I remember the local Safeway getting this in their front area, where the carts were placed. Whomever was in charge of what was available there removed Shinobi (I missed that one) and a standup Afterburner (my brother missed that one the most).
A few friends of mine and me would drop tons of quarters into the the four player model there. Sadly, whomever was in charge upped the challenge to make it quite the quarter muncher and we quickly lost interest in playing it because of that.
When this got ported to the NES I had to get a copy but it took me a few months to save up for it. While not as graphically impressive, the home version did its best. I later got an SNES and Turtles in Time on that and that NES game was forever relegated to the closet till it all was gifted to a cousin getting into gaming.
What a story, that same thing happened to me in some amusement arcades, where the people in charge ridiculously thought that increasing the difficulty of the games would make them earn more money.
I also played the NES port of TMNT, it was really impressive despite the hardware limitation of the system. Turtles in Time is amazing, I played that one in Arcades and SNES.
Best regards!