Introduction: Pixel style, 70s comics, 90s animation and classic FC games, this wave, ah, this wave in the fifth layer of the Renaissance.
Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles is about to launch a new game.
Over the years, in the various inventory of players' "Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles" top ten games, it is rare to see the shadow of the 21st century, even if it is occasionally selected, it must belong to the gba platform born in the 21st century, but the technology stays in the last century. In other words, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles games are best suited to live in the pixel age.
The new work released this time completely restores the cute appearance of "Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles" in the memory of the post-80s
Born in 1984, "Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles" is a memorable screen memory of China's post-80s TV children, the broadcast of animation that year, just and the popular promotion of fc hosts in China overlaps, following the "Contra", the turtles have sucked countless fans for konami, and even made an unexpected strong promotion for Pizza Hut who has just entered China's catering market. Let's go through this article, from the original birth of Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles to the golden years of introducing cartoons and pixel games, while picking up memories, while learning about the past, and preparing for the upcoming reunion.
A Renaissance in new York sewers
The 1970s were a period of rapid growth in the American comic book market, and in the past decade, the rapidly increasing number of comic book franchise stores provided an excellent sales platform for underground comics and independent comics published by individuals, and anyone who picked up a paintbrush could join the ranks of creators at any time. Two of the comic book lovers, Kevin Eastman and Pete Ryder, were heavily influenced by the free-spirited style of the period, and in 1982, instead of taking their drawings to Marvel or DC to try their luck, they founded their own comic book company, Phantom Studios, from the very beginning.
Kevin Eastman and Pete Ryder
This "studio" is not like the dedicated office space of an office building as everyone thinks, it is just the kitchen of Eastman's house - "phantom" is "non-existent" to put it bluntly. One night in November 1983, the two were in the studio with a pair of doodles, and the first teenage mutant turtle was born when Eastman placed Bruce Lee's knuckle stick and Zorro's blindfold on a two-legged standing turtle.
Ryder admired the idea so much that they expanded the number of turtles to four that night, and added "teenage mutant" (mutant teenager) in front of the original "ninja turtle" name, which on the one hand seemed to have more (pseudo)scientific basis, and on the other hand, the popularity of X-Men in the 70s and 80s soared, and mutant just corresponded to the "mutant" boom.
Unlike the familiar animated version, originally Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles followed a film noir style, with a more stylistic style like Batman and Night Magic.
In the process of processing the image and writing the story, the two first put in the Elements of Japanese Samurai and Science Fiction Movies, so that the four turtles with human intelligence and super physique because of the mutation worship under the mouse Sprinter, who is also genetically mutated and proficient in ninjutsu; next, the work focuses on the cold and dark style of film noir and underground comics, influenced by the master Frank Miller (masterpiece "Batman, Dark Knight", "Night Devil Reborn") and the two living environment, the background of the story chose the prevalence of street culture, In the end, Eastman initially gave the four turtles Japanese names due to their explicit ninja elements, but Ryder thought that this would create a cultural gap for comic book readers, so he selected the names of the four artists in the book according to a painting textbook at hand, namely Michelangelo, Leonardo, Raphael, and Donatello.
Comic cover (image source from the internet)
From 1984, when the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles comic was first released at comic shows, to 1988, when the anime series of the same name appeared on the television screen due to the popularity of the manga, "Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles" quickly became popular in the United States. At that time, "Transformers" and "Special Forces" were a bit like the "past Internet celebrities" in the current context, not only the animation ratings continued to be sluggish, but the theme toys were even more in slow sales (this set of classic operation methods of selling toys with animation was later moved to China with the reform and opening up), so the industry was not optimistic about the commercial prospects of "Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles" at the beginning of the period.
However, the reality is that the children who first grew up watching "Transformers" are entering adolescence, and the street culture in "Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles" has always been a mutant turtle that has always existed as an alien, a beautiful female TV reporter, and mysterious Oriental ninjutsu and other active, playful, and curious content put together, how a "cool" word. In 1988, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles toy sales reached $23 million (ranking seventh in the U.S. in the same category), and a year later, due to the continued popularity of the anime, this value soared to $110 million (about 400 million yuan at the exchange rate at that time).
The American Westinghouse Broadcasting Company, as the animation producer, began to prepare plans for the turtles to go to sea, and the third Shanghai International Television Festival in 1990 was their next stop.
Four wang eight dare to come to Guangzhou, is it not the ingredients for walking?
In November 1990, the third Shanghai International Television Festival was held as scheduled, and the TV stations from all over the world who came to the exhibition hoped to take this opportunity to introduce their excellent cultural products to the vast number of Chinese audiences. For the staff responsible for the introduction of content in various local stations in China, coming to the exhibition is equivalent to "purchasing goods", not only to choose the right program, to choose a good program, but also to select a program that not only conforms to the trend of the times, but also the people like to hear.
Mr. Bai Jiahui, who was the deputy director of the editor-in-chief office of Guangzhou Television Station at the time, took a look at the "Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles" (in order of priority, there was obviously no such translation at that time), this cartoon was perhaps too impressive at first, and in the next few days, Bai Jiahui, out of a professional attitude, although he also observed the animations of other filmmakers, but finally spent a total of 120,000 US dollars (about 600,000 yuan at the time) for Guangzhou TELEVISION at a price of 2,000 US dollars per episode, spending a total of 120,000 US dollars (about 600,000 yuan at the time) for Guangzhou TV Station. Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles".
Good memories of TV children after 80s
"Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles" became the first foreign animation series independently funded by the Guangzhou Television Program Communication Center and fully responsible for translation, production and distribution. The name "Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles", just like many things that first arrived from the United States in that era, was named "Sindaya" as an excellent translation of the name (other classic examples include Coca-Cola, KFC, Kodak, Transformers, etc.), "Ninja", "God" and "Turtle", each of which is taken out individually, our children and young people will not be completely unfamiliar, and together they will never forget.
As the green leaves around the turtle, the villains in the series also left a deep impression on the small audience at that time
In contrast, the foreign names of the four divine turtles in the Renaissance style are not so catchy, of which Raphael and Michelangelo follow the translations of the two giants in the Chinese world, and the program team considers Leonardo's low popularity and directly pulls "Leonardo" to "imposter". As for Donatello, which many people are not familiar with until now, it is even named "Einstein", "Da Vinci" is rounded up and is still in the Italian Renaissance era, Einstein is afraid that he can only use the portrait of this scientist that was commonly hung in primary and secondary schools at that time, and children have a certain understanding to explain (and Einstein's portrait hangs together, as well as Lu Xun, Beethoven and Marx).
In terms of dubbing, the program team borrowed a complete set of professional military equipment from the intelligence office of the Guangzhou Military Region, which not only provided high quality, but also the full-time recording staff of the intelligence room also participated as on-site staff. With sufficient guarantees on the hardware, several major voice actors Li Bangyu, Li Wei, Yang Limin, Feng Qian and other actors from the Guangdong Repertory Theatre and the Guangzhou Military Region Repertory Theatre were able to dedicate wonderful performances, such as Li Wei, as the voice actor of raphael, the villain Lang Ge and the clown bull head, who changed freely in various characters with different personalities and voice characteristics, and the professional skills were excellent, and the success of character shaping was even more than the Chinese dubbing in today's Blizzard games.
After Guangzhou Television completed the premiere of "Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles" in December 1990, it successively provided follow-up recording tapes to Shanghai, Beijing and other places, making "Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles" rapidly popular in China. Soon after, with the Nintendo FC console set off a round of game boom, "Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles" became the earliest IP adaptation game that Chinese players were exposed to, and the debut was the peak of the work, all from a manufacturer that has now been criticized by the majority of players - konami.
My name is konami and there is no fxxk in front of my name
The article began by mentioning that in the inventory of Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles-related games, the early pixel-style works were much higher than the later 3D and HD. So it's not hard to see why veteran players and Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles enthusiasts have such a strong sense of excitement when they see the retro theme "Big Factory" tribute games' newly announced "Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Slade's Revenge".
Slade's Revenge is a model for a series of Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles games launched by Konami in the late 1980s and early 1990s, most notably Tmnt: the Arcade Game (1989) and Tmnt: Turtles in Time (1991). Both games use 2D pixel-style action levels, supporting up to four players to operate the Turtles on the same screen, and the game also plays the hardware limits of the year, cramming a large number of villain enemies into the bustling streets of New York and the sewers that serve as the home of the Turtles. The post-80s Chinese players are most familiar with the "Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles" on the fc console.
Under the technical conditions at that time, the developers of konami used limited functions to make the game have animation-like vivid expression, and also made interesting content such as semi-open-world turtle chariots, switching level gameplay, and underwater levels. The "Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles" theme fighting game was mistaken for a horizontal version of the level for players who were in the prehistoric era for information at the time, and bought it home to find that it was a "fight", but how could the friends who met together to break through the level come in vain, so everyone became an opponent with a sword and a stick to greet. Konami's hand made the most of the copyright resources, and incidentally laid the groundwork for the crossover of Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles and Mortal Kombat 11 more than two decades later.
Compared with the brilliance of the 2D horizontal version, 3D and HD are simply the long nightmares of "Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles" that almost can't wake up. The 3D version of the god turtle game of those hot chickens in the ps2 era is not only spicy eyes, but also hurts feelings, and cartoon rendering not only does not bring more vivid expression, but makes the game more homogeneous. After upgrading to ps3/x360, even if Platinum Studios personally went down to "cover up", the quality of the game was still irreparable.
In "Slade's Revenge", we see that the kung fu of the turtle's fists and feet still seems to have little to do with the sharp ninjutsu, but the refreshing fights, the lively scenes and the high degree of reduction in the sense of humor in the manga and animation make players look forward to this new work with retro trends. There is such a picture detail in the trailer, the turtle first hits the enemy in the direction of the player in front of the screen, and then the enemy will hit the screen to form a "shattered" picture effect, this sense of humor that breaks the dimensional wall is a tribute to the same idea in the original "tmnt:arcade" version.
Conclusion: The two main producers involved in "Slade's Revenge" are Jonathan Lavigne and Justin Cyr, who are best known for their previous works as Scott Pilgrim vs. the World: the game, and a GBA-based Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles game. The two belong to the kind of developers with the typical "power generation with love" traits, are well-versed in a series of related cultures of Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, and have publisher Dotemu's precise vision of games such as Tekken Angry 4 and Wonder Boy: The Dragon Trap, and we have reason to believe that Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Slade's Revenge will be a "Renaissance" masterpiece.
References: "Fairy Tales of the Past, Chinese Translation and Production of Animation (1988-1992)" by Guanzhong Afu, Communication University of China Press