It’s funny. Seven-year-old me never noticed that Mikey outshines his brothers by a huge margin, or that Raph has ridiculously low health. Now that MetHy has pointed them out, these little details are pretty hard to ignore, so this hack is a welcome improvement to a game that I never knew it needed.

The thing about this hack is that the damage and range increases are hard to notice unless you’re doing before-and-after shots, and even then, you’re looking at subtle differences that are measured in literal pixels. That and I get too engrossed in the fast-paced combat to really look that deep into it. Though once I stepped back and just played through each stage, the polish began to show in the way I was cutting down foot soldiers while taking less damage overall, and this becomes very obvious on Hard Mode. Granted, the game has never been all that hard on Hard Mode, but the changes smooth out the feel of each turtle (sans Mikey) without diminishing the game’s overall challenge.

The shifted screen perspective is a welcome change too, but it’s also another change that’s not obvious unless you’re doing before-and-after shots. As MetHy said, it’s really only obvious when you’re encountering “scroll stoppers,” and even then, I’m too busy attacking everything to think too much about it.

My only gripe is that I can’t help but feel like Raph could still use a slight health boost. While I get that his low health offsets his high speed and damage, it almost feels too low for my comfort. But then again, I play this game exclusively on Hard Mode to get the best ending, so your mileage may vary.

Overall, this is a great improvement to a great game, and I doubt that I’d go back to the way things were before. Some tweaks to the turtles’ overall health pools wouldn’t hurt, but that aside, this is definitely a recommended hack.