| FOOT SOLDIERS
PROJECT #444 "C'mon after that Shredder creep!!" Preamble: Foot Soldiers. Shredder loves 'em 'coz they're cheap and obedient, but the Turtles hate 'em because they're plentiful and bothersome. In the Nintendo game Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles II: The Arcade Game (which, as its name suggests, was ported to NES from the full-sized arcade version), Foot Soldiers are the main obstacles the Turtles face, but they aren't just the purple-and-black clad warriors from the cartoon and toy line. Konami invented new types of Foot Soldiers in a wide variety of colors and carrying a diverse assortment of weapons, ostensibly to inject some variety into this button-masher of a game, which even I have to admit can get repetitive after a while. (Play through the entire game and you will easily dispense with over 800 bad guys, the bulk of which will be Foot Soldiers.) It got to the point, for me, where discovering new types of Foot Soldiers and assigning goofy names to them was the most exciting part of the game. I thought it would be fun to try to create action figure versions of all the many different Foot Soldiers appearing in the game. Now, I don't own 15 Foot Soldier toys, and I wouldn't have the time or inclination to paint them all even if I did, so I did the next best thing and came up with digital repaints, arming them with the appropriate weapons and tweaking their color schemes to match the video game. |
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| FOOT SOLDIER
COLOR: PURPLE Description: This is the original vanilla-flavored Foot Soldier, and one of the most prevalent enemies in the game. One supposes that these guys were the prototype design, before Krang and Shredder got the idea to start programming the later Foot Soldiers to use a signature weapon. They're the jack-of-all-trades of the Foot Clan, specializing in not having a specialty. They like to fight with their fists and feet, and they'll continue to pummel the Turtles until the green teens are either knocked unconscious or the Foot Soldiers are turned into a pile of scrap metal, whichever comes first. They're fairly single-minded, but at least they're persistent. They're also much more effective in groups, since a single Foot Soldier of this caliber really isn't much of a threat. Occasionally, you'll encounter one that has managed to pioneer a new combat art. These guys like to throw things, so it's not uncommon to come across one who knows how to toss ninja stars at you. They'll even throw manhole covers or huge tires at you—whatever happens to be laying around. I had to digitally alter the color scheme of this toy by hand—the shirt was originally grey, the pants and arm guards were blue, and the belt and bandages were black. |
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| SCISSOR
SOLDIER
COLOR: BLUE Description: The Scissor Soldiers are the first in a long series of wrong-colored Foot Soldiers that you meet in the game. Okay, maybe the Scissor Soldier doesn't really carry a pair of scissors. It's probably actually meant to be a knife of some sort that he tosses at you. I swear, though, the game sprite makes it totally look like he's chucking a big pair of kitchen shears at you. In a lot of ways, this could be a really effective weapon, if used creatively. He could cut off the Turtles' belts so they'd have no place to put their weapons. He could cut off their masks so that they couldn't tell each other apart. He could cut off Splinter's whiskers so he'd be completely unable to tell whether he could fit into a crawl space or not. Ahh, the list is endless. (Sometimes they forget their scissors. Then they just resort to punching the daylights out of you.) You have no idea how much I actually wanted to arm this guy with a pair of little, tiny scissors. Why don't they sell action figures that come with scissors, anyway? There seems to be a severe shortage of miniature school supplies in this world. In the end, saner heads prevailed and I gave him a weapon from Shogun Shredder that approximately matches my perception of what this dagger "really" looks like.
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| SWORD SOLDIER
COLOR: WHITE Description: Sword Soldiers are all business. While other Foot Soldiers are messing around with mining explosives or giant mallets, the Sword Soldiers are trained to fight in classic ninja style with the elegant and lethal katana blade. There are so many enemies in this game that are easy to defeat without them ever laying a hand on you, but the Sword Soldiers are not one of them. Even their color scheme shows a certain economy of style—they don't worry about parading around in flashy uniforms. They're white, and white means death. Or cotton. One of those. Even Leonardo, the Turtles' resident swordfighting master, finds these guys to be something of a challenge. Cut them down to size as quickly as possible! My Sword Soldier is armed with a katana from the original Usagi Yojimbo action figure, easily one of the longest and coolest-looking swords from the TMNT toy line. |
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| MACHINE GUN SOLDIER
COLOR: RED Description: The Machine Gun Soldiers first appear acting as bodyguards of sort to Rocksteady, near the end of the first stage. They have a virtually limitless range, so they're difficult to approach without getting pelted with bullets. It gets worse, though. What's even more dangerous than Foot Soldiers with semi-automatic weapons, you may ask? Why, Foot Soldiers with semi-automatic weapons riding skateboards, of course! They show up later in the game doing just that, prepared to put multiple holes into the Turtles' shells, all while effortlessly gleaming the cube. What show-offs. They're still not as talented skateboarders as Michaelangelo, though. He can do it while stuffing his face full of pizza! This guy is carrying the Brain Drain Gun that came with the original Krang toy. It's always looked to me like this is exactly what he's equipped with anyway, what with the big, wide open muzzle and all. He's riding the skateboard that came with Mondo Gecko. |
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| DYNAMITE SOLDIER
COLOR: MAGENTA Description: At first these guys just look like regular ol' Foot Soldiers, but then suddenly, out of nowhere, they start tossing firecrackers at you. Somebody's been watching way too many Saturday morning kids' shows, I think. When has chucking a stick of dynamite ever worked on an opponent unless you're in a Warner Brothers cartoon? You've got to give these guys mad props for trying, though. They're content to fling their endless supply of high explosives in the general vicinity of the Turtles, hoping that the hard-shelled heroes get caught somewhere in the blast zone. Sure, it's dangerous work, but the alternative is having Shredder blow up at them when they fail. Talk about a short fuse! I didn't have any tiny sticks of dynamite handy to equip this guy with, so I did a little bit of tricky photo editing on this one using one of the exhaust pipe accessories from Construction Mutations Michaelangelo.
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| BANANA SOLDIER
COLOR: YELLOW Description: The Banana Soldiers are the first all-new Foot Soldiers of Stage 2. Whatever you do, don't mistake one for April O'Neil. They're decorated in a bright yellow color, which nicely matches their cheery disposition, and they throw tropical fruit at you. Well, not really. The projectiles in question probably supposed to be boomerangs, actually, but the primitive 8-bit pixels are somewhat indistinct so it's difficult to tell. Besides, these guys already look like walking bananas, so what would be more appropriate than to be armed with one? Anyway, whatever it is they've got, they like to throw 'em at the Turtles, making them ideal at long-range attacks. You can easily get pelted with one of their mid-air weapons even after you've dispatched the guy who threw it. Banana Soldiers also like to hide behind Pizza Hut advertisements (no joke) and some of them aren't half bad skateboarders, either. To my utter surprise, I didn't have any toy bananas in my collection (and it wasn't for lack of searching), so I did the next best thing and equipped my Banana Soldier with the boomerang that came with my Storage Shell Raphael action figure. (Almost all the weapons I used for these guys came from the original Ninja Turtles toy line. It made more sense somehow to keep it in the family.) |
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| HAMMER SOLDIER
COLOR: REDDISH PURPLE Description: Stop! Hammer time! The Hammer Soldier doesn't believe in being subtle. While other, more elegant Foot Soldiers attempt to beat the Turtles at swordfighting or stealth, the Hammer Soldier is only interested in pounding the Turtles flat into street pizza. They're also not very smart, so they tend to miss the delicious irony of the above statement. Go figure. Anyway, the Hammer Soldiers move slowly, but they sure pack a wallop. Their gigantic mallets can crack concrete, after all, so you can just imagine what it would do to the Turtles' shells! Talk about your splitting headaches! They guard their weapons fiercely, and the one time Raphael actually managed to wrest one from a Hammer Soldier's grasp, he broke out into a refrain of "U Can't Touch This." For this project, I armed my Hammer Soldier with an accessory from the "Warriors of the Forgotten Sewer" Dwarf Don action figure. |
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| SNOW SOLDIER
COLOR: LIGHT BLUE Description: The Snow Soldier is specially designed to operate in the frigid climates that would cause regular ol' Foot Soldiers to literally freeze in their tracks. Unfortunately, every time they carry a traditional combat weapon, they invariably drop it somewhere and then have to wait for the spring thaw before they can find it. Krang reprogrammed them to fight with snowballs, reasoning that the stuff is plentiful and their ammunition is potentially limitless as long as the weather stays cold. Snow Soldiers are more of a nuisance than a threat, but sometimes they get particularly nasty and pack the snow into ice. You ever get hit with an ice ball in the face? Yeah, it hurts. Then you go home crying, and your mom tells you to put some ice on it. Parents are so funny. No, that's not a real snowball. I tried that the first time, but by the time I got him to hold one in his hand and got the camera all set up, it had already melted. The second time, I used a plastic ball instead.
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| SPEAR SOLDIER
COLOR: PURPLE Description: A lot of Foot Soldiers are dealt with easily, while some are more irritating and difficult to quickly defeat. The Spear Soldiers fall squarely into the latter category. They're more aggressive than your typical Foot Soldier, and their longer reach means that they're difficult to approach without getting clobbered. Donatello probably has the best chance of countering their offensive with his bo staff, but another strategy is to try to sneak up from behind them. They also seem to have an infinite supply of their pointy little javelins, despite the fact that they keep throwing 'em at you. Where are they hiding those things, anyway? A Spear Soldier is still just a Foot Soldier, though, so all it takes is a few well-places whacks with your weapon of choice to send one to that big salvage yard in the sky. Celebrate with some pizza topped with hot fudge and avocado spears! My Spear Soldier is equipped with the long naginata weapon that came with the original Usagi Yojimbo toy. Both the Foot Soldier and the weapon were digitally manipulated into the correct colors. |
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| CRUISER SOLDIER
COLORS: RED/BLUE/BROWN/GREY Description: The first Foot Soldiers to get themselves a set of wheels are the Cruiser Soldiers. If their vehicle of choice reminds you of the Neutrino star cruiser, that's no coincidence—apparently they reverse-engineered the vehicle after they stole it, and built themselves a whole bunch of killer Footcruiser road machines. The Cruiser Soldiers are pacifists by nature, which means they carry no weapons—only car keys. Of course, they're also lousy drivers, since nobody in their right mind would give a license to a ninja robot from Dimension X. They run over anything on the road that's in their way—skunks, squirrels, and with alarming frequency, Turtles. They come in a fairly diverse range of colors—red and blue Footcruisers have been sighted, as well as a rather ugly rust-colored orange model (pictured), with Foot Soldier pilots, along with their nagging backseat drivers, outfitted in color-coded matching uniforms. There is also a grey Foot Soldier who always rides shotgun, probably because somebody's got to hang his head out the side and whoop and holler at the sexy ATM machines as they drive by. My Cruiser Soldiers are driving the vintage 1991 Footcruiser model, courtesy of our friends at Playmates Toys. This one required a lot of careful digital manipulation, but it was only after I finished that I realized I forgot to attach the running boards to either side. Sigh.
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| BOMB SOLDIER
COLOR: REDDISH PURPLE Description: This is how Foot Soldiers learned to stop worrying and love the bomb. Hoisting a huge explosive warhead over their heads, so heavy they can barely carry it, the Bomb Soldiers get close enough to the Turtles to do some damage and then it's bombs away! What, they couldn't wait for the Turtles to get to the Technodrome, so they yanked these things right out of the rocket launchers and met them halfway there? Whatever. They don't even care if they get caught in the explosion themselves—they're just satisfied that the Turtles go out with a bang. These guys are slow and plodding and easy to avoid, but their ordnance is another story. Hacking one of these guys in two doesn't solve anything, since they drop their explosives as soon as you strike. Talk about shell shock! My Bomb Soldier is modeling the latest in incendiary fashion accessories for this season, namely a "stink bomb" from the original Party Wagon vehicle.
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| CYCLE SOLDIER
COLOR: BLUE Description: It's the Cycle Soldier, also known as the rebel without a clue! While other Foot Soldiers use combat techniques that are positively pedestrian, the Cycle Soldier is a two-wheeled terror and he's ready to roll. He won't hesitate to race through roadblocks, toll booths, or right over a Turtle's shell like it was a speed bump. You can try to defeat a Cycle Soldier while he's breaking the speed limit, but once he gets into gear and pops a wheelie, he's just as likely to break you in the process. Master Splinter's official advice is that the best thing to do is just get out of his way. Listen to your sensei, young students. Move it or lose it! My Cycle Soldier is driving the Turtle Cycle vehicle, by merit of the fact that it's the only motorcycle toy I own that's to scale with Ninja Turtles action figures.
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| HELICOPTER SOLDIER
COLOR: LIGHT BLUE Description: Helicopter Soldiers always wanted to be called Chopper Soldiers, but the Cycle Soldiers wanted that name for themselves, too, so they got into a big fight and Shredder had to break it up. Now, nobody gets the name. Serves you boys right for fighting about it. That said, Shredder really saved the best for last, because while this is the final new type of Foot Soldier you meet, it's also the most heavily-armed. Not only does he have an aerial advantage over you, but his vehicle is equipped with both a machine gun in the front and an incendiary bomb rack in the rear. Unfortunately, nobody taught the poor guy how to turn his huey around, so it's not too tough to sneak up on him from behind and kick his helicopter into smithereens. Clearly, Shredder should have spent less on flying lessons for these guys and more on finding ways to prevent them from blowing up. My Helicopter Soldier is piloting the Cobra F.A.N.G. from the original G.I. Joe toy line. (Hey, it's photo manipulation. I can stick the pilot in whatever sized vehicle I want to. Plus, Rocksteady's Pogocopter didn't look quite right.) The Super Nintendo game Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles IV: Turtles in Time (again, based on an arcade game) also has some interesting new types of Foot Soldiers, including Axe Soldiers and Manriki-Gusari Soldiers and Tuning Fork Soldiers (seriously) and Coat Rack Soldiers (no, I am not making this up). Maybe I'll get around to doing versions of them too, one day, but that day will not be today.
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This Page Created: 6/4/2010
Last Update: 6/25/2010
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