''Turtles'' is a video game developed by

Konami , is a Japanese multinational video game and entertainment company headquartered in Chūō, Tokyo, it also produces and distributes trading cards, anime, tokusatsu, pachinko machines, slot machines, and arcade cabinets. Konami has casi ...

and published in arcades in 1981 by

Stern The stern is the back or aft-most part of a ship or boat, technically defined as the area built up over the sternpost, extending upwards from the counter rail to the taffrail. The stern lies opposite the bow, the foremost part of a ship. Ori ...

and Sega. The Sega version was published as ''Turpin'' (ターピン). ''Turtles'' is a

maze game A maze is a path or collection of paths, typically from an entrance to a goal. The word is used to refer both to branching tour puzzles through which the solver must find a route, and to simpler non-branching ("unicursal") patterns that le ...

where the player is a turtle trying to bring baby turtles (called "kidturtles") to their homes while avoiding

beetle Beetles are insects that form the order Coleoptera (), in the superorder Endopterygota. Their front pair of wings are hardened into wing-cases, elytra, distinguishing them from most other insects. The Coleoptera, with about 400,000 describ ...

s. The game was ported to an unusual set of home systems. 1982 releases were for the

Magnavox Odyssey² The Magnavox Odyssey 2 (stylized as Magnavox Odyssey²), also known as Philips Odyssey 2, is a second generation home video game console that was released in 1978. It was sold in Europe as the Philips Videopac G7000, in Brazil and Peru as the ...

, Arcadia 2001, and one of the four cartridges for

Entex Adventure Vision Adventure Vision is a cartridge-based video game console released by Entex Industries in either August or October 1982. The launch price of the system was $79.95. The monitor, game controls, and computer hardware are all contained within a sing ...

. A handheld version of ''Turtles'' was also released by Entex in 1982. A port for the Casio PV-1000 followed in 1983.

Gameplay

Scattered throughout the maze are boxes with question marks on them. When the player walks over a question mark, a baby turtle crawls onto the main turtle's back, a house will appear at a random location on the map, and the player will have to bring the baby turtle to its house while avoiding beetles. Other times, however, beetles will come out of the boxes, which the player will have to quickly run away from. The player's only offensive move is the ability to drop bombs (which behave more like mines) to temporarily stun the beetles. Additional bombs can be picked up in the middle of the maze. Each maze represents a floor of the building. After eight floors, there is a cutscene showing the baby turtles following their rescuer out of the building, and gameplay begins again on the ground floor.

Reception

The Odyssey² version of ''Turtles'' received a Certificate of Merit in the category of "1984 Best Arcade-to-Home Video Game/Computer Game Translation" at the 5th annual

Arkie Awards An electronic game is a game that uses electronics to create an interactive system with which a player can play. Video games are the most common form today, and for this reason the two terms are often used interchangeably. There are other common ...

. ''Joystik'' magazine had a different view of the Odyssey port: "There is not much more to this slow-moving game. Even the background music is disappointing and joystick control is awkward."

References

External links

''Turtles''
at the

Killer List of Videogames Killer List of Videogames (KLOV) is a website featuring an online encyclopedia devoted to cataloging arcade games past and present. It is the video game department of the International Arcade Museum, and has been referred to as "the IMDb for pl ...

''Turpin''
at the

* 1981 video games Adventure Vision games Arcade video games Konami games Sega arcade games Stern video games Magnavox Odyssey 2 games Maze games Handheld electronic games Video games about reptiles Konami arcade games Multiplayer and single-player video games Video games developed in Japan {{maze-videogame-stub