RETROspectives: Battletoads

Think of a hard game. Many of you will probably think of Dark Souls, one of the hardest games of the previous generation of consoles and rightly so. The game is jaw grindingly difficult and even the first stage is out to kill you. But today I propose a much, much harder game that puts Dark Souls to shame. Compared to Battletoads Dark Souls is like a two piece jigsaw puzzle with instructions, well maybe that's a bit of an exaggeration.

The game was released in 1991 for the NES, the same year that the SNES was released and also saw releases on Gameboy and later on the SNES. With the series set for an Xbox One reboot in the near future let's take the time to revist the first entry in the series and see what makes the game so hard. The Battletoads Rash, Zitz and Pimple were spawned from the success of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles and was popular enough to have their own animated series and appeared in various Nintendo comics along with Mario. Due to their past successes it's no wonder why Rare (the development company responsible for Battletoads and now owned by Microsoft) want to reboot the series.

In the first game the Dark Queen kidnaps Princess Angelica and the Battletoad Pimple. It's up to Rash and Zitz to battle their way through various and unique stages to rescue them. In the first game the first stage is quite easy, almost like a deception to the rest of the game. By stage 3 the player would have entered the most infamous stage in video game history which recently saw a return in the Xbox One version of Shovel Knight. The Turbo Tunnel caused so much frustration that many never saw past this stage. The section sees Rash or Zitz, or both if you're playing two player, riding hovercars through a tunnel with obstacles scattered across the course. The further you go, however, the faster this section gets to the point where you have no time to think and act. This section is too long to memorise without playing this stage for days on end.

There are warps scattered throughout the game and one that let's you skip this section but the rest of the game is no better. Playing with two players is especially bad, if one player dies both players have to restart the stage and the health of the other player is not replenished. This makes two players on the Turbo Tunnel incredibly hard. But later on the two player game on the American versions is impossible (well almost, pulling it off is like playing Dark Souls blindfolded). The timings in the American versions do not accomodate for two players very well. But after probable years of trying and dying the game is beatable but be prepared to face the Turbo Tunnel, or variations there of, three times! And once you finally beat the game there's still another 4 to beat before Rare reboot the franchise. Good luck, you're going to need it if you try to tackle this franchise.

#Battletoads #RETROspectives #RARE