Developer : Rare
Release date : June 1991
Synopsis :
Battletoads is a beat ’em up/platform video game developed by Rare and published by Tradewest. It is the first installment of the Battletoads series and was originally released on 1 June 1991 for the Nintendo Entertainment System. It was subsequently ported to the Mega Drive and Game Gear in 1993, to the Amiga and Amiga CD32 in 1994 (despite the former having been developed in 1992), and released with some changes for the Game Boy in 1993 in the form of Battletoads in Ragnarok’s World. In the game, three space humanoid toad warriors form a group known as the Battletoads. Two of the Battletoads, Rash and Zitz, embark on a mission to defeat the evil Dark Queen on her planet and rescue their kidnapped friends: Pimple, the third member of the Battletoads, and Princess Angelica.
The game was developed in response to the interest in the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles franchise. It received mostly positive reviews upon release, with critics praising the graphics and variations of gameplay; however, many critics were divided over the difficulty. It won seven awards from the 1991 Nintendo Power Awards, and has since been renowned as one of the most difficult video games ever created. It was later included in Rare’s 2015 Xbox One retrospective compilation, Rare Replay.
Professor T. Bird and the three Battletoads, Rash, Zitz, and Pimple, are escorting Princess Angelica to her home planet using their spacecraft, the Vulture, for her to meet her father, the Terran Emperor. When Pimple and Angelica decide to take a leisurely trip on Pimple’s flying car, they are ambushed and captured by the Dark Queen’s ship, the Gargantua. The Dark Queen and her minions have been hiding in the dark spaces between the stars following their loss to the Galactic Corporation in the battle of Canis Major. Pimple then sends out a distress signal to the Vulture, alerting Professor T. Bird, Rash, and Zitz. Learning that the Gargantua is hidden beneath the surface of a nearby planet called Ragnarok’s World, Professor T. Bird flies Rash and Zitz there in the Vulture to rescue them. Between levels, the toads receive briefing comments from Professor T. Bird, along with teasing from the Dark Queen.
The professor drops the toads to the first level, Ragnarok Canyon, the surface of the planet guarded by axe-wielding Psyko-Pigs and Dragons that the player can fly with if taken out first; its boss is the Tall Walker, which throws boulders the heroes must throw back at it while avoiding its lasers. The toads then enter the world by descending through a downward-vertical-scrolling Impact Crater, the second level named Wookie Hole, where they face threats of ravens that can cut off the toads’ Turbo Cable, Retro Blasters that pop out of the wall and shoot electrical bolts, Electro Zappers that form a line of 2,000 volts of energy, and plants named Saturn Toadtraps that eat toads.
Ride levels include the third stage, the Turbo Tunnel, where the players dodges stone walls while riding on a Speed Bike and having to use ramps to get across long gaps; the fifth level, Surf City, where the player bounces on water surfaces on a “Space Board” while dodging logs, whirlpools, mines, and spiked balls; the seventh stage, Volkmire’s Inferno, where the ‘toads fly on the Toad Plane in a fire-y environment going through Force Fields and dodging fireballs and rockets; and level eleven, the Clinger-Wringer, where the toads ride on the stage’s titular unicycles while being chased by a hypnotic energy orb, named the Buzzball. All of them include a section of beat ’em up gameplay, with Surf City being the location a boss fight with Big Blag, the chief of the Dark Queen’s rat army that can squash the Battletoads with his weighty blubber slam, and Buzzball also serving as Clinger-Wringer’s boss.
The fourth stage, the Ice Cavern, is a platform level where the player has to use snowballs and ice blocks to destroy barriers while dodging those cold elements as well as spikes and hedgehogs and facing snowball-throwing snowmen. Level six, Karnath’s Lair, is a set of rooms that each consist of only one exit and multiple snakes moving in varied, twisting rectangular patterns that serve as platforms, and the toads must traverse them while also dodging spikes. Intruder Excluder, the vertical-scrolling eighth stage, is the most platform-oriented level in Battletoads; it involves several jumps on platforms, springs and through electric barriers between moving gaps of platforms, avoiding obstacles such as rolling Big Balls, Snotballs, suction valves named Suckas and poisonous gas guns named Gassers, and its only beat ’em up sections being encounters with Sentry-Drones, The player must get from the bottom to the top of the level, where a boss fight with the Queen’s genetically modified biogen Robo-Manus takes place. Level nine, Terra Tubes, is a mixture of a platform and underwater stage, and the only instance of the toads swimming in the game; it involves the player going through a non-linear pipe entrance into the Gargantua, with sections including encounters with Mechno-Droids and Steel-Beck duck creatures that guard the tubes, chases from the Krazy Kog, and rivers infested with spikes, sharks, electric eels named Elctra-Eels, and instant-attacking Hammerfish.
The tenth level, the Rat Race, is one of two levels in Battletoads to be located in the Gargantua, the other being the eleventh level, Clinger-Winger. Rat Race is a downward-vertical-scrolling with the same hazards and enemies as Intruder Excluder. In the stage, the Dark Queen sends fast rodent Giblet to activate three bombs in the ship for it to explode, and the player must self-destruct them before the rat makes it to them. After the bombs are successfully switched off, a showdown with the Queen’s least quick-witted commander, General Slaughter who only attacks with his head, ensues.
The Battletoads escape the ship and, in another upward-vertical-scrolling stage named the Revolution, go to the top of the Dark Queen’s Tower; the level involves the camera staying on where the toads move, thus presenting them as 2D sprites, but they and other enemies move circularly around the tower, thus making the background rotate as if it were three-dimensional. In the level, a variety of platforms must be jumped on in order to progress, such as those that sink the longer the playable character is one, those that disappear and re-appear, those that move around the tower, and springs; foes include oafs named Hornheads, Shadow Clouds that either harm the player with poisonous gas or blow wind to change the player’s speed, Spiked Balls that rotate around the tower, and Swellcheeks where the only way for the player to avoid being blown away by its wind power is hanging on the flag poles.
Once the Queen is defeated, she claims it will not be the last they would see from her, turns into a whirlwind and flies into space, “retreating into the shadowy margins of the galaxy to recoup her losses”. With Pimple and Princess Angelica rescued, the four are brought back into the Vulture and fly away from the planet.
Source : Wikipedia
