Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles was one of my favorite Nintendo games, probably topping somewhere around the top ten, hitting a little low because of the limitations on lives per character (unless you were suave enough to have the cheat codes on hand).
It had swell graphics and great music to boot. With this game, you play each of the four Ninja Turtles (Donatello, Leonardo, Raphael, and Donatello) and guide them through the underworld, the sewers and the waters, fighting all of Shredder's foot soldiers and other assorted goons to save April, the turtle's number one girl. You guide your turtles around, one at a time (when you're character loses all life squares, then you select another turtle until you run out--then it's GAME OVER) with the narration of the master, Splinter, who tells the Turtles what all they have to do in each stage.
It was the great game. I absolutely loved the soundtrack, though I wasn't very good at the game play. It was pure 8-bit fun. And, in the following the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle Games for both NES and later, for SNES, the format changed with better graphics and a different game play function (you could play two player format) which sort of modeled something like the Battletoads or Double Dragon games. Start at a stage, complete all foot soldiers and other enemies in each section, and then move on, interspered with scattered bits of the story and the impending doom of April who is captured by that scuzzbucket, Shredder. Actually, you'll see less of Splinter in the games to follow. In fact, I think I liked the whole Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle series. They were really fun games (Part II: The Arcade was what I thought to be the best of the sequels).