Turtles

Purchased Sept. 9, 2001
Derek's Classic Top 50 Ranking: 24th All Time
Originally Released 1981

Page updated Oct 1, 2001

Turtles came out in 1981, a year in which there seemed to be a new game at the arcade every week. Something about this game caught my attention and I played it quite a bit. I was fortunete enough to find a mint kit with one of the nicest Control Panels I have ever seen, looks brand new.

The kit:

Game Play & Modification of 600:

It was very common in the day to license games from Japanese companies because the demand for new games was so great. Konami was very prolific and it is my theory that STERN bought the rights to a game called 600 from Konami but was disappointed with the lackluster play and decided to change the game into an entirely new game called Turtles.

The top row in each set of pictures is from 600 and the bottom is from Turtles. Stern Decided to keep the term Kidturtles to refer to the small turtles you rescue from the ?'s blocks. It's obvious the 'S' stands fro Stern in the Turtles version but I have no clue what the 'P' can possibly stand for. The scoring  is exactly the same for each game with this exception. In 600 there appears an Exit after you rescue 6 Kidturtles from the level and then you are rewarded 150 points. In Turtles you must bring each Kidturtle one at a time to a House that appears at one of the 4 corners of the screen. You cannot pick up another turtle until you drop off the previous Kidturtle. This one difference makes the all the difference in gameplay in a good way fro Turtles.

Obviously the games are clones of one another but there are many differences between the two. First off is the most obvious, is that in 600 you are being chased by race cars and in Turtles, there are bugs that are your adversaries. There are 8 ?'s on each screen and behind 6 there are Kidturtles and behind the other two there are cars and beetles respectively. In 600 there is one car that is a lot faster than the other 4 and much faster that your poor Turtle. You must outwit him by having the slower cars get in the way or use your Energy to disable them.

A key strategy in Turtles is to collect as many Bug Bombs as you can as they are essential in later levels to your survival. In 600 you have an Energy meter that takes longer to recharge the farter you get in the game whereas in Turtles you get 3 Bombs every time you cross over the flashing star in the middle of the screen.

One cool thing about Turtles is that is have different music between each level as well as 4 different tunes for the level itself as opposed to 600's same music for the level and in-between floors. Starting with level 5, 4 enemies start the level.