist's music sounds much closer to the Arcade than Turtles in Time on the SNES does.

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Originally Posted by TrekkiesUnite118

At least they did a good job on the Music. Hyperstone Heist's music sounds much closer to the Arcade than Turtles in Time on the SNES does.

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That's because both the arcade and genny versions use FM music. Although arcade YM2151 is more powerful than genesis' YM2612, they can sound similar (the same case is about SFII also).