Master Shredder - Video Games

Video Games

As the original TMNT video games are mostly based on the 1987 cartoon, Shredder is often based on his first cartoon incarnation. He always executes some plan to provoke the Turtles into retaliating and defeat them; these include kidnapping April O’Neil and stealing the Statue of Liberty. Shredder is usually the last boss in the games.

• Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (NES) (1989): Shredder is the final boss. He is found at the end of the Technodrome level. He causes the Turtles to lose roughly half their energy if he touches them, and has a gun that can de-mutate them instantly killing them. He wears a red costume in like in the Mirage comics.

• Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (Arcade) (1989): Once again, Shredder is the final boss and is found at the end of the Technodrome level. He is armed with a sword, and has the ability to clone himself (the exact number of clones is one more than the number of Turtles attacking him in the arcade version). Shredder and his clones also have the ability to shoot lightning bolts from a device on the helmet, which de-mutate the Turtles they hit, killing them. When Shredder or one of his clones is close to death, his helmet falls off, a unique occurrence in the game series.

• Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Fall of the Foot Clan (1990): This game was the first one not to feature Shredder as the final boss. Instead, Shredder is the boss of the penultimate stage, which is set in a river. It is also the first game in which Shredder doesn't have the ability to de-mutate the Turtles. His only attack is a sword swipe, but he can teleport if hit. The final boss is Krang.

• Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: The Manhattan Missions (1991): In this PC game, Shredder fights the turtles in his Manhattan hideout, decorated in a Japanese style. His appearance is based on the Mirage comic version.

• Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles III: The Manhattan Project (1991): This game is the first to feature both a battle against Shredder and a second one against a mutated Super Shredder. The first battle takes place at the end of the Technodrome level, which is the sixth of the eight levels of the game. In this battle, Shredder uses a sword to attack the Turtles. Shredder later returns as the final boss of the game, on the stage set in Krang's spacecraft. This time, he mutates himself into Super Shredder, much as he did in the second TMNT movie which had been released earlier the same year (1991). Super Shredder has two superpowers, the ability to call down lightning, and the ability to shoot fireballs. These fireballs can de-mutate the Turtles, but unlike other games, this isn't an instant kill.

• Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles II: Back from the Sewers (1991): A sequel to Fall of the Foot Clan, this game also features Shredder as a regular level boss and Krang as the final boss. He does not have the ability to de-mutate the Turtles, but he does have a wider variety of attacks than in the previous Game Boy game. Shredder returns later in his mutated Super Shredder form, as a sub-level boss of the final Technodrome level. However, in this incarnation, his only super-power is the ability to teleport elsewhere on the screen. He attacks the Turtles using a sword.

• Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Turtles in Time (1991): Shredder is again the final boss of the game, and found in the Technodrome. However, this time, he is not preceded by a Technodrome level. Instead, the Turtles fight through a Starbase level in the future (2100 AD) with Krang as boss, then teleport to the Technodrome in the present (1991 in the arcade game and 1992 in the SNES version) for the final confrontation. Shredder attacks with a sword, and can fire energy attacks. In the SNES port of the game, Shredder begins the battle by mutating himself into Super Shredder, and has the added superpowers of super-speed movement, fire ground attacks, ice air attacks, and a de-mutating fire ball which instantly kills a Turtle. The SNES port also added a Technodrome level earlier in the game, which leads to a battle with a regular Shredder. In this battle, Shredder is in a kind of battletank, armed with a machine gun and claws. The player views the action over Shredder's shoulder inside the tank, and the only way to cause damage is to hurl the never-ending waves of Foot Soldiers toward the screen and into the tank.

• Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: The Hyperstone Heist (1992): This game uses a Super Shredder similar to the one in Turtles in Time. His attacks are roughly the same.

• Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles III: Radical Rescue (1993): Unlike its two predecessors, Fall of the Foot Clan and Back from the Sewers, this game does feature Shredder as the final boss. However, this time Shredder has become Cyber Shredder, half-man and half-machine. This form of Shredder possessed deadly kick moves and energy ball attacks, as well as being the only boss in the game with two life meters, as the meter instantly refills after it's drained the first time.

• Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Tournament Fighters (1993): This is the first game in which Shredder is not a boss but instead a regular playable character. Furthermore, his costume is based on the Mirage comics version. Finally, in the SNES incarnation of this game, he appears under the name CyberShredder, but there is no indication that he has become a cybernetic being as in Radical Rescue.

After a 10-year hiatus, a new series of TMNT games was initiated. These new games are based on the 2003 cartoon series, and likewise, Shredder in the games is the same as in the cartoon.

• Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (2003): Shredder appears as the final boss. The Turtles face him on the helicarrier at the top of the Foot Helicarriers; he wields the Sword of Tengu in this fight. Shredder's combo attacks are quick and nearly continuous. When half of his health bar has been depleted, his attacks become much faster. There is also a secret final boss in which the player faces the Shredder as Oroku Saki. His combos are much quicker and deadlier, and he also has a temporary powered-up state.

• Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles 2: Battle Nexus (2004): The game begins a short while before the end of the previous game, and Shredder is encountered by the Turtles in the second stage of the game - however, he is not fought by the player, only in a cutscene. As in the cartoon, Shredder is defeated, but he survives the assault on his headquarters. The Shredder resurfaces in the TCRI building later on, but once again, the player does not directly fight him; the main goal of the mission being to evacuate the Utroms back to their home planet. He is seemingly killed in the destruction of the TCRI building, but he once again survives. In a sub-plot exclusive to the game, he is detailed as being a mass murderer of Utroms on their homeworld, and he gave Utrom mercenary Slashurr a permanent scar. He later wiped Slashurr's memory, and employed him to kill the Turtles. However, Slashurr eventually remembers his past, and with the Turtles, battles the Shredder and the Foot on his ship. The Turtles eventually defeat the Shredder once again. In the Battle Nexus fighting tournament mode, Shredder appears as the final boss of the Foot Fight tournament, though the nature of these tournaments when it comes to the game's canon is questionable.

• Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Mutant Melee (2005): Shredder appeared as a playable character and opponent in three forms—his standard armor, without the armor (as Oroku Saki), and a golden "Mega" Shredder.

• Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles 3: Mutant Nightmare (2005) The third chapter of the game Exodus deals directly with the Turtles thwarting the Foot's efforts. As in the third season finale, the Turtles and Splinter battle the Foot at their headquarters, and follow the Shredder aboard his starship. They nearly sacrifice themselves to kill the Shredder as well, but the Utroms rescue them, and exile the Shredder to a distant ice asteroid forever. The Shredder is also encountered in the dark future as one of the final boss' of the Nightmare chapter of the game.

• TMNT (2007): In the console versions of the 2007 movie-based game, the Shredder appears as a boss in a flashback-within-a-flashback (as the events of the game are told to Splinter after their occurrence). The armor of Shredder in this game is based on the 2003 cartoon series version.

• TMNT: Smash Up (2009): Shredder is a playable character in the PS2 and Wii fighting game. He appears in both his Utrom Shredder and Cyber Shredder forms.