I am not familiar with the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles of today's youth. That is to say, I have never seen an episode of the new TMNT cartoon series. I did watch the old cartoon series back in the day, own all three TMNT movies (for better or for worse) on DVD, own some of the old comics, have the Pizza Hut TMNT Tour album on cassette (it's like an 8-track, but smaller) and at one time had honed my skills at drawing the pizza-devouring heroes on a half-shell to quite some degree. So, it's not that I'm unfamiliar with the Turtles - I just had not yet seen the new series - and I tend to be aggravated when icons of my childhood are completely redone for a new generation and everything is screwed up for no apparent reason. (Peter Parker is a scientist, d@mn it! The web shooters were an important aspect of the character and a tension-heightening pivot point in too many of the best Spidey stories to count - ARGH!!!)

Anyway, I'm pleased to say that Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles 3: Mutant Nightmare managed to bring a lot of what I remember with it - without completely disorienting me, offending me or defacing the amphibious quartet I so dearly love. There are changes, to be sure, but none that seem to take any more liberty with the turtles than the later movies did - and I apparently lived through that.

TMNT 3: Mutant Nightmare actually presents three episodes of the new cartoon series - using actual footage from the cartoon as back story (in the place of FMV's) and then places you in the action of the situation they've set up. Using a cel-shading approach, TMNT features an in-game look that is very similar to the cartoon lead-in segments. This helps the suspension of disbelief quite a bit...

...at least until you hit the load times. The maps are loaded in as sections of the city, and these sections seem to be pretty small. Each time you reach the connection point between the section you're on and the next section, you will be prompted as to whether you want to proceed to the next section or not. This got old shortly before the second time I was prompted. There are lots of other games that have found ways to avoid such intrusive load times - let alone prompting the player! I would say this is the hardest aspect of the game to get around; if this doesn't bother you, feel free to pick the game up.

TMNT 3: Mutant Nightmare focuses very heavily on team work. (Splinter would be soooo proud.) This game is, at its heart, a multiplayer game. Specifically, it's a four player game. Four player cooperative is a rare thing to find, so if you have four kids or three brothers or sisters, this would probably be a good game to pick up - at least you can argue that although it features comic book violence, it does so while uniting the players against a common foe. (Or some similar lobbyist rhetoric.) At any rate, it is possible to play with less than four players - the other Turtles will simply be computer controlled in that case.

There are a few modes of play available in Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles 3: Mutant Nightmare. In addition to the Story mode, there is a "Free Battle" mode that you can play to get a more challenging experience and to collect rare scrolls. There are also two "Challenge" modes - Score Attack and Time Attack, both of which are designed to see how quickly you can dispatch enemies. These are nice modes to practice in if you find you're not as fast as you'd like.

TMNT 3: Mutant Nightmare is not difficult to approach; its control scheme is fairly straightforward. You start with a limited set of moves, and you can buy upgraded moves with crystals you collect while you're playing the game. These gems are released when you beat an enemy, but any Turtle can pick them up, regardless of who finished off the enemy. I found that the A.I. was quick to pick up gems that came anywhere near them, even in heated battles, so you'll need to be watching for these gems and feel free to grab them when your brothers beat someone, because they won't hesitate to grab the gems when you beat someone.

Other than the upgrade feature, the difficulty seems to ramp up at an manageable rate. You'll find that as you get better, the game presents a bit more of a challenge to compensate. You'll need to work on dodging gunfire, fighting multiple opponents and working with the other Turtles (whether A.I. or friend controlled) as a team. These are the keys to making the game easier to play.

While there will be a difference in difficulty between playing alone or playing with up to three other friends, there are three difficulty levels to choose from that help to set the challenge to the appropriate level. Remember: practice, practice, practice.

The way the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles license is used here is above your average license game. Footage from three episodes of the new cartoon series sets up the action and then the game takes over. Using cel-shading, the game looks very much like the cartoon. This heightens the suspension of disbelief.

The main downfall of Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles 3: Mutant Nightmare, on the other hand, is the small map areas and the need to prompt and load between them. Earlier in the life of the PS2, this may have been acceptable - maybe - but at this point, when we've seen games with virtually no load-time on the PS2 and with even richer environments that Mutant Nightmare, this is very hard to overlook.

If you're an avid TMNT collector and you are hunting for a four player cooperative melee fighter / action game for the PS2, you've got to pick this game up! For the rest of you, you may want to rent this first; it can be quite fun to play, but it's not a game for everyone.