Right off the bat, this isn’t the worst Ninja Turtles game you’ll play. But it certainly isn’t a good one.
Gameplay
Fall of the Foot Clan is a simple side scrolling beat ’em up, you walk left to right and whomp everything that comes on screen.
A is Jump, B is attack, and down and B is a projectile you’ll never need to use. That is it.
It looks decent enough, with nice enough sprites for a Gameboy
Well you can jump and then kick, but that really is it. No back attack, no special, no variations. Just walk, and attack. Coincidentally, jump attack is overpowered as there is no cooldown on the attack, so think of this as a machinegun of kicks. If you’re fighting against the 1 enemy that takes more than 2 hits to die then it’ll die instantly. Against a boss it is less effective, as bosses tend to have a 2 second window of invulnerability after taking damage. Except Krang. The final boss is actually the easiest due to cheesing since he lacks a invulnerability window.
I think I prefer OG Gameboy-o-Vision
Story
You’re rescuing April O’Neil. Go whomp Bebop, Rocksteady, Baxter Stockman, Shredder, and Krang.
Not really sure what else is going on, except the Foot Clan “fall”.
More Gameplay
There are only 5 levels, so the game is short and can be beaten in 15 minutes on a first playthrough.
You get 4 lives, each represented by a Turtle. If all die it is gameover. You also get a level select, so can choose to start on the final level the first time you play the game if you’re terrible. Not that you’ll need it, as the game is pretty dang easy.
Each Turtle is slightly different, Raph has the range of a gnat, Donny has slightly longer range. All enemies (apart from 1) die in one hit, but I felt like Leo did more damage, though it is obviously hard to tell. It means that theoretically each Turtle handles differently, but again, is hard to tell.
Conclusion
Fall of the Foot Clan isn’t good; it is too short, too easy, you’ll be sick of hearing the cartoon theme tune after the 15th loop on the first level, there is no link play, there is no multiplayer, and there is no reason to play the game once you have beaten it which will be after 15 minutes at worst.
That said, Fall of the Foot Clan isn’t “bad”. It doesn’t try to do anything special and what it is simply “meh”.
Pros: Has an alternative ending, lots of hidden bonus stages
Cons: Too short, too easy, no real difference between Turtles both in play style and looks
38%
Back in the day:
I can’t find any reputable reviews for this game. Not even Metacritic has a score for it.
SPLINTER!
I'm awesome. I write about videogames occasionally but spend most time painting and playing Warhammer in varying formats.
Games Revisited 
I actually liked this a lot when I was a little kid. It was better than the lousy (albeit much more ambitious) top-down game generally known as “Turtles I” (whose PC port had game-breaking level designs and a black on red “password” DRM sheet). If you look at it as “babby’s first Turtles game” it’s passable.
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I think a kick to the nuts is better than that first Turtles game. I quite liked the Dam level but I know that is the level everyone picks on.
Early DRM was a pain, but part of me likes it. Crappy “turn to page 10 of the manual” was way less intrusive than some of the crap EA pull.
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Yeah. I don’t mind the “5th word, 3rd line, page 15” stuff so much as the “hold this photocopy-proof black sheet up at an angle so that light reflects off the black ink, read and type the hexadecimal gibberish you see in line 30 of column L.”
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