Republic Commando is probably in my top 5 Star Wars games.  It had a decent story, cool character design, and an immersive first person perspective.  There was a tactic in the game where you could jump into the shoes of any of the 4 members of the squad, which was helpful if any of the others were taken out of action.  I say this because they weren’t actually killed, just wounded and incapacitated.  If you managed to apply a medi-pack to one of your downed mates, you could revive him.  Some of the most edge of your seat action came when you were in close quarters and enemies were picking off your squad, and you had to revive each other in order to keep the mission going.  It was quite satisfying to revive your squadmate just at the moment you were knocked out yourself, but you could then jump into that character, turn around, and revive the previous. 

Delta squad were some of the coolest looking clones around, and it made perfect sense that Hasbro would jump on the chance to give us action figures from the game.  We reviewed Sun Fac a few days ago, and mentioned that he barely had any screen time in Attack of the Clones.  However, he was one of the level “bosses” in Republic Commando.  It was your team’s job to fight through the ranks of the Geonosians and take out this key Separatist leader.

I had assumed the character was no longer canon, swept away like sawdust on a shop floor with the Disney purge of 2014.  However, I had completely forgotten that Dave Filoni saved him, Delta Squad, and the concept of the republic commando during various episodes of The Clone Wars.  Specifically, Scorch ad the rest of Delta Squad were in a season 3 episode of the show, called “Witches of the Mist.”  Gregor was another Commando, and after seemingly sacrificing himself spectacularly to help his friends in TCW, he appeared later in Rebels along with Wolff and Rex.  Good stuff.

Scorch was selected to be the first member of Delta Squad to be realized in 3.75” action form.  I remember thinking it was one of the more awesome figures to hunt down. To add to the fun (if you cared about such things), he was also available in the Ultimate Galactic Hunt silver chase variant.  The figure seemed tricky to find at first, but if you had patience, you should have been able to find him. 

The colors and patterns on the armor are striking, and unlike any clone design previously seen.  The paint is applied fairly well.  The helmet style was all new in the game, and gives the impression of the standard clone phase one helmet on steroids.  The dirt and scoring on the figure are pretty great as well.  The marks on the helmet could almost be the inspiration for the bloody handprint on Finn’s First Order helmet.  The blue visor is a great touch as well.  You could almost see the HUD as you imaging being on the other side of the helmet.

The sculpt is excellent, and very true to the game character.  The body has ball joints at the neck, chest, shoulders and elbows. It also has swivel wrists and hips.  Sadly, the promising articulation ends there, as there are no knees or ankles.  This hinders the posability quite a bit, of course.  while the upper body is excellent, especially for a 2006 figure, it fails to realize full potential due to the limiting lower body.

The figure has a removable back pack; a unique design to this trooper.  There’s also a canister pack, perhaps for ammo or medical supplies.  Like the backpack, it’s removable, but both leave holes behind should you choose to leave them off the figure.  For weaponry, Scorch comes with a DC-17m Interchangeable Weapon System, which has silver parts just like some blasters that came in TVC several years later.

The figure was re-released along with repaints to make all of Delta Squad in a multi-pack later in the Saga Collection.  Amazingly, the entire crew was retooled with ball jointed knees and ankles in the the 2011 Shadows of the Dark Side line.  Because of this, the figure might be rendered obsolete by the upgraded version, were it not for the fact that the SOTDS figure is missing the all important hip canister.  We’ll rescue it from obsolescence and give it a status of “surpassed”. I’ll score this figure a 7.  Yeah, it falls short of full SA, but the sculpt, design, colors, and source material give it extra credit in my book.  But again, the newer version is probably an 8, if we were to give it a go using our new grading system.