The Video Game Project
A Closer Look At The Prototypes That Became Your Favourite Games!
Turtles
Turtles is a 1981 arcade maze game developed by Konami and published by Stern and Sega. The Sega version was published as Turpin. Turtles was ported to the Magnavox Odyssey² and several other consoles in 1982.
Scattered throughout the maze are boxes with question marks on them. When the player walks over a question mark, a baby turtle crawls onto the main turtle's back, a house will appear at a random location on the map, and the player will have to bring the baby turtle to its house while avoiding beetles. Other times, however, beetles will come out of the boxes, which the player will have to quickly run away from.
The player's only offensive move is the ability to drop bombs (which behave more like mines) to temporarily stun the beetles. Additional bombs can be picked up in the middle of the maze. Each maze represents a floor of the building. After eight floors, there's a cutscene showing the baby turtles following their rescuer out of the building, and gameplay begins again on the ground floor.
The Odyssey² version of Turtles was well received, gaining a Certificate of Merit in the category of "1984 Best Arcade-to-Home Video Game/Computer Game Translation" at the 5th annual Arkie Awards
