Battletoads – The Original on the Nintendo Entertainment System (NES) – Worst Games Ever

If you’ve ever played this game, then you have a sort of love hate (but mostly hate) relationship with Battletoads on the NES. I mean this game had so much potential. It had good graphics, interesting ideas, solid gameplay, responsive controls, kickass music, and it was a ripoff of Ninja Turtles. It had basically everything going for it at the time. The game only had one fatal flaw: The levels had been designed by a rapid Chimpanzee.

The first two levels of this game are phenomenal. If you rented this game from the store, you wanted to show it to your friends – it was that awesome. And how cool was it that your foot turned into a boot when you kicked an enemy off screen? So cool. And your hand became a giant fist when you punched their lights out. Mega awesome. After the first level, you fought a boss from the boss’s perspective! Holy hell, so unique! Then you dropped down some gigantic hole into the ground, which was also a very unique and groundbreaking design for a level. The best part was the third level.

The third level was basically the part where the game withered and took a feeble anal evacuation all over your living room floor. It stated out fine – beat the crap out of some giant mice and stuff. Okay. Then you get into some car and fly off…

And that’s a bout it. Game over every time. The flying car thing was next to impossible. The only way to beat it was to memorize the jumps, and there were a million of them. Try playing the game 2 players and there are a million additional problems, too. You can hit each other, and if either player runs out of lives the game ends. The other player starts with the same amount of lives from when the game ended, so basically the game goes into a cycle where it continues to go to the game over screen over, and over, and over, and over. So the two player mode is worthless. Avoid it.

How the hell were two players supposed to get through the flying car stage? C'mon Billy. Bad programming monkey! (Chimps are apes, though).

Does Battletoads get easier after the cycles? I have no idea myself, because I was never able to finish. From the looks of watching people play on Youtube though, I don’t think it does.

There’s a weird level with a snake that nobody in their right mind would ever figure out. It keeps crawling upwards and you have to hang on to it as it goes up. You never know what it’s going to do next, and you basically have to jump into the open space hoping to catch it on its next movement. Crazy. There’s another level where you have to run away from some random wheel things that roll at you, and you run through something that resembles a rat maze. The last level of the game has you climbing some tower that never, ever seems to end.

Whew. If you can beat this game, you are a superhero. The original Battletoads is hard for all the wrong reasons. It’s like that game “I Wanna Be The Guy.” Everything is trial and error, and you always have to make split second decisions. The game is seriously long, too. There are a lot of warps hidden around, though.

All in all, this game is just bonkers. Because of the fact that like 97% of the people that played this game couldn’t get past the third level with the rocket cars, the game is virtually unplayable. It sucks.

If you can beat this game or get far in it, I’m very sorry for the childhood that you lost out on. The rest of us did fun things with our time.