Probably one of my most questioned takes is my opinion regarding Battletoads. My retro card gets regularly revoked because I don't have a very high opinion of it. The way I see it, Battletoads best symbolizes that a well made game can be pretty unlikeable. Am I salty because in the near 29 nears of its existence, I've never beaten it? Well...YES, that's a part of it. Not just because it's ultra hard, but it's because any amount of time I've put into getting better at Battletoads felt more work than any quantity of fun should be.

Developed by Rare and Dlala studios and published by Tradwest, Battletoads does inject quite a bit of life into the brawler/beat'em up genre. For its time, the graphics were phenomenal. The sprites were expressive and well animated, the Toads' signature attacks highlighted by the exaggerated morphing of their appendages, like the ram horns when executing a running headbutt that finishes and enemy, giant boots, and wrecking balls. For an 8-bit game, there's a lot of unique animation in Battletoads.

There isn't any real problems with the controls, either. Battletoads is tight and responsive. Attacks land when they should, the hitboxes are respectable compared to brawlers like Double Dragon. I do really dislike that during two-player co-op, you can damage your partner. It's incredibly inconvenient unless you're playing with someone you're in complete synch with. And there's the music. The music in Battletoads and its sequels/spinoffs are among the most memorable retro gaming tunes (preferably Battletoads/Double Dragon: The Ultimate team). 

So there are some redeeming qualities about the 'Toads. But when it comes to playing the more notoriously difficult games in the NES library, as the years went on, my eagerness to really improve at Battletoads and eventually beat it waned considerably. I've beaten Castlevania III, Ninja Gaiden II, the ridiculously unfair Double Dragon 3: The Sacred Stones (the weakest of the NES Double Dragons). At one point in my life, I could do a run of Contra III The Alien War on one continue ON HARD. What separates 'Toads from them is that the game requires being dialed in for an insane amount of time to the point of it being very draining. It's certainly stressful to come up short when playing a game, but I also acquire knowledge that gradually rolls over when I begin my next play session. The cumulative effect leads to improvement, so it got less discouraging each time I tried. By the time I was 16, I was emotionally done with Battletoads. It wasn't a fun game to play with two players, since a single player running out of lives restarted the level from the beginning. And around the height of the retro boom period in the mid 2000's, it became a rite of passage for the hardest of the hardcore to claim they beat it clean. And I'll be more than a fair man, 'Toads is easier on the digits than trying to grind it out of Silver Surfer.

Battletoads is a harrowing experience, this game will beat the actual soul out of you. Every six years, I'd turn it on and go, "alright, this will be the day", but as the reflexes deteriorate, getting past the dreaded Speeder Bike stage is a Herculean task now. 

There seemed to be an effort to make Battletoads a franchise to perhaps rival or provide an alternative to the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles juggernaut that ruled the 90's. There was a very brief toy line that didn't quite take off, a single episode cartoon pilot of questionable quality. And by "questionable", I mean a poorly animated, washed down, cheap slapstick offering that makes Adventures of Sonic the Hedgehog look like Avatar The Last Airbender.

I feel the sequel, Battlemaniacs is a more polished title and a little more forgiving in terms of difficulty, but the original game is a technical beast that pushed the aging NES to some amazing limits visually and has some solid controls. Certainly deserves its hard game status more than Dark Souls, which is just hard because it's clumsy and poorly designed. Come at me.

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