Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles - Advanced play guide Author XBox Live Tag: Empty Blade (formerly MuKen) Author email: bdv2112 [AT] columbia [DOT] edu -----Contents----- I. What's this all about? II. Technical Details III. Essential tools IV. Enemy specific strategies V. Conclusion I. What's this all about? This guide is intended to help people become better players. Most people will run around blindly attacking everything with no real intent behind their moves (am I attacking? throwing? who knows? who cares?), or any sense of what threats are cropping up around them. Hopefully, we can get more people firmly in control of everything their turtle is doing, and playing with a better eye for their environment. It is difficult, but possible to beat this game on one credit. I've done so myself, and would like to see more people aiming for this goal. As such, this is not a walkthrough. I'm not going to enumerate all the things you see in the game. Nor am I going to go in detail over what every enemy looks like and how they act, I'll assume you've played enough to know these things already. What I will do is talk about the skills and knowledge you need to be a good player. I also want to clear up a lot of bad info I've seen floating around on boards, chatting on live, and in other faqs. I've seen a lot of misconceptions like that different turtles are faster or weaker or whatever, and I think it'd be better if people had a source of well- tested facts. So please read over the technical details section carefully, I have tested everything I put in there, and am also open to making revisions if somebody finds a mistake I made or figures out that something doesn't work exactly the way I thought it did. II. Technical Details We will now go through an overview of how the underlying system works. There will be more technical details about specific enemies in section IV. II.A. Differences between the turtles First off, the four turtles do NOT differ in walking speed, attacking speed, or attacking damage. If you want to check it yourself, grab an arcade emulator and map both controllers to the same buttons, they'll mirror each other perfectly. The only differences are in the dimensions of their attacks (horizontal and vertical range). There may also be differences in how far into the foreground or background they can hit, but I don't think so. As such, Don is far more effective than Leo or Mike because he has the most horizontal range, which is the most useful type of range. Raph also has a different special attack from the other turtles, which is a rolling kick that is good for movement and evasion, and very useful in many situations. Regardless of what people think, it does not do less damage than the other turtles' special attacks. It just doesn't kill foot soldiers in one hit, but that happens to not be a function of damage. More on this in the next section. He also has a diving kick that activates much more easily than the other turtles. With all turtles, if you jump and attack, at low height you get a horizontal kick, at medium height you get a diving kick, and at max height you get a swinging attack; Raph's diving kick can be activated significantly lower and higher than everyone else's. Since diving kicks are far more useful than horizontal kicks or swinging attacks, this is a HUGE advantage, and combined with his evasive special makes him the best turtle for beating the game solo, in my opinion. (Don is second thanks to his long range, and also definitely trumps Raph in multiplayer where evasive ability is not as important). Playing with anyone but Raph usually means I need to take twice as many lives to finish. Although I said they all move and attack with the same speed, since Raph has a low starting dive kick (which is the fastest way for any turtle to move around the screen) and a special that moves him more than halfway across the screen, it might indeed be fair to say he's the fastest turtle. II.B. Attacks I'll now break down every attack you can do, and discuss a little about how to do them and what uses they have. Some attacks have a knockdown property, denoted by "KD", and some count as multiple knockdowns for situations where number of knockdowns is important. Basic/combo attack: 1 dmg Rear attack: 1 dmg, KD Leo/Mike/Don special: 2 dmg, KDx3 Raph special: 2 dmg, KDx2 Jumping horizontal kick: 1 dmg Jumping dive kick: 1 dmg, KD Jumping special: 2 dmg, KDx3 The basic attack is performed by pressing attack on the ground. Turtles actually have two different basic attack animations each, which come out randomly (please contact me if you figure out some pattern to this). Generally, one of them has more horizontal range, and one has more vertical range. For example, Don's long range attack can't hit street cones, but his shorter one can. If the basic attack hits and you keep pressing attack, you can continue with various combo attacks which are generally useless, except in very specific situations (refer to section IV). That's right, you should NOT be using combo attacks on foot soldiers, because they will occasionally counterattack you. See section III for what you SHOULD be using. If you press attack while an enemy is directly behind you, you will do a rear attack, which can be annoying if you meant to do a basic attack. However the fact that it is a KD move gives it some situational uses (see section IV). Specials are done by pressing attack and jump simultaneously. Foot soldiers happen to automatically die after three knockdowns regardless of damage, so for Leo, Mike, and Don, the triple knockdown results in instant death to foot soldiers. However, you must be intelligent in using it, since it comes out slower and has a lot of recovery. So if there's a red foot soldier standing somewhere behind you, don't use a special on the guy in front of you, because there's a good chance you're gonna get a shuriken in the back of the head on your way down. Raph's special causes him to roll forward before kicking, hitting about a half a screen away. Both the roll and the kick keep him "low" resulting in immunity to any horizontally moving projectiles, and even some ground attacks (most notably shredder's sword slice). He IS vulnerable to those ground attacks during the split second transition between roll and kick, but still not to projectiles. So for example when Rocksteady is shooting his machine gun, it is completely safe to roll in and special kick him in the nuts; the bullets won't tag you when you transition. But when special attacking Shredder, you have to space it correctly so that he can't slice you up when you are transitioning from roll to kick. The jumping horizontal kick is performed by pressing attack while in the air but still close to the ground. You can do it early on your way up, or late on your way down. It is slow moving and during the early animation it is fairly easy for most enemies to hit you out of it. However, it is useful for getting a non-knockdown attack to move you forward without moving the screen forward. Screen management is an integral part of play, by preventing the screen from moving forward, you can prevent additional enemies from coming before you are done with the current batch. So this can be very useful in the right situations if you want to avoid using knockdowns. At mid height, pressing attack in a jump will get you a diving kick which moves you forward very quickly and is quite useful. Because it is a knockdown and moves forward a lot, it is also very effective in large crowds of foot soldiers. As I mentioned earlier, Raph can activate this almost the moment he leaves the ground, and also nearly at the peak of his jump, giving him the powerful ability to do quick fast moving knockdowns on multiple enemies at all ranges. As I mentioned before, this is THE fastest way to move around, and also is very useful in that it can get you all the way to the right of the screen without causing it to move forward. To perform a jumping swing, press attack once your turtle starts flipping at the top of his jump. Your turtle will perform the swinging attack (looks just like a non-Raph special) all the way down, and despite how it looks, it does hit people on the ground as well. Yes, even Raph can do this, despite not having the ground version of this special, so he too can kill foot soldiers in one hit (although it is fairly tricky to aim this correctly without getting hit out of the air). The timing to do this with Raph is very hard, since most of his jump range results in a dive kick if you attack. However if you hold the jump button down throughout the jump he will have the same timing as everyone else. Alternatively, you can also do it by pressing jump and attack together at the apex of the jump, which is useful if you were originally going for a dive kick but changed your mind. II.C. Foot soldiers Since these are by far the most abundant enemy and die according to a fairly complex system, they get their own little subsection. All foot soldiers die after taking 3 damage; HOWEVER any time you hit them with a knockdown move they take no damage from it and have all of their health completely restored. Fortunately, they also die if you connect with 3 knockdowns. Note that hitting them while they are jumping so that they fall down does not count as a knockdown, only 'knockdown' moves count. Some moves, like the special attacks, count as multiple knockdowns. Leo, Don, and Mike's specials count as 3, granting an instant kill, whereas Raph's counts as 2 (so you can kill them with one more knockdown afterwards). This is where the misconception that Raph's special does less damage comes from. On all other enemies, and all situations where DAMAGE is concerned, it does the same amount as every other special. It just happens not to be able to kill foot soldiers instantly because it causes 2 knockdowns instead of 3. Another way to instantly kill foot soldiers is by throwing them. Although throws seem random, they are not. To throw a foot soldier, you simply press attack while you are still in the middle of performing a prior basic attack, combo attack, or rear attack. However, you can only throw when you have a throw 'charge' built up. There is an invisible meter that goes up for every point of damage you give or take. It takes 3 points to prepare a throw, and once you use it you start from zero again. So for example, killing a foot soldier with a Donatello special does not charge a throw, since you only did 2 damage, and he just died from the triple knockdown. However if you now hit something else with a dive kick, you'll have a throw charge. Note that the throw is not actually part of the first attack, although the animation makes it look like it is. You can completely miss with the attack, and then still connect with the throw which is a separate move, and even has different ranges. Also note that even if you have only 2 'throw points' accumulated, you can attack, get a 3rd point by hitting with the attack, and then press attack again during the recovery to get your throw. The timing for this is just a tad trickier, since if you had 3 points you could've just double tapped attack without worrying about waiting for the hit to connect. You can also do this by mashing the button, but then you only get it about 90% of the time, it's better just to learn how to do it correctly and get it 100% of the time when you need it. A full charge is generally more useful. Doing a throw by double tapping when you have a full charge is great, because you can tag people that are in range of the throw, but not in range of your basic attack, which is something you can't do with the 2-pt trick. I haven't bothered to figure out how much damage all the enemy attacks do, but most of the time if you get hit and don't fall down, you took 1 damage, and if you do fall down you took a bunch of damage and now have a throw charge. (congrats, sort of...) Note that 1 damage does not mean one bar of health, a bar is actually a few points of damage. So you can special attack someone (2 pts), get punched by a foot soldier (1 pt) without losing a bar, and now you have a throw charge (2+1=3). I believe that all 4 turtles have the same throw range, but I have no way of being absolutely sure. It is slightly larger than the basic range of all turtles except Don. So you can use it to 'extend' your range a bit when attack foot soldiers. For Don, it is actually LESS than his basic attack range, so there will be situations where he can hit foot, but can't throw them due to distance. III. Essential tools I'm now going to talk about some basic skills you will need to learn in order to play this game at a high level and have any chance at all of beating it on one credit. The most important thing is to completely understand the timing and range of your basic attack: when you press attack, there is actually a small window of time during which if anybody enters the path of your attacking animation they will be hit. Learning to line up this attack window with various things is the most important skill in this game. This is also an area where the four turtles may or may not differ slightly. It is hard to be sure, but some might have longer timing windows where their attacks can hit enemies. Number one, is the timing of foot soldier hit recovery. When you hit a foot soldier with a basic attack, they reel back and become *invincible* for a short period. If you use a combo attack, it will miss them because of this invincibility and you will not get them until your third attack. However, if you pause a moment and do another basic attack with the right timing, the attack window will cover the moment they recover so that they will be hit again. Doing this correctly prevents the foot soldier from leaving or counterattacking, and is a TRUE combo. Using the built in combo attack has the wrong timing, and since the foot soldier will recover before you recover from your combo attack that missed entirely, he may or may not punch you in the face. Thus you should always use multiple properly timed basic attacks, rather than combo attacks. In multiplayer, this also means you are much more likely to get the next hit, and thus the kill (hooray for points) than the guy standing next to you mashing attack blindly. When in multiplayer, you should learn to judge this visually by the foot soldier's hit animation, rather than just memorizing button timing, since the timing can change depending on lag. The next timing windows to learn are foot soldier wakeups. Some foot soldiers are most easily approached with a diving kick (such as the spear soldiers). If you can then line up a basic attack properly as they stand up, you can initiate a free 3 hit chain and finish them off with no risk. If you're having trouble learning this, you probably need to be doing it later: the stand up animation makes you think they are hittable earlier than they really are. You can also line up your special (which has a big window and is pretty easy to time) for a free instant kill. You can even do this with Raph since you already got one knockdown: dive kick in, walk away, pause a sec, and then Raph-special back just after you see them starting to sit up. They'll be standing just as you get to them. Similarly, when you are standing on different ledges and they jump up or down to your level, you can line up a basic or special attack with their recovery from this. Again, if you're having problems, the timing you can hit them is probably much later than you think it is. You can also use the same timing to hit foot soldiers when they land from jumping out of the water in the sewer. Although more fun is to learn the timing to hit them at the very top of the jump using a jump swinging attack. This is an instant kill, and if timed properly can get you the points before anybody else in multiplayer. Another extremely important window to learn is the vertical movement of bosses. The safest way to hit a boss is to wait above or below him for him to approach you, and time your basic attack so he walks into it. This is more difficult, and is actually several different timings because all the bosses have different movement speeds, and some of them even vary their own speed. If you're having trouble, I suggest you focus on watching your feet and their feet. It is much easier to judge the distance and timing this way. You can also choose to vertically approach the boss yourself to attack them, but this is harder to time right, and in fact for many bosses I don't believe it's possible to do it so that you *never* get hit. Waiting for them to approach you, it is possible to beat almost any boss without taking a single hit. Finally, although not a practicable 'skill' like the others, another very important concept I mentioned earlier is screen management. You need to learn to fight without allowing the screen to move forward when the situation calls for it, because this can prevent additional enemies from coming on screen. Any and all crowds are easier to beat if they do not have a mix of different types of enemies. The screen moves forward if and only if you walk or jump to the right while in the right half. Any moving attacks will not move the screen. Thus, you can use the whole screen, if you only use dive kicks and similar things to get to the right, and be careful not to walk rightwards while over there. This can be more difficult than it sounds at first, but you'll get the hang of it. IV. Enemy specific strategies I'll now talk about some of the ways to effectively fight each enemy in the game, also covering any technical details that you should know. IV.A. Foot soldiers Against most foot soldiers, you can simply walk up to them from a diagonal direction, and three-basic-attack chain them to kill them. Some foot soldiers, such as spear users and machine gun users are difficult to approach due to their range and tendency to back up as you walk towards them. These should be attacked with a dive kick, followed up by a properly timed special as they stand up. Donatello can also take out spear soldiers by using his special at max-range. Non-Raph specials can take out clustered foot soldiers in one swing, but need to be used with caution; before you do it pay attention to any other enemies on the screen and make sure they aren't in a position to attack you while you recover. Although normally the least threatening, purple foot soldiers become some of the biggest threats when there are lots of enemies on the screen, because of their ability to grab you. All grabbing attacks (purple foot, mousers, electrical whips) can be near-fatal in groups, because as you mash out of them, you often get re-grabbed by someone else, or at least beaten down for a lot of damage. Also dangerous is the fact that you cannot safely walk up and down past a purple foot soldier; he has the ability to grab you while you do this. Against most other foot you can walk up and down right past them without getting hit. (Purple spear soldiers are also capable of stabbing you while you walk past). Furthermore, purple foot soldier grabs ignore height, they can grab you right out of the air while you jump around. Thus, in a crowd, they should be amongst the first enemies you target, along with robots and mousers. Throws, in my opinion, are best saved instead of using them whenever you get them, because there are some situations where they can be very useful, and you want to make sure you have one whenever you need it. Firstly, in a large crowd, if you can separate a foot soldier from the group, it's nice to be able to kill him quickly. Also, if you do happen to get hit, all your timing goes out the window and it's time to start mashing attack back. In this situation, if you have a throw, you can kill the enemy as soon as you recover, whereas if you don't you'll accidentally start a combo attack and possibly get counterhit again. Finally, there are many situations where the alternate vertical and horizontal range of a throw allows you to tag a foot soldier you'd not normally be able to reach. When the number of enemies on screen gets very large, you should decide whether you are gonna kill them all by using damage or by using knockdowns, since each knockdown will reset their health. The best turtle for using damage is Don who can basic attack at long range. To do this, you should move up and down evasively, or jump around until you can separate small groups of enemies that you can cluster in front of you and basic chain. Don't be afraid to cut your chain short and leave if someone approaches from behind, or if a projectile user shows up. Also, be wary of the aforementioned spear or gun users who you will still need to approach with a dive kick and special to safely kill. This strategy is better than knockdowns when there are mousers on the screen, since it is not safe to divekick them. It is also usually better with purple foot soldiers, as it requires less jumping. If you decide to kill by knockdown (which is usually the more effective route), the best turtle is Raph, who can use low-height dive kicks to quickly knockdown groups. He also has a long range special that will add a double knockdown to distant groups, and also acts as a method for quickly moving around and repositioning yourself to dive kick other groups. You should either try to get to one side of the crowd so you can move in without worrying about your back, or you should try to control the center of the screen and keep using specials and dive kicks to keep all the enemies at the sides. Knockdown is definitely a better strategy than damage if there are spear or gun users, since you will need to attack them via dive kick anyway and don't want to accidentally knockdown other foot soldiers and reset their damage. In multiplayer, it's possible to be much more aggressive with walk up basic attacks or even non-Raph specials, because you have friends covering your back. So you might as well charge right in and try to get as many points as you can. Also, in multiplayer, when you're competing for points, a throw is the only attack that will hit a foot soldier while they are recovering from another attack, so it's a good way to "steal" a point from someone else who is already comboing an enemy. Some people think the best way to get points in multiplayer is to run around with Donatello special attacking everything in sight. However against good players this is a poor way to score, since a basic attack comes out faster AND will prevent anyone else's special from connecting by making the foot soldiers invincible. Usually the first person to reach the enemy or group of enemies with a basic attack will initiate his three hit chain and get the points, unless someone else steals a kill via throw. Donatello IS still the best guy for getting points in multiplayer, but he should do it by using his long-ranged basic attacks. IV.B. Robot thingies I don't know if there's an official name for the robots with the drills on their heads that come out of the ground. They'll run around you in circles and stop to shoot lasers or grab you with their electric whip. Learn what the whip animation looks like, because you cannot dodge it by moving up or down, you must hit them away before they do it, or be out of range or in the air. This can be especially deadly if you're jumping around in a large crowd of foot soldiers, because you might not notice this and land in it, and get comboed some more by the other foot soldiers as you break free. So learn this animation so well you'd spot it even out of the corner of your eye, and be sure to dive kick them instead of landing. For this reason, knockdown is also a better strategy than damage if there are robots in the crowd. Robots take 6 points of damage to kill. However, any attack with KD property will disregard its damage and number of KDs, and instead do exactly 3 damage. Thus the best attack to hit them with is the dive kick; it'll only take 2 to kill them. However, it is important to keep in mind that if they stop right in front of you, you shouldn't use it because you'll fly right over their heads and get hit in the back. Instead, turn backwards and use a rear attack which is also a knockdown for 3 damage. Using the rear attack is a little tricky at first, since if you position yourself wrong you'll attack the wrong way, but once you learn the proper positioning it's easy. If you're under pressure from a lot of enemies, though, sometimes it's better to just use the basic attack so you don't have to spend time positioning yourself. IV.C. Mousers Grouped with their own kind, they are no threat and easy to knock away. Mixed in with groups of foot soldiers they are more dangerous, as they are likely to jump at you and grab you unexpectedly while you move around. Getting grabbed by anything in a crowd is a painful experience. Furthermore, it is not safe to dive kick them, you'll hit them and kill them, but often times you'll hear the sound effect from them grabbing you anyway, and take some damage even though you didn't see any grab animation. Thus, if you get into this situation, it is best to maneuver yourself so that you can knock down everybody to one side with a dive kick, and turn around to swat away the mousers (and anybody standing next to them) with basic attacks. If you're aiming to get all the points as they come out of the wall in multiplayer, again do not mash. Wait until you see them emerging from the shadows, and time your basic attack so they come out into it. Done correctly, you'll get much more of the kills than somebody standing next to you mashing. If they're coming out of a high hole, time a jumping horizontal or dive kick back and forth over the hole so you get them, or use a non-Raph special. Correct timing always beats mashing. IV.D. Helicopters These guys take 4 knockdown hits to kill, so in general a special and a dive kick will do it. I don't know how much normal damage, because it's not really practical to use any of the non-knockdown attacks on them. Once they are hit, they become invincible and shake, and you can time another jump attack of your choice to combo them as they come out of it. Non-Raph turtles can come in with a dive kick, then turn around and use a special and timed properly they will die with no chance for retaliation. You can also come in with a jumping special, then jump away, turn around in mid- air, and come back with a dive kick to finish them. This is a little tricky because you must space the first jumping special so you hit them in the cockpit without getting swatted away by the blades. Alternatively, you can just do 4 dive kicks back and forth and time them so the Helicopter can't move away. This takes awhile though, and it's very likely someone else will come along to stop you. Against the machine gun helicopters, it is pretty safe to stay at the top of the stage, and just use either the jump special->dive combo or the dive->special combo to kill anything that approaches you. The bomber helicopters are probably the fastest way to die in this game if you're not careful, due to their wide range of coverage and high damage. The best thing to do is time a dive kick to hit them at the end of their bombing run (so you don't land on a bomb) and finish with a special. Hence, this is the one part of the game where Raph is really disadvantaged. Raph could instead use the jumping special->dive kick combo, but this is much harder to time right, especially when you're trying not to land on the bombs. It is doable though. Alternatively, you can arrange it so your first dive kick hits all bombers at once, and combo all of them with 4 dive kicks. Or forget about combos, and attack them one dive kick at a time until you kill them or they give up and leave (this was the only way I can get through this without dying with Raph, it really is hard to use combos with him). Yes, I know you can avoid the bombers by stalling the early fights in the stage, but that isn't much fun to show off, now is it? :) With practice, you can do this the "real" way. IV.E. Minicopters These guys take 1 damage to kill. However all knockdown attacks will do no damage, but they die in two knockdowns. Thus, diving kicks are a bad idea. A horizontal jump kick kills them in one hit, and is the most effective weapon here. Non-Raph specials also take one hit, but are harder to connect with. When they first come out the door and begin to fan out, there is a moment when they are all hittable and very close together. If you time a Don special correctly, you can wipe out a large number of them with one swing. I think it might even be possible to get all of them, but I usually play as Raph so I'm not sure. With Raph, you can pretty easily get 4 of them with the jumping horizontal kick right as they fan out, and if your timing is spot on you can get even more. Note that Raph's dive kick starts early, so you have to press attack IMMEDIATELY after you jump to get the horizontal kick instead. IV.F. Rocksteady and Bebop Rocksteady will fall down after taking 5 damage, Bebop after 6. For the purposes of making them fall down, all knockdown attacks count as 3 damage, regardless of actual damage or KD value. If Rocksteady or Bebop charges, they are invincible, you should jump AWAY (this allows you to avoid it even if you reacted a little late), and then turn around and steer over them in mid-air. Their death system is a little bit strange. In terms of causing them to die, the ONLY attack which matters is whichever one caused them to fall down. You can do the initial damage with whatever you want, but it's the last hit that counts, and furthermore they count by knockdown value of that hit, not damage. Even stranger is the fact that if the last hit was NOT a knockdown move (i.e. a basic attack or horizontal kick), then it will count for 3 knockdowns. Thus, the best attacks to make them fall down with are non-Raph specials and basic attacks. It will take a total of 12 knockdown points gained in this manner to kill Rocksteady, and 18 to kill Bebop. Rocksteady has two kinds of kicks, although they have the same animation. One is a normal, slower and interruptable kick that he uses if you hesitate in front of him. The other is an instantaneous invincible kick that he only uses after you have hit him 4 times without making him fall down. Thus, you should try NEVER to let him be in this state. In other words, at least one of your first 4 hits should be a knockdown move, that way he'll always fall down before getting hit 4 times. The best sequence is to hit him with a dive kick first, taking his damage to 3, then move up or down to avoid retaliation. Then come back and hit him with two basic attacks, which will make him fall down without ever entering the 'invincible kick mode', and also count for 3 knockdown points according to the system I laid out above. If you are crazy good with your timing, it is also possible to walk up, hit him twice, and finish with a non-Raph special without ever letting him retaliate, but the timing for this is quite hard. If he pulls his gun out, treat him the same way, until he starts backing up. Once he starts backing up, he will be trying to get to mid-screen distance and use his machine gun, if you are Raph this is a perfect opportunity to let him get that range, and special attack through his machine gun. Be sure to move up or down right after the special, then come back and hit him two basic attacks. For anyone else, the safest thing to do is move forward and force him all the way into the side of the stage where he will stand still, and then wait him out. If you feel like taking risks, you can wait for him to shoot, then jump over it and dive kick him. If you jump too early, he'll shoot up and knock you out of the air, if you do it too late he'll hit you with the ground shot. Bebop is safe to approach on your own vertically. Move in, and hit him once. He'll immediately try to retaliate with a punch. Move up or down to dodge it, and move in again after the punch. After 6 hits, he'll fall down, and then punch again as he gets up. Rinse and repeat. Donatello can move out of range of any punch instead of up or down, and poke him right after he punches. In single player ONLY, if you time it right, you can walk right up to him and hit him 6 times in a row such that each hit interrupts his punch. This is the fastest way to take him out. Or, like with Rocksteady, if your timing is crazy good you can hit him with 3 basics and finish with a non-Raph special. When fighting them together, all the same tips apply, you just have to be careful and make sure one doesn't hit or shoot you while you are attacking the other. I prefer to focus on Bebop first, using the 6 hit interrupts to finish him quickly. Once he's out of the picture, Rocksteady is pretty easy to take down on his own. IV.G. Baxter Easiest boss ever, 'nuff said. IV.H. Rock soldiers The best strategy for either one is to stand directly above or below, and time your basic attack to hit them as they approach you. Then immediately walk up or down and repeat. As simple as that sounds, it takes a lot of practice to do it right, especially for the red one who varies his walking speed. Once you learn it though, these become easy fights. You can also find a 'sweet spot' just below them and a little to the side where you can just mash on the attack button until they die. This however is much less reliable, you can't really learn to do it consistently without taking some damage while getting into that spot. After learning the first approach, I rarely take any damage while fighting these guys. Not to mention it looks cooler to any watchers. :) IV.I. Krang Just like the rock soldiers, use the vertical hit and run method. If you are Don, you can also do this horizontally using your long reach. If you time the hits right after his recovery while standing out of range of his kick, you can prevent him from using lasers or rockets on you. IV.J. Shredder For Raph, this fight is a no-brainer because of your ability to special attack him safely. Jump around and get the two Shredders off alignment with each other, then line up a special. Once you knock the helmet off of one, concentrate on the other until he dies. Other turtles have to use dive kicks instead, which is a little riskier. When he initiates his turtle beam, it only hits across the screen on his own plane, not everywhere even though that's what it looks like. You can dodge it up or down easily if you see it coming. If you are close enough to interrupt him, he will often try again and you can keep interrupting him until he gives up. Keep him moving up and down while doing this (he'll follow you) so the other Shredder doesn't slice you in the back while you attack In multiplayer, this fight is harder, because there will be tons of Shredders and it's difficult to keep track of who is using the turtle beam. If the Shredder in front of you starts a turtle beam, interrupt him and let your friends know he's trying. Can't really give much advise here otherwise except to keep your eyes open, and otherwise treat the fight the same way. V. Conclusion If you master all of the "Essential tools" I listed, and keep your eyes on everyone on the screen at all times, you can beat this game in one credit. This, however, takes a lot of practice. It's not just enough to be able to use these tools, you have to be able to do them without any effort at all. For example, if you knock a spear soldier down, and you're standing over him ready to special him when he gets up, it's no good if you have to carefully watch his animation to know when to do it. While you're busy staring at the guy on the ground, someone else is going to come up behind you and smack you upside the head. Learn to do these things without thinking about it, so you can keep your attention everywhere at once. The strategies I laid out for the specific enemies are probably not the only ways to beat them, but they work for me, and are one good way of playing through the game. If you've got new tips, or even better new "Essential tools" to add to my repertoire, let me know, I'll be glad to expand this guide and credit you with the info. :)