Battletoads
| Developer: Mindscape | Graphics: |
 | |
| Publisher: Mindscape | Sound: |
| |
| Year: 1994 | Difficulty: |
 | |
| Genre: Escaped from the jar | Lastability: |
| |
| Number of players: 2 simultaneous | Rating: |
2/10 | |
They’re three mutant toads, pumped up on amphetamines, wanting to compete with the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Pimple, Rash, and Zitz. They’re cool, they know how to fight, and their Nemesis is much better looking than Shredder.
It’s hard to classify this game, as the style changes drastically from one level to the next. Let’s just say you spend half your time beating up everything that moves (a la Double Dragon), and the other half passing skill and reflex tests (memory tests, in my case), like the infamous scooter race where you have to jump over holes and avoid walls zipping past at breakneck speed. Odd … I hate this kind of thing in other games (Mega Man X8 … argh!), but here, it works. Cartoonish humour, variety of situations, and over-the-top difficulty—these are the driving forces behind Battletoads.
And despite the frustration of losing all our lives at the same places and starting over from the beginning again and again, we keep coming back! That’s a sign of quality, right? Or that we’re big masochists…
Not masochistic enough, however, to play it on Amiga. This version is a disgrace comparer to the original released on the NES three years earlier! Mainly due to the abysmal handling using a single-button joystick.
Besides the original, the series includes two episodes on Game Boy (very well done), a crossover titled Battletoads and Double Dragon: The Ultimate Team released on NES, Sega Genesis, Game Boy, and Super Nintendo in 1993, and the same year, on Super Nintendo: Battletoads in Battlemaniacs.
Treat yourself, download an arcade emulator (MAME), and the latest title in the series: Super Battletoads (1994), and preferably play it with three people!
Note: The developer of the original version is the Rare studio, and the stylised snakes in level two (third image) may remind you of one of their older games: Snake Rattle ‘n’ Roll (NES, 1990). Its Game Boy port, Sneaky Snakes (1991), traumatised me…
|
