Battletoads (Too Fucking Hard)

[Melf]

I popped this in on a whim today, figuring I'd get to the jet ski part and die like always. This time, however, I passed it ON A SINGLE LIFE! It's taken me 20 years to pass this damn stage, and to do it with one life was freakin' sweet!

Then I got to the ice stage and lost all my lives. Continuing sends you back to the beginning, so this is as far as I go. Why is this game so damn hard?

[HappehLemons]

Screw Battletoads. It's just too goddamn hard.

[ThugsRook]

Level Select = Up, Down, Up, Up, Down, C, A, B

[djshok]

My wife can get to the snake level in that game. I can't get past the stupid bike level. This game is evil. I eventually beat every game I owned back in the 90's except this one and the Ooze.

[DarkDragon]

Perhaps they should have toned down the difficulty when they ported it to the Genesis.

[Melf]

Level Select = Up, Down, Up, Up, Down, C, A, B

My hero!

[Kollision]

Battletoads is one of those games that separates gamer men from gamer boys.

[Zebbe]

I've gotten to the bomb stage. I need to pick up the game and try again.

[ItellYaHuat]

The game is very easy (especially level 3 since there isn't much combat. I can do it without losing a life). I guess that's because I picked up early on it when I was a toddler. My only problem is the Rat Race where you have to get rid of the bomb. I lose my lives there mainly. Normally I'd progress through the game smoothly but that level is a speed bump for me. If we're talking cheating, I beat through the game without level warping with infinity lives. I was losing on the Rat Race many times but I managed to win one time so I got to beat the rest of the game. The Dark Queen isn't as tough as the Rhino boss and the Clinger Winger (stage 11) just requires near perfect timing on the turns.

[oldskool]

I think the furthest I ever got was the snake level or the ice stage, whichever one is later. But then again, I have never really sat down for more than one session every year or so to see how far I could get. I was lucky to find a mint CIB Battletoads on Craigslist for $5.

[N.Saibot]

I popped this in on a whim today, figuring I'd get to the jet ski part and die like always. This time, however, I passed it ON A SINGLE LIFE! It's taken me 20 years to pass this damn stage, and to do it with one life was freakin' sweet!

Then I got to the ice stage and lost all my lives. Continuing sends you back to the beginning, so this is as far as I go. Why is this game so damn hard?

No one has to play through the ice part, ever. Just at the end of the jet ski part there is a teleporter,
that sends you straight over the ice part to the next level.

This is how you find it: in the end of the jet ski part you have a really fast sequence of walls, drive
into the seventh wall (I believe it's the 7th, didn't play that part for a long time now). You can
actually see there is a worm hole there, it just flashes buy so quickly, you probably never noticed it.

[StarMist]

Thank you Melf for making me feel good about my gaming for about an hour, which led to my wasting a couple more. Plugged in Battletoads (NES) and survived lv 3. Then pretty much breezed through lv 4. Endured the rather irksome surfing. Bested the snake and its cheap instant kills. Lv 7 also has lots of garbage but I beat that, despite the flicker (sure that's no matter on the G) which vanishes one's entire sprite against the boss. Did I say 'cheap' already? No no no. Lv 8 has a race, this time on a plane, which you wouldn't think could have been made by the same people who designed the totally fair and enjoyable race in lv 3: it's sheer memorization and drudgery--high-speed drudgery. For masochistic purposes I beat that and moved on to lv 9 (down the tubes--except not in EWJ style). That is the worst video game lv I've ever played...and I've played through Peter Pan on the NES. Were it the first or second lv nobody would've ever extolled or bought this game; most players just haven't trouped far enough to see it. It's full of instant kills that can only be avoided by memorisation (so, great, I have to memorise the worst lv I've ever played), and bad control in the form of an out-of-water jump that altogether jerks. Incidentally the control throughout isn't perfect, it suffers from that decaying lateral gravity common to NES games, as eg in Ghosts and Goblins, where hard long sidewise jumps lose their natural trajectory once the character begins to descend. So I cheated and advanced to the Rat Race lv. For the first time in what seemed like, or actually had been, quite a while I discovered a good idea: very little fighting, just chase the blighter down the screen. All right, I'll do it again. And again? No. That third time is so difficult I honestly thought I'd overlooked the ability to hop down through platforms. Nope. So, it's not fun anymore and it's getting harder? hmm...Off it went.
Now why, other than my being a natural windbag, have I gone on so long about this? If memory serves your reviewer gave it an 8. Fine, he beat it, good for him--he should get the 8, not this end-wrecked game. This raises the question when is game difficulty a fault? I'll pursue this in a new thread.
P.S. Fuck those ducks!

[Mr Smith]

I've never even attempted to get beyond level-1 of Battletoads.

[StarMist]

I've never even attempted to get beyond level-1 of Battletoads.

That is why this man should be our new moderator. Our current moderators have played and beaten too many games to understand why we're so pissed off on seemingly innocent topics. (Melf, I know you've whipped a bushel of others). I'd tout Smith for President, but I'd rather see him do something more worthwhile with his time.

[MightyJayM]

On my real hardware, I can barely manage to get to level 8, using warps (never could beat the snake level on my own). Once I tried it on emulator with save states, and I couldn't get past the rat race. This game is hard, but on the "cheap" way. Everything just seems so unfair, from the countless ways to get an instant death (why bother to include a life bar ?) to the very very limited continues or the totally unplayable two-player mode. It's a shame as it features a very inventive level design and quite a lot of diversity.