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The Hyperstone Heist is a game I’ve wanted to play for a long time. I was always under the impression that it was similar to Turtles in Time and I love that game. I don’t know if it’s rare but back when I was looking for copies, I came across a lot of reproduction cartridges and I remember genuine copies selling for quite a bit of money. So when the Cowabunga Collection released, needless to say, I was excited to finally have the chance to play it. Developed and published by Konami, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: The Hyperstone Heist was released for Genesis in December, 1992 and it was re-released as part of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: The Cowabunga Collection in 2022. For this review, we played the version from the Collection for PC.
The story opens with April O’Neil reporting from Liberty Island when Manhattan shrinks. Shredder reveals this was from the power of the Hyperstone, a treasure from Dimension X, and threatens to conquer the world so the Turtles go after him. Hyperstone Heist shares many similarities with Turtles in Time and borrows a lot of things from that game but there are some differences. When compared to the SNES version of Turtles in Time, Hyperstone Heist comes with only the story or arcade mode, less stages, and less bosses. Despite the reduction in stages, many of them are longer and feature some areas that feel similar to stages in Turtles in Time. Most of the mechanics from Turtles in Time are present here, too.
The version of Hyperstone Heist in the Cowabunga Collection does come with some enhancements but not as many as some of the other games. You can set the starting level and turn friendly fire on and off. The game does support up to two players, comes with multiple difficulty levels, and before jumping in, you must select one of the four Turtles; Leonardo, Donatello, Michelangelo, and Raphael. They retain most of their moves from Turtles in Time and there is a separate button for dashing or running. You cannot throw enemies towards the screen but you can still slam foes onto the ground repeatedly, damaging nearby enemies in the process. Once again the scoring system is how many enemies you’ve defeated but unlike the SNES version of Turtles in Time, you are not awarded extra points for defeating enemies with certain moves.
So if you’ve played Turtles in Time, most of what’s here should be familiar. But, unfortunately, we feel Hyperstone Heist is just not as good. It’s not bad but it feels lacking compared to that game. It doesn’t take very long to get through, the new stuff isn’t anything amazing, and most of it feels familiar. Furthermore, one of the stages here isn’t as good as the others in our opinion. And that stage is The Gauntlet. It’s basically a boss rush featuring all of the previous stages’ bosses and ends with a fight against Stockman. We would have preferred a more unique stage in the style of the others.
For the most part, we would say the difficulty is on par with that of Turtles in Time. The SNES version, that is. It’s not as challenging as the arcade games or NES games but does put up a decent fight. It features some new foes like fire breathing Foot soldiers but most of the enemies should be familiar to veterans of Turtles in Time and other than Tatsu, none of the bosses are new. As expected, health is replenished by acquiring the Pizza Pickups and Power Pizza is a power-up that will cause your Turtle to spin around for a limited time allowing you to quickly inflict damage to multiple enemies.
As for the presentation, Hyperstone Heist is not a bad looking game and features good sprite work and animations. That said, many sprites and assets look like they were ripped from Turtles in Time but some of the backgrounds of familiar areas do look different. The action is backed by some excellent tunes which should also sound familiar. Ultimately, the game looks and sounds fine but we would say the audiovisual presentation is a slight downgrade from Turtles in Time. I’m sure part of the reason is because of hardware limitations and we won’t knock it for that. For example, the Genesis doesn’t have anything like SNES’s Mode 7 which may explain why some effects are not present in Hyperstone Heist. On the technical side, the game does run well, or at least it does in the Cowabunga Collection, and we did not encounter any noticeable bugs or major problems.
In the end, we enjoyed Hyperstone Heist but we feel Turtles in Time is by far the better game. Now that I’ve finally played it, I’m glad I didn’t drop over one hundred bucks on a genuine copy for Genesis. I honestly thought it would be better than it is. It’s not a bad game by any means but it does feel like it’s lacking. It’s not a port or conversion of Turtles in Time, it’s its own thing, but it borrows a lot from that game and simply doesn’t deliver an experience quite as enjoyable. This game probably would have been better if it was just Turtles in Time with the necessary changes to support the Genesis hardware. But, instead, Hyperstone Heist feels like a reskin of Turtles in Time with just enough changes to make it feel like a different game. And it’s not as good.
We would recommend Hyperstone Heist because it’s a fun beat ’em up. It’s biggest problem is that it takes a lot from Turtles in Time and offers a less enjoyable experience. I think if Konami actually made Turtles in Time for Genesis or a truly different game, it probably would have turned out better. Nevertheless, it’s definitely worth checking out if you’re a fan of Turtles beat ’em ups and we feel the Cowabunga Collection is great way to experience it.