TEENAGE MUTANT NINJA TURTLES: TOURNAMENT FIGHTERS - GRANDMASTERS EDITION Super Nintendo Entertainment System written by Allo on 3rd March 2025 updated by Allo on 17th March 2025 updated by Allo on 1st April 2025 updated by Allo on 11th April 2025 REASONING AND JUSTIFICATION FOR CHANGES ======================================= BALANCE CHANGES The main goal of changes made in this "Grandmasters Edition" was to balance the Grandmasters Rat King and Karai (who are boss characters and therefore overpowered) by "nerfing" them sufficiently, so they may be used in fair competition. This also serves to expand the competitive roster by 2, increasing the playable characters from 10 up to 12. This adds more variety to the gameplay and can change up the existing meta, keeping this game fresh and exciting. These changes were chosen by first assessing what tools made Rat King and Karai too strong, and then figuring out the best way to reduce the effectiveness of these tools. (It is important to note that these changes only apply when played by a human player, so as to make the final bosses in Tournament and Story Mode still very formidable to create a good end game challenge!) These changes were then playtested for some time, which yielded promising results. However, it will be worthwhile getting very high level, competitive players in the TMNT: TF community to truly explore these balances as it will likely take some time for the meta to evolve, and strategies to be found. Hopefully people see this as a good start! RAT KING -------- RAT BOMBER - USEABLE DURING BLOCK STUN Rat King is too strong for a number of reasons. The first is his Rat Bomber, which is strong because 1) the throw system allows a character to be thrown during block stun, and when combined with the fact that Rat King is positive on block with most jump-ins and grounded attacks, he can essentially react to his opponent's block by performing an inescapable Rat Bomber; 2) it has a greater throw range than even Chrome Dome's Electric Pile Driver; and 3) his rebound after the move is small enough to make it so that he is easily in range to perform another Rat Bomber. Being thrown out of block stun is an essentially a broken mechanic in the game, so this issue was resolved my making a global change to make characters unable to be thrown while in block stun. TMNT: TF is a Street Fighter clone, and no Street Fighter game (outside of World Warrior) permits throws in block stun. It stands to reason that TMNT: TF also should not allow being thrown out of block stun. RAT BOMBER - RANGE AND RECOIL Rat King's Rat Bomber range has therefore been reduced from 88 pixels, to 80 pixels (which is the same as Chrome Dome's Electric Pile Driver). This only applies to human players. Rat King's Rat Bomber also normally leaves him close enough to very easily get into range again to do another one! As a result, his post-move rebound has been increased, and the opponent is also able to recover faster, making Rat King have to put a lot more work to get into Rat Bomber throw range again. GENERAL DAMAGE Rat King's attacks also do too much damage. His Rat Bomber does a whopping 38 damage, which beats out the strongest throw move in the game (Chrome Dome's Electric Pile Driver) by 14 points. All his normal attacks also do very high damage, so his overall damage output was reduced by 25%. This still leaves his Rat Bomber at the most damaging throw in the game, but brings it down to 28. This damage reduction only applies to human players. RAT ARROW Rat King's mobility is also extremely good, due to the ease of executing his Rat Arrow special move (his jumping HK, which propels him forward). When done sequentially low to the ground, this can have him cross the entire screen in less than 1 second. Given it is a special move which even does block damage, the tool needs to be made harder to use. The Rat Arrow now requires a directional input (i.e. pressing down+K). Down was chosen as it is diametrically opposite to up, and so now doing multiple Rat Arrows close to the ground requires executional skill and therefore be prone to mistakes (which can cause loss of good spacing/positioning, or even leave Rat King flying vulnerable in the air with a normal kick). The concept of a directional motion was entertained (e.g. U,UF,F+K) given that the Rat Arrow is a special move, but the time it takes to execute said motion would be too long and this would render the move almost useless by comparison! Additionally, Wingnut's Power Dive is also a Special Move that does block damage, and is executed with the same simple single direction motion requirement (down+K). Rat King's Rat Arrow has also now been given more variety depending on the strength of the button used, which is actually a buff rather than a nerf, as this helps with Rat King's positioning game. Rat King now has a LK version of the Rat Arrow, which travels at half the horizontal speed of the HK version. This can help him get over projectiles without getting too close to the opponent, and the variety can also create less predictability and make it harder for the opponent to react to. HOPPING AXE KICK Rat King's Hopping Axe Kick is also extremely powerful. It's just a single button normal move (HK), but it can hit THREE times (each being a heavy hit); leaves him positive on block so he can combo with another (i.e. 4th) attack afterwards (which can result in re-dizzy even from an already dizzied state). Additionally, it allows him to cross approximately 75% of the screen with just a single button. (He was also previously able to react to an opponent blocking by performing Rat Bomber while they are in block stun, but as stated earlier, this mechanic has already been fixed.) To weaken his Hopping Axe kick, the move has now been changed to a "Command Normal", requiring pressing LK+HK at the same time. Errors in execution leads to his normal standing kick, which due to its slow animation, can be a very costly mistake. Additionally, the very first phase of the move where he lifts his leg up now no longer can hit the opponent. The move is only able to hit after he hops forward and brings his heel down. This effectively makes the move have a long startup/telegraph, and removes the ability to easily re-dizzy. Finally, the horizontal movement speed during the move has been slowed down, so he needs to be much closer for all the hits to connect, and it is also harder for him to be close enough to perform follow-up attacks afterwards. RAT KING'S CROUCHING HEAVY KICK Rat King's crouching heavy kick has zero startup frames, and recovery is so quick that it rivals the animation speed of some character's light attacks! Given that it can also knock down, this is obviously overpowered. As a result, the recovery on this move has been slowed down. However, the startup has not been changed as Rat King has no fast light attacks (all other standing normals have very long startup) and really needs this crouching heavy kick’s fast startup as part of his armamentarium. KARAI ----- Karai is much more difficult to balance while keeping her core abilities intact, as almost every tool of hers is overpowered. It would have been easy just to strip her of all her tools, but this would result in her losing a lot of what makes Karai "Karai". All attempts were made to try and keep her core abilities wherever possible. SLIDING The first and most obvious overpowered tool is her ability to perform infinite combos. One of these involves the ability for Karai to enhance her grounded normal attacks with a forward slide, by holding the back direction while pressing an attack button. Her standing light punches can combo in each other, cannot be ducked under (so will hit crouching opponents) and when used in combination with the slide enhancement, the slide brings her close enough to negate the hit recoil, so she stays close enough to follow up with a never ending string of light punches. As a result, the slide version of light punch has been removed for human players. Her slide is too strong in combination with many other attacks. Her standing heavy punch has fast enough recovery that if she is in point blank range after the slide, she is able to throw the opponent immediately after by using the same back+HP input used to perform the sliding standing heavy punch! The opponent cannot retaliate with an attack or throw, and if they try to jump, the missed throw will come out as another sliding heavy punch which will clip the opponent before they can escape. Karai's standing kick already has incredible range. Using this in combination with the slide enhancement would make the reach of this normal attack far too large for other characters trying to play footsies to deal with, so this was also removed. With regards to slides, Karai still retains her sliding crouching heavy punch and crouching heavy kick. However, the speed of the slides has been decreased. The sliding crouching heavy punch (referred to as the sliding low backhand) can be used to slide under jump-in attacks, and can still be used to close space on the ground. The crouching slide kick is essentially Karai's sweep, and has the ability to knockdown. It was initially removed in earlier versions, but this move has been sufficiently nerfed in other ways to have her now regain this move in her repertoire. The computer controlled version of Karai still retains the ability to slide for all of her grounded normals. HITBOX OF GROUNDED NORMALS Karai's standing light and heavy punches are incredibly powerful. The reason is because hitbox starts so high so it can clip jumping opponents that are even quite high into their jump AND extends down vertically so much so that it can hit even crouching opponents! This is too strong, and as a result, the hitboxes for both of these two attacks have reduced vertical sized hitboxes, so that they can no longer hit crouching opponents. Karai's crouching kicks also have a very long range when compared to her hurtbox. This is not so much a problem for the non-slide version, as it doesn't do much damage and doesn't create a knockdown, but the same can't be said for the sliding one. Karai's sliding crouching kick had such a large hitbox that any other character who is also performing a sliding kick at the same time would be beaten out of their attack all the time. The hitbox has been shrunk to have the same position relative to the hurtbox when compared to every other sliding character in the game. SPEED OF GROUNDED NORMALS Many of Karai's normals have very short startup, in particular the standing kick, standing heavy punch, and sliding crouching kick. This makes them far too strong, as this gives Karai too much advantage when playing footsies, and can beat out any other character easily. Another issue is that the very short (1 frame) pauses between each successive animation doesn't make it possible to proportionally shorten them further at higher game speeds, as a 1 frame pause cannot be made any less than 1, despite every other character having shorter frame pauses to make the game run faster. This makes Karai's normals inconsistent between game speeds, making her normals seem slower at higher speeds by comparison. As a result, all the startup animations of her standing kick, standing heavy punch crouching punch, and crouching sliding kick have been made to have longer frame pauses, so that she is no longer overpowered when playing footsies, and there is also much better consistency of Karai's moves for all game speeds. Karai's crouching slide kick also has too fast recovery, which doesn't match sliding low knockdown attacks from all other characters. For a move that has such a long range and causes knockdown, she can't really be punished for spamming it. As a result, the recovery on her crouching slide kick has been increased. JUMPING HEAVY PUNCH Karai's jumping heavy punch is a multi-hit air move which has a fast downward trajectory, and creates quite a long hit stun period. As a result, it can be easily chained into another jumping heavy punch by holding up and pressing heavy punch again just as Karai leaves the ground. This creates a never ending loop, resulting in an infinite combo. It also does an extremely high amount of damage. A lot of different ideas were toyed with, including limiting the number of punches, needing a directional input to execute the move, but given she already has two other dive attack options in the air (D+LP and regular K), any alterations to the move would end up with the same effect as her existing attacks. As a result, for humans players, her jumping heavy punch was removed and replaced with her jumping LP, both of which can be turned into the Diving Torpedo Punch by holding down. JUMPING KICK Karai's jumping kick (both LK and also HK actually share the same attack) when performed immediately changes the jump trajectory to halt any upward movement and also add a lot of forward velocity (making it travel much more horizontal compared to the Diving Torpedo Punch), making it like a Diving Stomp. No directional input is required, so it's very easy to perform low to the ground consecutive Diving Stomp kicks. The speed of these dives rivals that of games in Capcom's Vs. games, much faster than any other Street Fighter game. The closest we see is Dhalsim's drills, which is still significantly slower. This incredible speed and ease of execution makes Karai's high/low mixup game very difficult to react to. As a result, there is now an input requirement (holding down) for all diving attacks, including Karai's jumping kicks. If down is not held, Karai will continue her default jumping trajectory (this is technically a new move that isn't normally in the game, so Karai actually gains something rather than losing things in the balancing process!). Additionally, given that the dive kicks have such a big hitbox, it also can only be performed at the peak of her jump, just like Chrome Dome's dive kick. This also means that dives now require good execution, timing and positioning. Mistakes in execution can leave Karai flying vulnerable in the air with a normal non-dive version of the attack. Additionally, given both dives don't create a lot of hit stun, poorly positioned/timed dive attacks can be punished appropriately, creating a risk/reward mechanic. DIVING ATTACKS MOVEMENT SPEED Even with the additional directional movement requirement, Karai's Diving Torpedo Punch and Diving Stomp Kick are still overwhelmingly strong. To further balance them, they now have significantly reduced horizontal and vertical movement speed. The Diving Torpedo now functions like Armaggon's dive attack (D+HP) which has a constant downward velocity rather than being affected by gravity. The Diving Stomp Kick now has a significantly reduced horizontal velocity. These changed movement speeds only affect human players. THROW INPUT Karai's wall throw is performed with a light punch - this is the only character in the game (aside from Chrome Dome) that can throw with a light attack button. For all other characters, a heavy button is used. In a game where there is no whiffed throw animation, a whiffed throw comes out as a heavy attack which has a longer startup, attack duration and recovery compared to a light attack. This seems like a small detail, but it gives Karai an unnecessary advantage. Karai's wall throw is now executed with HK, so there is a bigger risk for attempting to use her wall throw. THROW RANGE Karai's normal throws have greater range than other characters in the game. Since she is already so strong, her throw range has been reduced to be equivalent to other characters. This only applies to human players. FLYING FIST FRENZY This move is one that a lot of characters struggle to deal with. It does a LOT of damage regardless of whether or not it is blocked, gives Karai heaps of meter, is difficult to intercept without an anti-air attack, and allows Karai to escape all the way to the other side of the screen afterwards making it very difficult to punish. Furthermore, it is so easy to execute - it is a two button (HP+HK) press move, but you don't need to hit the two buttons simultaneously (as in, in the same frame). As long as the two buttons are being held down together at some point in time, the move will execute. This means, you can literally have two buttons continuously held down and the move will keep executing one after another! No skill or timing is required to pull off another one as soon as Karai lands from her previous Flying Fist Frenzy. The next one is essentially immediately executed on the exact frame she is able to do another one! To address all the issues above, the move has been fixed in several ways, for human players: 1. The total attack duration has been shortened by half, resulting in less damage and meter gain. 2. The amount of super meter gain for each individual hit has been reduced by about 1/3, further reducing meter gain for the move. 3. After the move, she no longer jumps back to the end of the screen, but rather stays in the same horizontal position. This means she is in much closer range to be punished afterwards, particularly if the move doesn't fully connect (e.g. opponent walks forward, so only about a third of the punches actually land). 4. The input requirement for the move is now a charge down, and then up and punch, to simulate Street Fighter's Claw's Sky High Claw move. This means that executing another one requires forethought and precise timing otherwise Karai will get hit before the move comes out, or even clipped as she tries to jump backwards. There is a huge upside to this move change - it no longer overlaps with the input requirement for her Dark Thunder Ultimate Attack! IZUNA DROP The move isn't really overpowered, so no changes were made to it. However, from an executional standpoint, this move is also too easy to perform (simply holding LP+LK). The input requirement for this move is now a charge down, and then up and kick; just like Street Fighter's Claw's Izuna Drop. GENERAL DAMAGE AND DIZZY REQUIREMENTS Despite the above changes, Karai is still very powerful. Her ground attacks have huge range, and she has an unmatched selection of aerial attacks which can follow a huge variety of different trajectories. When combined with her high/low/throw mixup game, and special moves and relatively high damage, she is still stronger than the rest of the cast. As a result, her overall damage (with the exception of her special moves) has been reduced by 12.5%, and her dizzy requirements have been reduced (from being greater than all other characters!!) to that of Raph/Mike who have the lowest dizzy requirements in the game. As usual, the CPU controlled Karai still retains her normal damage and dizzy requirements. KARAI'S CANCELLABLE CROUCHING PUNCHES AND KICKS Karai actually gets a buff here, rather than a nerf. Karai's code routines do not support having any of her normals cancellable. However, given how slow the non-sliding versions of her two crouching punches and kicks are, a routine has been added into the code to allow both these normal moves cancellable into her special moves (Izuna Drop and Flying Fist Fury). They will obviously not combo, due to the long animation before the special moves actually enter their active attack phase, but at least gives Karai some exit options if the opponent tries to counter-attack. FLYING FIST FRENZY AND IZUNA DROPS WALL JUMP Both the Flying Fist Frenzy and Izuna Drop moves are very predictable because they a) always jump off the wall at the same height; b) always jump off the wall behind her. Both of her moves were designed to mimic Street Fighter's Claw's Wall Dive and Sky High Claw moves, but Claw has the ability to jump off walls on either side and the strength of the attack button used changes certain properties of the move. Changes have now been made to both of Karai's special moves to better emulate Claw's specials. Firstly, Karai can now jump off either wall by inputting a direction (together with up) after the charge down. The direction determines the wall that Karai will jump off, so if up-left or up-right is pressed, Karai will jump off the left wall or right wall respectively. Secondly, depending on the strength of the attack button pressed, this will change the height of the jump at which Karai jumps off the wall. Now, a heavy attack button will result in Karai jumping off the wall at a higher height than when executed with a light attack button. This creates a bit more variety and unpredictability to Karai's special moves - again, this is actually a buff rather than a nerf! ARMAGGON -------- FIN SLICER (AKA SHARK UPPER) The intent of Grandmasters Edition was to only change broken global mechanics, and also balance Rat King and Karai. However, Armaggon is so strong that he sits in a tier of his own. This is contributed to by his very strong Fin Slicer (AKA Shark Upper) special move. This move is very damaging, has invincibility startup frames; and on top of this is difficult to punish because a) there are no recovery frames on landing, b) the LK version has a very short flight height, c) and the HK version can end up behind the opponent making all forward facing attacks and B,F charge specials unusable in response! This overpowered special move is (partly) responsible for the infamous Armaggon vs Armaggon mirror match at high level play. As a result, this is the only non-global mechanic, and non-boss balance change to be made. The Fin Slicer's horizontal velocity has been halved, so that Armaggon can no longer end up behind the opponent (unless they are in the corner). The vertical velocity has also been increased, so he flies much higher in the air, allowing him to be hit on the way down (he still has no landing recovery frames though). Finally, the damage of the first hit has been reduced to compensate for its invincibility startup frames. FUNCTIONAL AND AESTHETIC CHANGES -------------------------------- In addition to boss balance changes, Grandmasters Edition also set out to fix any game breaking mechanics, as well as other functional and aesthetic changes were made to the game to make the game feel more complete. LEO'S ROTO CUTTER INPUT Due to the way the inputs for special moves are read, which permits quite long time delays between each successive directional input, walking forward and then trying to perform a Shining Cutter (QCF+P) results in a Roto Cutter coming out. This is not only very frustrating, but reduces Leo's effectiveness as a character. As a result, the attack button used to trigger Leo's Roto Cutter has been changed to a LK/HK (from LP/HP) so that the Roto Cutter will not accidentally come out. UNBLOCKABLES ON TURTLES AND WAR AFTER ARMAGGON'S SHARK BITE AND CHROME DOME'S GUT PUNCH THROWS One of the other major game breaking problems was the inability for the Turtles and War to block immediately on landing after the Armaggon's Shark Bite and Chrome Dome's Gut Punch throws. This leads to some very nasty and inescapable follow-up situations, including touch of death combos. This mechanic has been fixed, allowing the Turtles and War to block immediately after landing from these throws, effectively removing unblockables after Armaggon's Shark Bite and Chrome Dome's Gut Punch. NO NEGATIVE EDGE ON SPECIAL MOVES Negative edge is when certain special moves for certain characters can be executed on release of the appropriate attack button, as well on press. For unknown reasons, not all characters have this programmed in (e.g. War) and not all specials have negative edge either! Not only that, the way the negative edge is programmed into the code is also wildly inconsistent, differing between the characters!! Not only is this inconsistent, but when combined with the extremely lenient timing requirement of attack button presses (i.e. you can even press/release buttons before the directional requirement has completed), this can make special moves come out when you don't want them to. This is most noticeable when trying to execute combos, particularly when the cancellable normal move and subsequent special move use different buttons, for example, Raph's s.HP into HK Chest Buster and Mike's c.LP into HP Rising Thunder. As a result, to make things more consistent AND to make combos easier to execute, ALL negative edge detection on Special Moves has been removed. GRANDMASTERS EDITION SUBTITLE The subtitle "Grandmasters Edition" has been added in place of the Copyright text on the Main Screen. KARAI'S PORTRAIT Karai's character portrait has been replaced with an improved one, which better resembles her in-game sprites. NO CRASH FOR CREDITS ROLL AND BOSS ENDINGS; FASTER CREDITS ROLL The Championship Edition patch unfortunately introduced a crash for the high difficulty level credits roll (i.e. the version where there are fighters duelling in the background). This has been addressed by always loading the text only version of the credits roll. Additionally, because the credits roll takes so long (almost 4 minutes), the credits roll has been significantly sped up. Rat King and Karai were never intended to be played in Tournament Mode, and since no endings were programmed for them, the game crashes instead. This has been fixed, by jumping past the ending sequence and straight to the credits roll. CURSOR MOVEMENT BUG The Championship Edition patch allowed better movement of the cursor on the main menu, where left and right inputs could be used to move the cursor from one column to another. However, this also resulted in the cursor still being able to move after a menu item was selected. This bug has been fixed - the cursor now cannot change position after a menu item is selected. CONTINUES IN STORY MODE This seems like a trivial change in comparison, but it always seemed unusual that there are 4 Ninja Turtles, but there is a 3 or 5 option for number of continues. In story mode, it should be that each continue can represent each Turtle so that when all Turtles are eliminated, the game is over. As a result, the number of continues you can choose from has been changed from 1,3,5 (and 10 with the secret code) to 1,2,4 (and 10). BOX ART AND INSTRUCTION MANUAL PAGES To make the game feel more complete, new box art for Grandmasters Edition has been made. For the front of the box, Mikey was chosen as the lead protagonist, as he is the only one missing out of the NES, SNES and Genesis versions of Tournament Fighters. The logo has also been updated to match the same colour scheme, and the text "Grandmasters Edition" has been added in the same style as the text in the game for continuity. For the back of the box, the author had a lot of run re-writing the text in the same style as the original! The entire box has also been put together, which can be printed out and assembled if someone wishes to do so! The box art can be downloaded here: http://www.geocities.ws/allo/BoxFront.jpg http://www.geocities.ws/allo/BoxBack.jpg http://www.geocities.ws/allo/BoxFull.jpg Additionally, Rat King and Karai have always been missing move lists in the instruction manuals, so these were also made for them in the same style (fonts, layout, art style, etc.). A commissioned artist was engaged for the artwork. Hopefully people can get enjoyment out of this as well: http://www.geocities.ws/allo/RatKingManual.jpg http://www.geocities.ws/allo/KaraiManual.jpg ACKNOWLEDGEMENT Credit goes to Enigami, Kosheh and Streetwize for the wonderful Championship Edition that formed the base ROM that this Grandmasters Edition was built on top of. The colour palette changes, improved menu navigation and accepted default settings for competitive play has helped to breathe new life into this amazing game.