TMNT Fall of the Foot Clan- Game Boy Review

By Mark Rodriguez

I used to own the original Game Boy, but with all the moves here and there, it was eventually either lost of left behind.... but I kept all of the games because I know that sooner or later I'd get another Game Boy. Well, early this year Paige and I hit a retro game shop and among some retro stuff we bought here and there, I found a Game Boy Advanced SP! I still had all my Game Boy games and I spent the rest of the day playing Super Mario Land and TMNT Fall of the Foot Clan. Here's my review on the Turtle game.

I'm actually surprised my iphone could take such clear pictures.

TMNT Fall of the Foot Clan is a one player side-scrolling beat-em up game based on the 80s cartoon and brought to you by Konami. Similar to the first TMNT game on the NES, you can choose one of the 4 Turtles, and each of them only has one life. If a turtles dies he's 'captured' and you're down to three turtles, and so on. You lose once you lose all four Turtles.

All the turtles look the same and are armed with their signature weapons. You can jump, attack and do a flying jump kick. If you duck you can throw shuriken. The game is strictly side scrolling so you can only move left and right. The game also has pizza that appears as you break objects or blow up foot soldiers, that refill your all or most of your life bar depending if it's a slice or full pizza. 

The game also has random bonus games with Splinter and Krang that appear in hidden areas. They seem to be weird guessing games and I was never able to beat them. 

As always, April is kidnapped by the Shredder and you have to get past his armies of Foot Soldiers and Mousers to get her back. You go through 5 stages and this game actually let you choose what stage to start from. Yes, if you're good enough you can actually just choose the last stage and finish the game there.

The first stage takes you through the city streets and sewers. In the sewers you face bats, mouser and falling blocks. On the streets you have to avoid being run over by Foot on motorcycles while you fight the Foot Soldiers and Tubular Transports. The boss for this stage is Rocksteady.

The second stage is more sewer action as the you now have to avoid pillars that raise and lower, and basically get in your way as you fight against the Foot and Mousers. And Fry Guys. Yes, I guess they made a cameo here.

I guess Super Mario Bros 2 wasn't enough for them.

The second boss of Bebop and he shoot those weird energy rings at you. I gotta get a gun like that.

Stage three is pretty short, you fight off the bad guys on top of speeding trucks. The boss here is Baxter the fly.

Stage four takes you to the river where you either fight in the water and avoid killer fish or jump across logs fighting off Foot and falling ball things. Then you go to the sewers again and face the Foot, Mousers, flying things and falling blocks all at once. The boss here is Shredder and he warps all over the place and also has a big sword.

The final stage is the Technodrome and a real gauntlet. You face the Foot, Mousers, Roadkill Rodneys that actually take two hits to kill (and in a game where you kill everything in one hit, 2 hits makes a big difference when everything is swarming all around you) more floating things, Tubular Transports and rockets that home in on you. Plus you have to avoid lasers. The second part of this throws more enemies at you every few steps and there's also this rolling thing covered in spikes you can't destroy and just have to avoid. It changes size and also appears from the ceiling at least once, so keep on your toes.

The final boss is Krang, cause I guess Konami noticed that the real mastermind of the series was Krang, and Shredder was usually following orders. I didn't give him much of a chance to do anything and just took him down since I was down to my last Turtle at this point, but I know he throws some kicks.

My Review

This was a fun game. It does get tough at times so it's better to play all the way through and ease your way through it than going to the last level right off the bat. I haven't played this in a long time so I honestly forgot about the killer fish and the entire river stage. 

The graphics are cool. The characters are large and detailed enough so you know who they are and are easy to see on that old green chrome game boy screen. It's a pretty simple game as most of the bad guys are one hit kills and you get hurt just by getting touched by the enemy. Luckily there's plenty of pizza at times when you're one hit away from getting captured. 

The music is decent enough. It's mostly new stuff and not just remixes of the classic tmnt theme song, so I gotta give em credit for that. There's also cool cut scenes cut from the intro in between stages as they continue their quest to rescue April.

Overall a decent game. Just simple and fun and good for killing an hour or two on a long car drive. That's what most game boy games were for anyway and in that aspect this game delivers.