Tartarugas!

Tartarugas was originally a sleeper arcade game by Konami, which was distributed in the U.S. by Stern Electronics. In the game, you control a mother turtle that runs around a Pac-Man type maze. Run into question marks (?) to uncover baby turtles, then transport them to a house which appears randomly on the maze. But beware: you might uncover a deadly beetle, which will join the other three beetles already chasing you down. Cornered? Stun the beetles by dropping a Bug Bomb! But be careful -- your supply of beetle-blasting ordinance is limited. Luckily, you can pick up additional bombs in the center of the maze. There are ten levels; when you advance a level, you climb to a new a floor of a building, on your way up to the Roof. A whopping FOUR different maze layouts are packed into this game.

This is the only licensed arcade translation to appear on the Odyssey² in the United States. The port is extremely accurate. In fact, if you allow for changes to maze layouts due to differences in screen orientation, it's darn near perfect. The graphics aren't quite up to par with the coin-op, but they're awfully close. Arcade Tartarugas, with its austere line graphics, question mark icons, and simple sprites, was an excellent choice for an Odyssey² port -- there's nothing the coin-op does that the O2 can't handle. Even more importantly, the gameplay is captured perfectly. The O2 version may be a shade easier than its arcade counterpart, but play them side-by-side and you won't notice a tremendous difference in the experiences. Even the music of the arcade game is reproduced (sort of) by The Voice. Using a series of staccato vocal tones, The Voice "scats" two tunes taken from the coin-op. The overall effect is somewhat bizarre but charming in its way -- although you'll probably turn the volume down after the third or fourth time through the songs.

Most importantly of all, Tartarugas is an excellent port of a good arcade game. It's a classic, uncomplicated maze chase. Each board is a little more involved than a typical round of Pac-Man but not as complex as, say, Lady Bug, leading to a fun game that's easy to "zone out" on while playing. And it's cute! Rescuing tiny little baby turtles... who can't love that?

Tartarugas was one of the last original O2 games released in the United States and is the second rarest (behind Power Lords of course), although it's not really that difficult to find today. That's good, because it's one of the best games out there and deserves to be in every O2 fan's collection.

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