Potentially one of the best games on the system, dragged down by game-crippling bugs… among other things.
+Well-detailed and colorful sprites
+Level warps allow the player to skip harder stages… in a way
-Difficulty spikes during the third level and doesn't stop going up
-Limited lives and continues
-Two-player mode is crippled with a multitude of bugs and design problems
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In the early 1990s, beat-em-ups thrived in both the arcades and on the home consoles. Games like Double Dragon, Final Fight and Streets of Rage were all focusing on the typical heroes-fighting-gangs-of-villains-to-rescue-their-woman sub-genre of beat-em-ups. However, Rareware would put out a game that would throw most of this on it's ear… with the arcade classic Battletoads.
In this game, two anthropomorphic toads (Rash and Zitz) fight against the evil almost-dominatrix Dark Queen to save their friend Pimple and Princess Angelica, who were kidnapped by her when they were out on a joyride in a space-car. Fighting through over 12 levels of extreme action, this game wound up making enough cash at the arcades to justify a port to the NES (as well as the Genesis, Game Boy and Game Gear, but that's not in this review).
Unfortunately, something went wrong with the port and the end product is… less than satisfactory.
Well, the first thing that seems to have gone wrong is the controls. While I've admittedly not played the arcade game, the port's controls are slippery at best. Twitch-gameplay is completely absent in this game, as the slightest touch sends the player's chosen toad flying across the screen, and the hit-detection is heavily off for much of the game, often leaving the player open for insane damage from the enemy. This is only made so much worse during cooperative play, where there is no way to disable friendly fire! Furthermore, the game's difficulty winds up spiking to insane levels by the third stage.
While the first level is a relaxing jaunt though some sort of bizarre alien world populated by pig-aliens and the second level is a nice rappelling level where you fight your way into a deep cavern, the third level winds up essentially driving most two-player games into the game over screen and lone players insane. The platforms the players have to leap over are incredibly touchy on what you can and can't hit, often leaving players landing on the platform… only to fall through completely as the game refuses to let them land. Sadly, this is followed up with a racing stage that eventually demands twitch-reactions with controls that don't let that happen… and if any lone player dies in this segment during two-player mode, both players have to restart at the last checkpoint.
And if that wasn't bad enough, if either player gets a game over, both players are sent back to start the stage over again! And it's worse if the player can't continue, because the game STILL sends the other player back to the stage beginning!
And if those problems still weren't enough to kill two-player mode, a fatal bug in stage 11 actually prevents the second player from moving in a race stage where both players are being chased by an instant-kill ball of death.
That's right, a bug that prevents the stage from even being attempted with two players.
In spite of all these problems (and boy, there are many of them), the game is still enjoyable in its own right – particularly in single-player.
The titular toads can turn parts of their bodies into a multitude of different objects as they pummel their opponents, including morphing their head into that of a ram's head as they headbutt an enemy or turning their foot into a gigantic boot. The enemies and boss characters are all colorful and certainly well-designed – though grow increasingly cheap as the stages roll by. Particularly in later stages, where one touch will kill.
The racing stages are perhaps the largest bane of this game, though, with at least three racing events forced upon the player – each with shoddier controls than the last. Luckily, these and most stages can be skipped through special warps that are, sadly, nearly impossible to access without practice. However, these warps cut out at stage 10, forcing the player to still go through the remainder of the game alone… which can be a serious annoyance in two-player mode.
When it comes to the controls, this game tries to be great, like Double Dragon or the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles beat-em-up. However, as I've described already, it falls far short of even touching the ideal.
The visuals are often touted as being excellent and well-detailed, but I feel I must disagree to an extent. Stages tend to only have a few colors for the background, giving the game an almost monochromic feel – similar to how many games in the current generation of gaming feel that brown and gray are the only colors one can use in decoration. The colors do change per stage, but the bland stage design isn't helping in that – instead relying on impossible jumps and instant-kill traps rather than inventive gameplay or creative fights. Furthermore, while the enemies are mostly unique for each stage, the sprites almost feel overly detailed for their small size – looking more like a mass of pixels than the actual creatures they're supposed to represent. Certainly, the game looks good on the NES, but it just does not look fantastic for a game put out near the end of the NES' life cycle.
The sound is certainly fun, each stage having a unique and engaging tune. A particular favorite of mine is probably the racing theme, in spite of how much I hate those racing stages. Interestingly enough, there's even a bonus tune on the pause screen, sounding like a beatbox for a rap rather than a smooth tune like the rest of the game. While nowhere near as iconic as the music found in most first-party Nintendo games, there's no bad music here.
Sound effects are a bit underwhelming, however, and can be a bit annoying when dramatic deaths are delivered with a 'thwap' noise. But it's not particularly bad here either.
I wish I could say that this game will keep you playing it long after you beat it… but that'd require someone to actually beat the game in the first place. And asking that is like asking someone to swim the Pacific Ocean with concrete waders.
Oozing with the spirit of the early 1990s, artificially hard and impossible to beat with two players, this game is still a fun one… so long as the player is patient and has a game genie with them.
Maybe.
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Gameplay: 5
Visuals: 7.5
Audio: 8
Replay Value: 6
Personal Tilt: 7
Final Score:
6.7 out of 10… rounded up to a 7 for Gamespot.
It's not a bad game, but the difficulty cripples the game so it's almost completely unplayable by anyone but the most dedicated of gamers.