Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles

Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, released in 2003 by Konami, was one of the games accompanying the franchise's return to popularity following the release of a new animated series. On the Game Boy Advance it offers an action platformer with beat-'em-up elements, in which players alternately control all four turtles – Leonardo, Raphael, Michelangelo, and Donatello – making their way through New York's sewers, rooftops, and the Foot Clan's lairs, with each character wielding a unique weapon and a slightly different fighting style. The levels combine battles against waves of enemies, platforming sections, and boss fights lifted from the contemporary TV series, including Shredder and other iconic villains, and players can switch between turtles at any time depending on which fighting style suits the section best.

The graphics aimed for a faithful rendering of the characters in line with the new series' art style, and the music and sound effects matched the fast, action-driven pace of the fights, with audio typical of Konami's licensed titles of the era. The controls were adapted to the GBA's small number of buttons, so the game relies more on simple attack combinations and dodges than a complex combat system, making it accessible even to younger or less experienced players. Contemporary reviews rated the game as solid, if not groundbreaking, action platforming, drawing mainly on the popularity of the license and its precise timing within the era's wave of interest in the turtles.

Today it serves mainly as a pleasant nostalgic reminder of the early 2000s and a demonstration of how Konami approached licensed handheld games at the time – craftsmanlike and honest, if without greater ambitions to push the genre forward. For fans of the series from that period, it remains a nice way to revisit the visual style of the turtles and their adversaries, and as a handheld action platformer it offers a pleasantly balanced mix of fights, jumping sections, and boss battles, so players never grow tired of any single type of challenge for too long.