Sweet lord. This game is a prime example of why childhoods have been destroyed by video games. I used to own this game when I was a young lad, and I used to play the Hell out of it everysingle day. Back then I was the true definition of what you would call a “noob” so making it to level 3 seldom happened. I today am reviewing this game because thanks to emulation I have once again found out why I have a love/hate relationship with this game. If you have never played this game before, let me explain the premise. You play as one of three toads names Pimple, Rash, and Zitz. Wow Rare really thought outside of the box when they picked those three names by the way. You have to fight a woman known as “Black Queen” she is a very evil woman who happens to have the worlds biggest cleavage for a video game character at that time.
Your enemies consist of pigs, crows, robots, fire, pitfalls, spikes, snakes, and the list goes on and on. When you start up the game you realize this is not your run of the mill normal “beat the shit” out of everything type of video game. In level one it’s simple enough to get through fairly easily other than the boss fight which can be troublesome as hell as it is played from a first person view of the boss robot you have to fight. Level two is more difficult as you must proceed down a huge tower of some sort while you are tethered to the top of the stage. There are so many enemies it is ridiculous, first off the crows want you dead. Plain and simple, they will do anything to destroy you as you are going down the tower. Then you have electricity that if it touches you will cause you to fall from your tether completely and then your dead. If you can get past that well then it wont be long before you get more pissed off at a game then ever before. Level three is a BITCH. You have to fight enemies and then you have to ride a hover-bike to different platforms, the only problem is that most of the platforms you jump on you just fall off as if you somehow missed it completely. I mean I could understand if you didn’t get enough speed or something to that effect but honestly when you are jumping to the platform going the same speed as the one before it and you just fall through the damn thing, that is just infuriating. I am an avid old school gamer and I tried my best during last year to beat that level for a week straight and I finally just gave up.
Thanks to a new emulation tool using a Sega Dreamcast, I was able to basically just say screw it and move on to level 7 with the help of a Game Genie. Level 7 has you riding a hover-bike again but without the random platforms, you just have to go through it while not getting hit by electricity but the problem is you honestly get .5 seconds to make your next move, it is simply ridiculous. Rare honestly must have sat in the development room and thought “How can we make this game impossible for the 5 year olds who will own this game?” “Oh I have an idea, why don’t we have ridiculous stages where you fall through the level, and others where the enemies just gang-rape you, until you our out of lives and continues” I am assuming that is exactly what was said because this game just bends you over and lets you have it. There are twelve levels while I shall only be talking about two more to save time and anguish for myself. Level 8 is just unreal. I spent 45 minutes with unlimited livers trying to conquer what might be the hardest level in the entire game. In Battletoads you get three lives, and can get up to a total of 5 lives, the problem with this is that if I would have had 5 lives at level 8 within the first 2 minutes I would have lost them all. This level is tedious as all Hell. You have to go up platform after platform, facing robots that shoot electricity in which two hits is instant death. On top of that once you can somehow navagiate for the first like 30 platforms you then have to deal with toxic gas which will result in instant death. I mean that is honestly like me saying “OK you have to fight Mike Tyson in the ring right now, oh and by the way you have to have one arm tied behind your back” You might as well not even attempt it because your ass will get handed to you over and over again. The farther you go up the platforms the harder the level gets, they add fans to blow you off the platforms or to suck you in and run you through the blades which big suprize, instantly kills you. Oh did I mention that you only have two checkpoints in the whole level? I guess I should have mentioned the fact that the first 30 minutes of that level I spent not even making the first checkpoint so I had to start the entire things all over again. I honestly don’t think I cussed more in my life then I did at this game at that stage, it is the hardest thing that I have ever completed so far. Ok, the final stage I want to discuss is level 12. You have to climb a tower with platforms, who the hell would have thought huh? None the less the stage is hard but isn’t as hateful as the others, the reason I enjoy it the most is probably because the tower is rendered to where when you run right or left it actually makes the tower move so basically it has a 3-D effect, which isn’t bad for a game made all the way back in 1991. The biggest problem was I played it for 30 minutes and didn’t get to a checkpoint so each time I died I had to do the whole tower over again. I pretty much said to Hell with it, I cannot do anything good in Battletoads.
I know I just ripped this games ass apart, but let me explain. If Rare didn’t make this game so damn hard I would actually play it a lot more often. The action is awesome, and the animation is very good given the status of games back in 1991. The soundtrack is also amazing, especially when you pause the game, it has such an awesome beat to it, when I hear it I always think back to when I used to listen to it constantly because of how awesome I thought it was way back then. The biggest thing is the violence. Holy shit is there violence. I mean you beat up a bunch of rats and then for your “final hit” your foot will turn into a huge ass boot, or you will grow horns and turn into a ram, or your fist will have brass knuckles on it or some other random stuff like that. The fact that you actually get to see the characters die is also awesome. I don’t know another game back then that lets you see a toad get sucked into a fan and have his legs sticking out of the fan when the blades are running. The toxic gas death animation is also sweet, you see the toad gasp for air, pass-out, gasp again, and then die. This game was straight to the point when it came to what it wanted to be, it wanted to be a game that only a few people who have the balls to play it for days upon end could complete. Hell it was a two player game but you couldn’t finish the game with two players because of a glitch on level 11, the second player cannot move. So you must beat the shit out of him until he dies because this game actually allowed players to kill one another. On top of that there is no password or save feature, so unless you had what might be the best skills known to man, you are not going to beat this game. Emulation has made this game a lot easier, but you still have to be nothing short of a elite NES player to get through some of these levels. I hate this game so much, but at the same time this is one of my top ten NES titles, probably because of the nostalgic value this game has. If you haven’t play it then you have to, you have to play this game just to understand what the Hell I am talking about. If you have played it before, then pick up this rom, as much as it may hurt to play it, you know it will bring back some old memories.
Battletoads New (U) – NES
Oh man,
You didn’t mention level 11 “Rat Race”. I to this day have never been able to beat that stage. That stage makes every other level in this game seem like a cakewalk.
Basically you have to jam down through a vertical stage dodging enemies, and obstacles (much like the level you mentioned with the fan blades).
However, the hard part is that a fucking giant rat with a bomb strapped to its chest is chasing you the whole time. So basically if you make one mistake you are dead. And there is only 1 checkpoint as far as I can recall.
Also you may not know this, but in level 1 there is a warp to level 4, and in 4 you can warp to 6 (which is the snake stage I believe), and in that stage there is a final warp to that sewer pipe maze level (10 I think).
Actually that was level 10. And I think it was called Gargantua. The rat doesn’t kill you by touching you, but he races you to 3 self destruct bombs, and if he gets to any of them first, you’re dead!
hi
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good luck
I liked the gameboy one