Trivia / Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: The Arcade Game

• Dummied Out: At one point, the game was to have special power ups in the form of color-coded pizzas: "Speedy," "Whirly," "Zappy," and "Energy." "Energy" remains in the final game as a life meter refill, and "Whirly" and "Speedy" pretty obviously show up in the sequel as the instant-kill invincibility attack and the Turtles' automatic dash attack, respectively. The odd one out is "Zappy," which gives the Turtles a laser gun to use. This one likely got nixed because the cartoon's licensors did not want to see depictions of the Turtles shooting people, realistic guns or not.
• Keep Circulating the Tapes:
  • The game was delisted from XBLA years ago (due to the license expiring), meaning unless you managed to snag it back when it was available, or even find a console with the game in it, there had been no legal way to play the original arcade game with much of the original music for years, beyond looking for an original cabinet, or downloading a ROM.
  • In 2019, a mini-cabinet, including Turtles in Time as well, was released by Arcade1Up. It costs several hundred dollars.
  • For those without infinite money, 2022's Cowabunga Collection has every version of every classic TMNT game (including this arcade game and its NES port) for only around 40 bucks... and on Xbox, Playstation, Switch and PC.
• Screwed by the Lawyers:
  • The initial run of Arcade1Up miniature cabinets had to use a Cover Version of the original TV theme song for the first arcade game's Attract Mode, presumably due to legal issues with the original recordings. The original theme returned in later Turtles in Time branded cabinets that have both games. The covered theme carried over to The Cowabunga Collection.
  • The Pizza Hut logos found in the NES version were removed when it was put into The Cowabunga Collection.