If there's a 16-bit fighter that can hang with the heavyweights, it's Tournament Fighters. I remember when we first saw the commercials for this game, it looked very impressive right out the gate. Unfortunately, we rented the Mega Drive version and were introduced to the really ungood interpretation of the game. The SNES port of TMNT Tournament Fighters felt like the foundation of a fighter that should've become a series.

A tournament is set up and many fighters show up to compete, including Shredder. The Turtles enter in hopes of not only stopping him, but to test their skills as well. The ability to play as Shredder is pretty gravy, but it's downright hilarious to watch him in post fight interviews next to April answering questions.

The roster boasts 10 characters. The four Turtles, of course. The rest of the lineup includes War and Armaggon, characters featured the TMNT Archie series. Wingnut, a bat humanoid from the TV series. Aska, a character exclusive to this game, she hasn't been seen since, and Chrome Dome, a loser 8 foot robot Shredder created who was defeated in a matter of seconds. Rat King and Karai serve as the bosses. I am a little envious that the Mega Drive version has April O'Neal (who fights a bit like King of Fighters' Mai Shiranui) and Casey Jones as fighters. Each character plays pretty diverse, so there's some variety. Some of the Turtles share similar normal strikes, but are unique in their respective fighting styles.

Most given fighters around this period borrowed heavily from games like Street Fighter II. Tournament Fighters feels very savvy in its own right. Control scheme wise, doing general motions like quarter circle forwards + an attack will garner a special attack, so a little experimenting will pay dividends. The buffering on some attacks can be a little overly sensitive, I sometimes want to use projectiles, but it will launch another attack with slightly similar inputs instead. That aside, the controls are very responsive and satisfying. You have a Super Meter as well. Super moves were still a relatively early concept around this time for fighting games, so when I go back and see this feature as early as 1993, it's quite fascinating to see how far the meta and philosophy of fighters have come. The overall feel of the game is polished, it made me wonder why Konami didn't delve into developing fighters more.

The graphics are amazing. The colors and lighting is very much in the same spirit as Turtles games around this era, like Turtles In Time. The stages are detailed and boasts a quality amount of background activity, and the sprites for each character are large and well animated. There's not a great deal of slow-down during gameplay and the hitboxes are fairly generous. Tournament Fighters does have strong jump-ins, so anti-airing can feel a little suspect

With a standard Tournament Mode and a Story Mode where you have to rescue Splinter and April from Karai, the leader of the Foot Clan in Japan (I don't know if she was acknowledged as Shredder's daughter as this point), TMNT Tournament Fighters offers a good deal of replayability. This game is one of the best 2D fighters of the era and is totally worth going out of your way to play if you can. It boggles the mind that another mainstream fighting game featuring the Turtles hasn't come to fruition. yes, they were in Injustice 2, but that doesn't count.