OMG TMNT

God knows how many hours I spent as a kid playing through "Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles II: The Arcade Game" on the NES.\nSure, the graphics and sound sucked compared to the actual arcade game, but in the early '90s it was a damn fine port of an arcade game.\nNow, the arcade game has come to Xbox Live, and without having to be squeezed onto an 8-bit system it's an absolutely perfect translation … at least offline.\nIt's hard to call yourself a real gamer if you haven't played "TMNT" in the arcades before. It's a basic yet extremely enjoyable game. Pick a turtle, and go through a series of sidescrolling levels taking out hundreds of Foot Clan soldiers --and eventually Shredder himself -- to rescue April O'Neill and Master Splinter. One button jumps, one button attacks. It's almost Zen-like in its simplicity, and it's an absolute blast with three other friends … offline.\nThe real draw of this port, in theory, is the ability to go through the game with your friends via Xbox Live. \nIn reality, it's a giant mess as the usually smooth animation is reduced to a slideshow. The music, which let's face it, is really only great as nostalgia, is reduced to, as one person I played with put it, the sounds of "a robot shitting."\nHow "TMNT" has so many problems yet much more complicated modern games such as "Gears of War" do not boggles the mind.\nNot every game suffers such problems, but in my experience online, only about one in 10 Live games had little to no slowdown.\nThe basic game is still as much fun as it was nearly 20 years ago, but the online portion really needs to be patched ASAP to make it run at an acceptable speed. Still, it's only $5 to download an arcade-perfect version of "TMNT" at long last, and offline co-op is just as good as you remember, so it's not a total bust.