Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Tournament Fighters is a fighting game, for the Nintendo Entertainment System, Super NES and Mega Drive/Genesis by Konami. While the title is the same, the game is different for each console. Like many competitive fighting games of the era, Tournament Fighters borrowed heavily from elements contained in the Street Fighter II video game. The Japanese Super Famicom version of the game was retitled Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Mutant Warriors, whereas the Japanese Mega Drive version retained its North American title. The NES version was the only one not released in Japan.

In the Super Nintendo version, a tournament has been organized and many fighters have entered, Shredder being one of them. The turtles decide to participate in order to stop their nemesis as well as proving their strength in the tournament.

This game, instead of following a 6-button attack control like most of Capcom's fighters, uses a 4-button scheme (weak and strong attacks) like most SNK fighting games. A particular feature is the possibility to use a super special attack. In order to achieve this, the player must fill a green bar under the life bar, by hitting their opponents. Once full, the player must press the two strong attack buttons simultaneously.

There is also the option of enhancing the speed of the game, making the fights more intense but also harder to follow.

In addition to the main and versus modes, there is a story mode in which to turtles must rescue April O'Neil and Splinter. Only the four of them can be playable whereas the other characters (as well as a turtle clone) are the bosses. There is also a watch mode, which basically makes the computer control the characters. There are ten characters available, and two bosses.

In the NES version, the turtles (Leonardo, Donatello, Raphael and Michelangelo) have been challenged by Shredder, but in order to confront him, they decided to have a tournament between themselves in order to see who is fit for the encounter. There are seven characters. Aside from the turtles, Casey Jones, Hothead (a samurai dragon from the original toy line, based on the Warrior Dragon character from the Archie comics. Nintendo Power magazine once cited his Archie origin, where he was a fireman who later mutated into a dragon like creature) and Shredder. It is the final game made by Konami for this console and the last game made by a third party developer as well. It is also one of the very few versus fighters made for the NES.

In the Genesis version, Splinter has been kidnapped by four purple turtles. When the real turtles realized this, Krang appeared and says that he keeps Splinter with him and that the only way to get him back is that the turtles must go to Dimension X and meet Krang. The player must fight the clones of all the playable characters (see below) as well as the bosses - Triceraton, Krang and Karai.

Besides the turtles, the player can also choose between April O'Neil, Casey Jones, Ray Fillet, and Sisyphus.

This game uses a 3-three button scheme. Two of these are used for standard attacks (in order to do a stronger attack, they have to be pressed along with the d-pad). It doesn't take advantage of the 6-button controller. Because of this, it is considered that this version pales in comparison of the Super NES version.

The game also features (somewhat) destructible environments on a couple of stages where you can fall through the floor.