THE OLD SHELL GAME.

Byline: Redmond Carolipio Staff Writer

The great thing about Saturday morning cartoons were their simplicity. You had bad guys fighting good guys, with magic or technology tossed in for style points.

Konami's ``Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles'' is best classified as a Saturday-morning game. This title hopes to help re-inject Leonardo, Donatello, Michelangelo and Raphael into a culture that was enamored of them more than a decade ago.

Konami was the first company to put them in front of gamers. It started with an eight-bit Nintendo title and evolved into a couple of splendid arcade beat-'em-ups. Eventually they faded away, and life moved on.

Now here they are in 2003, still pounding away at the Foot Clan - but with some changes fans will definitely notice.

With entirely cel-shaded visuals, this next-gen game chapter of the Turtles leans more toward the early Kevin Eastman and Peter Laird graphic novels instead of the cartoon show. This time, our green heroes have white, Batman-like slits for eyes and carry a slightly edgier look, as opposed to the friendlier, wide-eyed versions we saw more than 10 years ago. The Turtles' personalities are also closer matches to the comic.

Other differences: Mad scientist Baxter Stockman is black, while the cartoon had him as a short, white guy with ``mad scientist'' hair; you actually see Shredder with his armor off - you hardly saw his face on the cartoon.

Through all this change, the game play has stayed the same. Playing this edition of ``TMNT'' will remind you of the wild action of the arcade and 16-bit titles. Each turtle has a small moves set that is easy to execute. Players use these moves to fight endless hordes of enemies on vast comic book-style stages that end with a boss battle. This is very old-school - you could just jump into the game without really knowing what all the buttons do and figure it out as you went along. This eliminates the learning curve you'd find in a lot of today's games, which should make it more fun for beginners. But this simplicity also serves as the game's weakness.

There's a reason why beat-'em-up games are in short supply - they get tedious. Gamers nowadays can only bash around groups of thugs for so long - eventually they'll want some diversity in the experience, and ``TMNT'' just doesn't have enough of it. Despite those bumps, it's nice to see the Turtles back on the gaming scene.

TEENAGE MUTANT NINJA TURTLES - Three stars

Platforms: PS2, Xbox, GameCube.

Price: $49.99.

Rated: E for Everyone.

In a nutshell: Effectively reproduces the crazy arcade feel of past ``Turtle'' titles; graphics take after the original comic book more than the TV cartoons.