Uploaded July 2026 | Updated September 2026, 2 weeks ago
That Ultra Games logo closing out the commercial is not actually a real company, and that's the whole point of it. IGN has described Ultra Games plainly as a ghost publisher, invented by Konami purely to get around Nintendo's strict rule limiting how many games any one company could release on the NES in a single year. Konami wanted to put out more titles than that cap allowed, so they built a second name to publish under, and Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles came out through it in June 1989. In Europe the same trick ran again under a different Konami shell called Palcom, releasing the game as Teenage Mutant Hero Turtles instead.
The game earned its reputation almost entirely through one level. Mission two drops all four turtles underwater into the Hudson River to disarm eight time bombs planted by the Foot Clan, and you get two minutes and twenty seconds to find every single one while dodging electrified seaweed and force fields. Miss the timer and the game ends immediately, no warnings, no partial credit.
Here's the detail that still gets brought up whenever this game comes up. TMNT co-creator Kevin Eastman has said outright that even he could not beat the dam level, and he has talked about fans cornering him at conventions, furious at him personally for how hard the game was, even though Eastman had nothing to do with building it. Konami did.
None of that stopped it from selling. Turtle-mania was at its absolute peak in 1989, and this cartridge moved roughly four million copies despite, or maybe partly because of, being one of the most punishing licensed games on the entire system. It later got pulled from Wii Virtual Console in 2012 once Nickelodeon bought up the TMNT rights, before finally getting a proper second life in 2022's Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: The Cowabunga Collection.
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#tmnt #teenagemutantninjaturtles #nes #ultragames #konami #nintendohard #kevineastman #retrogaming #retrogames #80sgaming #90skids #gamingnostalgia #videogamecommercial #1989 #gameforestgf #youtubeshorts #gaming
That Ultra Games logo closing out the commercial is not actually a real company, and that's the whole point of it. IGN has described Ultra Games plainly as a ghost publisher, invented by Konami purely to get around Nintendo's strict rule limiting how many games any one company could release on the NES in a single year. Konami wanted to put out more titles than that cap allowed, so they built a second name to publish under, and Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles came out through it in June 1989. In Europe the same trick ran again under a different Konami shell called Palcom, releasing the game as Teenage Mutant Hero Turtles instead.
The game earned its reputation almost entirely through one level. Mission two drops all four turtles underwater into the Hudson River to disarm eight time bombs planted by the Foot Clan, and you get two minutes and twenty seconds to find every single one while dodging electrified seaweed and force fields. Miss the timer and the game ends immediately, no warnings, no partial credit.
Here's the detail that still gets brought up whenever this game comes up. TMNT co-creator Kevin Eastman has said outright that even he could not beat the dam level, and he has talked about fans cornering him at conventions, furious at him personally for how hard the game was, even though Eastman had nothing to do with building it. Konami did.
None of that stopped it from selling. Turtle-mania was at its absolute peak in 1989, and this cartridge moved roughly four million copies despite, or maybe partly because of, being one of the most punishing licensed games on the entire system. It later got pulled from Wii Virtual Console in 2012 once Nickelodeon bought up the TMNT rights, before finally getting a proper second life in 2022's Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: The Cowabunga Collection.
Subscribe to Game Forest GF for retro gaming content every single day.
#tmnt #teenagemutantninjaturtles #nes #ultragames #konami #nintendohard #kevineastman #retrogaming #retrogames #80sgaming #90skids #gamingnostalgia #videogamecommercial #1989 #gameforestgf #youtubeshorts #gaming
