Jotego has released a brand-new FPGA core for Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Turtles in Time, Konami’s legendary 1991 arcade sequel to the 1989 original. Praised for its fluid gameplay, colorful visuals, and lively soundtrack, it remains one of the most iconic beat ’em ups of its era — and it’s now playable on FPGA hardware.
Development of this core had been intentionally delayed out of respect for Furrtek’s work, who was reverse-engineering a complex protection chip on the original board. As Jotego explained, “For me, it was important to respect his pace of work and not to release anything ahead of him that could reduce his interest.” After Furrtek’s recent retirement from RE work, Jotego decided to move forward with an interim implementation based on MAME, while maintaining his goal of completing a fully accurate recreation in the future.
This release reflects what makes the JT ecosystem stand out, a deep respect for collaboration, transparency, and preservation. All JT cores are open source, with contributors credited and often compensated for their efforts. While compiled cores debut as beta releases for Patreon supporters, the complete source code is always made publicly available on GitHub, ensuring that this work benefits the entire community.
The new Turtles in Time core runs under JTRiders, alongside Golfing Greats and the upcoming Premier Soccer. Minor issues such as sprite glitches or music dropouts may appear, but the game is fully playable on MiSTer, Analogue Pocket, and SiDi128 (excluding the smaller SiDi and MiST boards).
Jotego also updated several JTCPS1 and JTPINPON MRAs, restoring attract sounds and correcting DIP switch mappings, continuing his mission to bring arcade history to FPGA with accuracy, openness, and respect for those who helped make it possible.
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