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Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles Mutant & Monster Mayhem was made in 2005 by WayForward Technologies and was released by Tech 2 Go LLC. It is a plug and play gaming device.
Sadly the gun lacks sights. The handle is rather short and not suited for being used by a huge adult hand. The trigger is hard and has sharp edges. Prolonged play was quite painful to the whole hand and especially to the trigger finger. The gun sports a reset button and an on/off switch. The battery compartment should include a battery caddy for four AA cells. Sadly my gun came without this. Using a laboratory PSU I found out that the gun expects 6 V DC with the plus pole being left when the gun points to the TV. Building an own caddy is difficult as the compartment is small. Finally I ended up soldering wires of a PSU directly onto the springs which were just barely wetable with solder. The gun is notable for featuring three distinct RCA connectors which is rarely seen on plug and play devices. Nevertheless the system gives out audio in mono.
Mutant & Monster Mayhem is not the first TMNT light gun game. In 1988 Bandai released another game for the Takara Video Challenger, which was based on the 1987 TV series. Mutant & Monster Mayhem however is based on the newer 2003 series. I am just familiar with the original comics by Laird and Eastman and with the eighties series. Therefore I can't say how faithful the game is to its origin.
The game consists of four chapters made of three levels each, which are concluded in a boss fight. Chapters can be chosen in any order. One chapter takes place on a Triceraton Spaceship. This chapter reminds me of Body Count which I reviewed in episode 26. Another chapter takes the player to Mutant City. D'Hoonib Forest is another chapter. Finally there is the ninja themed Battle Nexus. Each chapter has a unique set of enemies. At the conclusion of a level a score screen is displayed. Beating a chapter will show a brief animation. Succeeding all chapters will trigger the credits roll.
The player has a certain number of lives which are used up if the health gauge is exhausted. The lives are restocked at the beginning of every level. The total number of lives is altered by the difficulty setting. Easy will give the player five lives whereas hard mode will provide two lives. If the player runs out of lives the game is over and doesn't provide any continues. From time to time a fellow turtle appears on the screen. Shooting him will cause the player to lose a whole live and a score penalty is triggered. As a default weapon the player uses a semi automatic gun with infinite ammunition and unlimited capacity. Items such as health, screen clearing bombs, a shield and two other weapons can be picked up. The other weapons are a spread gun and a full automatic gun.
Personally I think the game could have been much better with some little changes. Nevertheless I am glad I own the system despite its flaws. I like the art style and the music. The ordinary game play felt much too easy compared to the boss fights. Furthermore I find it lazy that the difficulty setting just alters the number of lives.
I think the box looks really appealing. It allows the customer to touch and feel the gun.