Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Fall of the Foot Clan

The Good
Konami was one of the few companies that could make a decent game out of any major license. Naturally, back in the early 1990s, the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles were the great Behemoth of cartoon licenses (and I'll admit that yes, I was nuts about the series when I was a kid), with action figures, T-shirts, comic books, a TV series, and of course, video games. (I suppose I could go on about TMNT underwear and the like, but let's not.) So how does Konami's first Gameboy game featuring those four green dudes stack up? Let's find out.

The premise of this game is pretty much like any other TMNT game: April's been kidnapped, Shredder did it, go kick his butt, blah blah blah...I think Shredder's just looking for an excuse to get his butt kicked, that or he really doesn't have much better to do. So you choose your favorite turtle at the beginning of each stage, go and smack around a few Foot Soldiers, then fight a boss at the end of each stage. The bosses are the standard major enemies of the series: the mutant rhino soldier Rocksteady, warthog punk Bebop, the half-human half-fly Baxter Stockman, and of course Shredder and evil brain creature Krang and his android exoskeleton. The gameplay is standard beat-em-up fare, but everything dies in one hit. Once in a while, the action breaks for a little mini-game, where you can try to regain lost health. Speaking of health, each turtle can take 8 hits, but each one also counts as a "life", meaning when one turtle is defeated, you lose him for the rest of the game.

The graphics in this game look pretty good, with decently sized characters and detail. The game also doesn't move too quickly, which is a good thing, as the first generation Gameboys (this game came out soon after the Gameboy was introduced) had a nasty problem with screen blur sometimes, especially in side-scrolling action games. The sounds were pretty good, although some of them were rather high pitched and whiny sounding. Music is a mixed bag: my favorite tunes were Stage 2's music and Stage 3's music. There's the standard rendition of the TV show's theme song in the intro, of course, and reprises of it in some cutscenes. The rest are "take it or leave it" pieces of music.

The Bad
It's short...WAY too short. I can beat this game in a half hour. Also, animation of the enemies feels a bit limited, but then again this IS a first-generation Gameboy title we're talking about...

The Bottom Line
For a first-gen Gameboy game, it's a pretty good effort. Although really short, it's good to waste a half-hour with. Go for it if you're still into TMNT games, collecting them, or just want a quick Gameboy game for lunch breaks or whatever.