Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles 2: Battle Nexus

Play with up to 4 Players

NA release: 19th October 2004
EU release: 11th March 2005
JP release: N/A
Developer: Konami
Publisher: Konami
NGC Magazine Score: 50%
Mods Used: Widescreen Hack

The second in Konami’s trilogy of Turtle beat-’em-ups. Quite a lot has changed, with the game actually supporting four players. The Turtles themselves also have different abilities this time, which is both a blessing and a curse. Especially when playing alone.

On your own, you now play as all the Turtles, swapping between them with the Z button. They all have different abilities. Leonardo is good at attacking, Raphael can push the occasional large box you encounter, Michelangelo can hover over the one or two relevant gaps you encounter throughout the game and Donatello can activate buttons that look like a computer console. Essentially, they have meaningless abilities assigned for the sake of it.

Which means you’ll pretty much be playing as Leonardo while occasionally switching to others to trigger progression through the level. The Turtles all share a health bar (even in co-op) so you can’t even tactically use one because the others are low on health. The actual fighting is quite dull still, too. Most enemies explode when they die and objects fall from the sky in many levels, there’s rolling borders (with one of the Turtles quipping that they’ve seen something like that in a movie every single time) – it’s just frustrating.

The game manages to take up two discs because there’s a lot of cutscenes taken from the show, you play through full episodes and a lot of these episodes are included. This version of the show doesn’t seem half bad, as the cutscenes were a highlight of the game.

Poor

The game looks great, and there’s a little variety given the inclusion of racing sequences. Nevertheless, Battle Nexus struggles to rise above the ordinary and, unless you’re a huge turtles fan, it’s best left alone.
Jes Bickham, NGC Magazine #105

Remake or remaster?

Only in a Turtles collection.

Official Ways to get the game

There’s no official way to get Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles 2: Battle Nexus.