This game was infamous for being considered to be one of the hardest NES games of all time, and I remember being a kid borrowing it from my cousins (who had a large NES game collection), and I remember not getting very far. If you died, your current turtle was captured and you’d have to pick a different one, if all four turtles were captured you had to start from the very beginning. Playing in a top-down perspective for part of the game and avoiding various hazards, your goal would be to get to the side scrolling stages by entering manhole covers or buildings, very similar to Zelda II: The Adventure of Link.
Konami was the developer, but for the first outing it was published under their Ultra Games company in the states, a way to produce more games on the NES. As I said before, the first Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles game released in 1989 for the Nintendo Entertainment System, which was based on the popular cartoon series at the time.
