Retronauts - Retronauts Episode 396: Battletoads

Episode Date: August 16, 2021

When Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles struck gold at the start of the '90s, everyone wanted the piece of the action. That included British developer Rare, who created a similar group of green heroes to capitalize on Turtlemania: the Battletoads. Though it's mostly remembered for a singular stage within the first game, and only lasted a few short years, the Battletoads series attracted enough nostalgia to receive a brand-new release 26 years after the last one. But is there any appeal for this IP outside of sheer irony? On this episode of Retronauts, join Bob Mackey, Jeremy Parish, Matt McMuscles, and Stuart Gipp as the crew clings to their speeder bikes and zooms through a history of Battletoads. It'll be mad, bad, and crazy! Retronauts is a completely fan-funded operation. To support the show, and get exclusive episodes every month, please visit the official Retronauts Patreon at patreon.com/retronauts.

Retronauts is part of the Greenlit Podcast Network. For more information, please go to greenlitpodcast.com. This week on Retronauts, we're totally traumatized by the TurboTunnel. Hello everybody, welcome to another episode of Retronauts. I'm your host for this one, Bob Mackie. And today's episode is all about the Battletoads. Before I go on, I want to introduce everybody on this totally awesome podcast because that's the only pun we'll be using for the next 90 minutes.

Who is my constant retronauts companion in North Carolina? I guess that's me, Jeremy Parrish, but in the virtual world, I'm known as Exema. Okay, yes, I guess we have to come up with our toad names. I'm in Pataigo, Jeremy's Exema. Who do we have across the cold ocean that has no toads in it? Oh, I am Stuart Jip, and I guess I am athlete's foot, but with the Y instead of an A, that's kind of cool, right? I don't know. That's slightly extreme, I think.

And who is our other guest on the line? I'm Matt McMossils. Leprosy, some of cold. I don't know where we go from there, and I'm very, very anxious. great because when Mr. Baumacky invited me on, I was like, okay, I'm going to say totally several times. He has already said it. But I just, I'm so excited to be on retronauts. I could just croak. So I'm happy enough with that. We have a second one. That's why the Battle Todes couldn't last. There just weren't, there wasn't enough material for more of a series. And yeah,

for some reason, Matt, so Jeremy's on here because he's, you know, retronauts, obviously. Stewart's on here because he's the British person we have to have on the show, so we're not too mean to rare he has to he's going to be held accountable for all of this i'll take the blame and for whatever reason mad and i don't know this should not be an insult but when i thought of battle toads i thought of you and i'm not quite sure why but i feel like this is in your wheelhouse i'm not quite sure why you chose either um but i i mean i i i've posted a bit about battle toes i've played a few of the games on my channel so i'm not insulted i i i just i detect a little bit of hostility towards the toads here. So maybe I can even that out because I'm pretty sure it's a great series.

You might be misreading my tone. I've got a frog in my throat. Okay. These are not battle frogs, sir. They're toads. But I will accept it. Sorry, I feel very amphibian about this. I mean, ambivalent. Oh, my God. Oh, geez. Well, okay, so it's 2021, but 2020 was the year of two things, COVID-19 and Battletoads, because Battletoads had their grand revival. in 2020 with a remit, not a remake, sorry, but a reboot. And that led us all to ask, you know, what's the deal with Battletoads? So a year late, we're bringing you this podcast,

and I will ask that same question throughout, because this is an interesting series, and it was an interesting kind of flop, kind of hit in certain ways. But I do want to explore where this series went. But of course, my current Zoom slash Google Me background is a turbo tunnel, and that is the one reference

people of a certain generation will all understand is a turbo tunnel I don't think zoomers get it I don't think anyone older than Gen X gets it but if you're Gen X or millennial that used to be like a uniting factor

in our lives if you're getting together talking about video games for the first time in like the early 2000s we all were traumatized by this one level in Battletoads that is the lasting legacy

but there are several Battletoads games there's a reboot there's a cartoon there's lots to talk about before I go on I do want to know everyone's Battletoads history and I know Jared

me, uh, I, I choose to believe this is true. You claim to have finished battle toads as a misguided youth. Once. I did it once. Yes. And then I, I said, oh, now I can beat this anytime I want. And I played it again and realized, no, that was a fluke. That is a thing that will never happen again. Were you a Battletoads renter that you purchased Battletoads? No, I bought it. I, I bought all the hype. It showed up on Nintendo power on the cover. There was, you know, there was like a Power Blade episode issue, I think. And then there was like a little like two toad hands holding binoculars like in the corner.

What was this mysterious frog hand about? And Nintendo Power really hyped this game up. And you know, at this point the Super NES was out, but I did not have it. And this was one of those games you could buy and say, well, I don't need a Super NES because look at how good the graphics are in this. so yeah I really I wanted I wanted this to be the game and I talked it up for a long time convinced myself I loved it

you know and then a couple years later I played the super envious game and realized you know there's actually nothing redeeming about this and I don't ever want to read this again and I've been true to my word wow until this very episode yeah I mean Battletoads did get a Nintendo Power cover it was some pretty early hideous CGI arts

but it got a I think it was the June issue this was a July 1991 video game but yeah what they made a big deal about a big splash if you will about Battletoads so Stuart what was your experience with Battletoads being in the home country of Rare

I think it just kind of turned up I remember a friend of mine had the Game Boy there was a Game Boy game that was like a port of the original game which was the second one for some reason I don't know why they did it that way I'm sure we'll get to that but my main experience was playing Battlemaniacs the SNES game

A friend of mine had that And I don't think we saw the third level Because even the second level on that game is insane You're basically descending a tree It's like the tower level from the first game But towards the end The speed goes into ridiculous overdrive Of all of the walls of spikes

It just gets insanely tight And it doesn't even end It just fades out as you're going down And if you die while it's fading out It still counts So yeah But I feel like I think my reaction to that was just kind of like

well it's a video game so yeah of course you're not supposed to finish them they're impossible because I had a spectrum yes I never finished anything I'm sorry to hear that yeah that's okay thank you very much I do appreciate that it was awful it was absolutely awful and I'm only now coming to terms with it but so as a result my response to sort of battle toys is just kind of like that's not so bad turbo tunnels I mean it's okay you know at least it previews the obstacles that are coming

it doesn't just kill you and then make you load for 15 minutes again. It's slightly fair. And Matt, how about you? A lot of games at that time, I didn't have a subscription Nintendo Power. I'd get one later on, like, more towards 95, but I would see

ads in comic books for NES games all the time. Usually, like, a white page with the game box just there. And I think it was the Boutes 1 Boxer where the Toads are kicking. And it's always weird because they have the exact same

design on the box art like there's no one doesn't have glasses uh you know uh rash or whatever and i remember seeing that ad just going oh well that looks so amazing yeah at the time did you know like is this a ninja turtles rip off of course it wasn't from the wool over wise but you were still kind of i'll take more ninja turtles give me the biker mice i i want them like i'll take it all in so when i finally did rent it i i thought it was amazing at the time like just it was a technically advanced NES title until you got to the turbo tunnel and it could never ever beat it as a kid. I don't even think I beat it as an adult.

And I only learned a few years ago. It's like this game isn't that hard if you cheat and use all the teleporting like tricks in the game just to get through it. I didn't even know about that until like I think an episode of a Game Center CX when when you tried to beat that. But I really like the. a bit more come the Super Nintendo. I was a big double dragon fan.

So when Battle Toad, my mind melted Battle Toads Double Dragon. And I kind of played that as like my Toad game of choice. Because for all intents of purposes, it was, since it was made by Rare and Double Dragons were an afterthought. But the actual NES game I never saw really past the turbo tunnel for most of my life. Yeah, I'm the same way. Let me tell you the rest of the game doesn't get any nicer. It continues to hate you from start to finish

Is there even a walk path that lets you skip that level Where you're jumping through water And there's a rubber ducks that just randomly may or may not kill you That one I don't remember if you can warp past that That makes the turbotone look like Mario Brothers 1-1 As far as I'm concerned We will get to exploring every difficult level of this game As for me, I did fall for the spell

Because I was very susceptible to marketing And Nintendo Power, you know The cover said this is the hot new thing and like Matt, yeah, I love Ninja Turtles. I'll take more of these guys, please, because there's just simply not enough turtles to go around. So I never, like, purchased the games, but I would follow them through rentals,

and my enthusiasm gradually declined over time, but I did really like the double dragon crossover, which we'll talk about. I thought that was, like, the best game in the series, the most manageable difficulty in the best gameplay, but outside of that, I can see why it went away, and we'll talk about the many factors involved in that very soon. But, yeah, I do want to talk about Battle Tote's history to put you back in time the year 1991.

So at this point in time, rare. is one of Nintendo's most prolific developers. I believe by the end of their NES work, they did 47 games. They developed 47 games, or at least their name is on 47 games. Some things are subcontracted out. They were the most prolific Western developers for the NES.

They were, you know, beaten in terms of sheer numbers by Tose, who is based in Japan, and made, who even knows how many Famicom and NES games. But in terms of Western, Developed games, rare was like no one, no one made that many besides them. And because of they were so prolific, the quality of the games varied because you could have something as good as RC ProRam. You could have something on the other end of the spectrum like Who Frame Roger Rabbit?

And most of the things they did, Beetlejuice too, yeah. And most of the things they did were licensed. They did some original stuff like Wizards and Warriors, but for the most part, they were doing adaptations of like game shows and ports of things. and yeah so occasionally you get a good game out of them but they weren't known for quality they're just known for the amount of games they put out so that's where rare is so yeah rare is is kind of one of those studios kind of like tose where it really like the quality of their output really varies according to who is publishing and you get the impression that companies like Nintendo or um i don't know trade west said here have time and money and make this game good

like here is a large ROM that you can put your game on so you're not cutting corners and slashing content and you can actually refine it whereas when they were publishing for like an LJN or someone it was just you know please make this game by Monday and here's like a two kilobite ROM for you to put it on we want the cheapest possible board for your Nintendo game so yeah so I feel like Rare had great potential but a lot of work for the Famicom and NES, really just boil down to contract work, you know, taking a low bid and giving publishers exactly no more than they asked for, like the minimum threshold of acceptability, which for some publishers was extraordinarily low. So, yeah, they were like full of people with great technical expertise. That was how they got onto the NES in the first place. They beat everyone in the west to the punch by basically just like reverse engineering the NES, the Famicom. And when they were given the time and space to really create great stuff they did, and when, you know, they just had to pay the bills and the publisher was like, just get something

done for us. They did that too. Yeah, you could see how the quality of their games skyrocketed when they just became part of Nintendo and had to kind of just hold the N64 aloft with a little bit of help. The quality of the games really did improve. And also, so 1991, Rare's making a lot of games for Nintendo. Also, what's happening in pop culture? Well, here's what's happening in pop culture. 1989 was the year of Ninja Turtles. We did a podcast about that a few years ago, but 1989 was the arcade game, the NES game, and finally, the series had existed, the cartoon series had existed, but 1989 was the start of the weekday syndication package

in which there were 65 total episodes, five days a week. So that is when the Ninja Turtles hit it huge. Max Turtle saturation in the 1990, that was the movie. So that is where that fad was at this point in time. In 1990 was also the year of the Simpsons. So in 1990, turtles are sharing the throne with the Simpsons in terms of what kids like. And by 1991, there's the second Turtles movie. And that's when I feel like as a kid at the time, that's when the enthusiasm started to wane with the turtles, where people were less interested. The Simpsons were still the big fad. There were still enough interest to keep that original series on the air until like 1994. But that's when the decline started. And this is when

the Battletoads are just coming into being in the decline of the Turtles. And like a lot of the also-ran turtle clones, Battle Toads does happen a bit late. So there are ones that happen much later in time, like Biker Meiss from Mars in 1993, Street Sharks is 1994. There's something called Wild West Cowboys of Moosa, 1992. I feel like because of how long things take to animate, all of the Ninja Turtles copycats came a little bit too late to be their own thing. And Matt, I know you have a lot of experience.

with some of these clones, especially street sharks. Yes, I have a lot of experience with street sharks. You are a street sharks. Yeah, you are a street sharks expert on what a cartoon. Yeah, no, I was. I mean, around that time, though, like 91, I kind of remember there being a lot of hype around the second Ninja Turtle's movie. And obviously, when kids saw it, it was like maybe a little more kid friendly and everything. but I just remember, because I did a little bit of research,

like 93 was when they realized Mirage, playmates, whoever, that things are really dipping down for us. So we need to, what can we do to re-energize the turtles? I know, market them even more and put up more action figure lines and get all these, like not more, you needed to sort of change the turtles a little bit, but they didn't. It stayed the same until those wacky later seasons where they kept mutating

and like whatever, 95, 96. I'm always shocked to know how long the original Ninja Turtles cartoon actually lasted. Yeah, you're right. I'm not familiar with these subsequent mutations. That sounds unusual. Yeah, it was 1996.

And, yeah, like, I remember seeing the third Ninja Turtles movie in 1993 as a kid thinking, I guess we're still doing this. I was kind of out of loyalty, kind of out of like nostalgia for being eight, I thought I saw it. But yeah, so how this all ties into Battletoads. I mean, obviously Battletoads is trying to

their Ninja Turtles, but I was looking at the documentary about Battletoads on the rare replay game package. And essentially rare, they saw the amount of merchandise that the first, well, I guess technically the second Batman movie was making Batman 1989. And they're like, hey, merchandising rules, we want some of that. And that is where the idea for Battletoads started, is that they wanted to have an IP that could spawn a bunch of toys and products and comic books and fruit pies and, you know, Chef Boyardee creations and what have you. Seeing how they went about it, I feel like because they were in the UK

and because they were a very small team and because they were new at this, you can see why this stumbled out of the gates because with things like Ninja Turtles and the Simpsons, it was all a concerted effort to be like, let's get the TV show on the air and roll out the merchandise immediately and find other licensing opportunities.

With Battletoads, you can see, like, there were only three figures. They're not very good. There was no official comic. the pilot for this cartoon that was never made came way too late. It was all of these things. You could tell the IP wasn't being handled by people who knew how to successfully market something like this. In fairness, I think that was pretty common back then.

You know, these massive crossover franchises, you know, mass market saturation, that was pretty new. I mean, Batman really kind of defined that. And then, you know, you had Ninja Turtles the next year and the Dick Tracy movie, like, if you are old enough to remember comic books around that time and magazines and so forth, like Dick Tracy ads were inescapable. But that was still, that was still a really, a pretty new thing. Like the idea of just carpet bomb the, you know, everyone, just put everyone on blast. Didn't really happen for anything outside of Star Wars at that point.

So it was, you know, I can forgive them for not really getting it because people were still figuring it out. We lived in a more innocent time. It wasn't the media hellscape that were trapped in now. It is true. Plus it was based on like a video game first rather than like the reverse, like have a video game based like a video game based on a bucky O'Hare or you know, the Ninja Turtle. So it was a weird way to go about it or let's create the game first, but still with the intention of merchandising like the crap out of it, which yeah, I never saw like you mentioned all those things that kind of didn't really get off the ground. I didn't even know that there was like a failed pilot until like years, until like the internet, basically. Same here.

I just let me know that it existed. So I was flabbergasted like, wow, they try to make the toads. Like when you hear that there was a bubbsy cartoon, I'm just like absolutely not. Someone made this up as a joke. Yeah, I mean, it's online officially. The people who made it just put it online so you can watch the Battletoads cartoon. But when you look at the Battletoads and you look at Ninja Turtles, they didn't really steal enough because you can see how the turtles, why they were, success because it's like there's great theming and that they all have different colors.

They all have, you know, different weapons. So immediately, they're distinct the second you see them, even though they're identical characters. They also each have their own personalities that are distinct. This is not true of the Battletoads. They don't have distinct weapons. They kind of look different, but not enough in a way to make you say, oh, that's my favorite. And obviously, they really can't have personalities.

And we'll talk about this as we talk about different games in that in every game, there is seemingly a different origin story and the one that they kind of eventually figure out is not very satisfying so I feel like that's something you need from the beginning when you're doing this kind of massive IP for kids. It's like you need to have a Bible saying

this is where the characters came from and here's who they are and here's who their friends are. The universe is simply not big enough. There's a villain. It's kind of their version of the shredder. It's a dominatrix. But again, there's no other characters outside of that. There's like some villains, but they're also not

defined and they're not very interesting I always forget his name Robo Manis I think that's his name Silas Volkmeyer The Master Splinter Oh Professor Tiberd Yeah

I know all of these way too well I'm ashamed of myself I just think kids don't want to buy a big black action figure it's just a big rat wearing like pants nobody wants that I don't like big black No it's not and big black just sounds too British as well It's like, I'm going to go on a big black mate.

So no one wants to hear that. It's like calling a character Captain Bollocks, you know? Yeah. Now that would have sold. I would buy that right now. I'd buy that, too. And also a more adult version of Captain Underpants. Also, Zitz and Pimple are the same thing, kind of.

So you need more variety there. And yeah, I just feel like, and even when I was a kid, I could tell the people who made this game were kind of being derisive of the Ninja Turtles. Like, oh, can you believe how stupid this is? How easy is this to do? We can just do our own and make it very dumb and have them all named after, like, skin conditions. It's that easy. So I feel like going into this, it's a creation that's already, like, openly cynical and derisive towards the thing it's trying to rip off, which means it can't really succeed on its own terms.

I think one factor is, like, with the turtles, no matter how you feel about them, I guess, it could be like, you could pick the games up and be like, which turtle do you want to be? Who do you want to be? And in Battle Toads, I don't think you can do that until the Double Dragon game. It's basically just, who do you want to be? Oh, well, you can't be pimple. He's a whole option. So what you're saying, Bob, basically, is that in being so condescending toward the thing that it's satirizing, it's basically Shrek 10 years early.

Ooh, yes, although I don't know which I like worse. Large green protagonists, doesn't hold up well, ironically popular in hindsight. That is true, yeah. This is the Shrek of video games, I think. I think we solved it. I think, like, a lot of people miss Ninja Turtles in that what they missed about it was that it already was a parody. And I think that escaped a lot of people because that was not really clear in the cartoon, which was the most famous interpretation of the Turtles. But it's weird that people are paring this thing that was already a parody of Frank Miller comic.

So in a way, it's like, oh, you kind of didn't get it. Yeah, but you weren't meant to, like, depending on your age. Like, it was always going to go over. Like, there's lots of things Raphael would say. Like, I didn't understand breaking the fourth wall. So when Raphael would, I was like, is he talking to me? Like, I didn't even have a concept of like, you know, how he's really, me, it's really, I'm a Ninja Turtle too.

But the only thing the Battle Toads like lacked even from the games, because the games don't really mention it, sort of, they don't have their food of choice. Yeah. I think every, you can eat flies, but that doesn't count because that's actually realistic for what they are. But the fact that Biker Mice ate chili dogs, Sonic ate chili dogs, and the street charts ate hamburgers, like they did not have their food of choice, and therefore they will never have

that marketing synergy. Like you can't sit down and watch Battletoads or play Battletoads and eat flies. It just doesn't work rare. I sure someone got fired for that blunder. Yeah, like in terms of marketing this to kids, you're right. That's one of the things they missed out on. And so we have like things like colors and weapons and personalities and like a favorite food. Even catchphrases, there is not a catchphrase.

I mean, I was looking at the early comic and I think the catchphrase. Yeah, you get mad, bad, bad and totally crazy, was their catchphrase. But that's also, I don't think that's present in the games. It's just a real hodgepodge of just different ideas floating around. But for a cynical as this was, it wasn't cynical enough. They didn't do their homework enough to be enough of a ripoff to be successful outside of the first game. I mean, for, well, I'm sure we'll talk about a bit later, but like for colors and making more identifiable personalities, that happened, but way too late. Like maybe the arcade game and after that, not really.

And then even way after that, like last year, they did it with the Battletoads reboot, but that was 20 years too late. You needed to have all that framework, like you said, when the first game came out or actually have the cartoon launch. and give you more of that then but they were way too late like you said and they mishandled it so yeah they don't have much um in terms of personality and let's go totally crazy is really good but they don't say it in the game and that was the main avenue that people had to see these characters just didn't work out so going back to the production of the first game there's a bit about it on rare replay you can watch these videos they've all been uploaded to YouTube, but a few facts about Battle Toads. Originally, it was going to be called

Amphibians with a Z or Z, if you're in the UK, or Canada. And originally their idea for the game visually was very fluid animation, but since they couldn't necessarily do that on the NES, they opted for the exaggeration of the limbs and the heads, which is what you see in the final game. So it's like, if we can't make large, well-animated characters, which would be in future games, we can at least have these flourishes for big attacks. And that's how it was interpreted later in the games. And yes, this game is exceptionally difficult because there was no focus testing really at the time

and it was tuned to the abilities of the people who made the game. And I think the story on Rear replay is the software engineer would basically fine-tune a level until he could beat it and then he would make it a little bit harder on top of that. So this game was designed to be difficult to the people who made it. This was not play tested by a general audience.

We did not really do that at this point in time. At least Rare didn't do it. And it wasn't a common practice, I don't think. And it's worth mentioning that the people who made it were battle-hardened. They were, like, calloused, just hateful, cynical people after, you know, a decade of video game abuse. So it's not even just that it's the people who made it. It's that, you know, made by the people who made it who are monsters. Exactly, exactly.

Because they are from the UK and they grew up with brutally hard microcomputer games, not only playing them, but making. them. So what they see as a difficult game is different than what we see as a difficult game or what someone in Japan would see as a difficult game. So already they have the unfair advantage in just being battle-hardened by all of these very, very blisteringly difficult

games. So the general design of Battle Toads was inspired by Double Dragon, and that would make sense because later they would cross over, thanks to Trade West. And the U.S. launched got a big pushman-inteno power. And, yeah, this was a big summer game right before the launch of the Super Nintendo in America. that would launch in America in August this was I think a July video game so like just right before

the launch of the SNES in America of course it had been out in Japan for quite some time but we wouldn't have known that or wouldn't have been able to play it unless we were really cool and yes despite rarest plans for the series this was basically a four year phenomenon and

after the first game I don't think anyone really cared that much I mean kids in my school and kids that would play games with me we thought the first battle-tales was kind of neat but after that first game I just played the rest of them out of curiosity like oh I wonder what they're doing now

because I just was just like I felt obligated to see this through because it did feel like well this could be a turtles thing maybe if I play it enough and no the answer was no no no it wasn't for me it was kind of the beginning of my NES Swan song there weren't many games that I bought for NES after this

Mega Man 4 came out that Christmas, and I got that for Christmas, and was like, I think I might be over this. And I don't remember, I must have bought some games in 1991 because, you know, I didn't buy a Super NES until summer of 92. But I can't remember anything that I really played for NES at this point. It was just kind of like, it just felt like, you know, everything was kind of getting a little long in the tooth. And I think this was an example of that. like visually this is one of the best looking games on the NES things it does the the parallax scrolling the hilarious you know at the time animations exaggerations of characters delivering their death blows the way it would shift perspectives i mean you fight the first boss from the perspective of the first

boss like something like that was really cool and really innovative really innovative on the hardware but at the same time i i don't know i just didn't this game did not have a spark of magic you know it did not spark my joy. As much as I devoted myself to it and played it, it just didn't quite click the way that something like Metroid or Biana Commando or Mega Man 2 had. I guess it's just, it's so varied that there's no mechanical complexity because the controls are constantly changing

or the perspective is constantly changing. So if you get good at the brawling bits, it doesn't really matter because there's only about two of them in the whole game. Yeah. And then it's just like, okay, but now you've got to run away from stuff and everything's like you'll want to hit anyway so it doesn't really matter you play perfectly or you just don't bother yeah the we can talk about this when we break down the levels but the um a lot of the stages in here demand a precision that the controls and the character designs just

don't allow and when you're trying to drop down holes and basically like run as fast as possible and be as precise as possible and like pull back around as you fall so that you can shave a pixel or two off your drop distance these controls just aren't good for that you've got these big floppy character feet like what is what is the collision detector like where's the edge how do you like what counts as stepping over the edge it's it's very frustrating yes because like like stuart said it's you have brawling bits and then you have platforming bits but you're never doing one for too long it's not like megaman where you can get good and you know in a short period of time um as a kid though when I was playing it, I remember being like pretty amazed at those changes and you didn't notice

those little things that Jeremy just kind of outlined because you're just having fun, but you go back to it now. You can kind of see why this isn't, you know, in terms of how it plays like an NES classic. It is because of the marketing and how Nintendo Power kind of pushed it and how this is Rare's like big coming out party essentially. Well, I mean, I guess they had a few more years of a couple more Battletoads games before they really picked up with like a donkey con country but i remember being pretty enamored with this technically because i didn't get my super nintendo until way late well like my parents were just like

no uh you don't need a super nintendo but when the donkey con country set that came with the superintendent came out that's when i got it so that was like late 94 so i was on my nes for a while and i yeah there wasn't a lot to play after that point uh once the superintendent had been out for a few years but it was only until like you're old enough to go back to the NES like let's say in your like early 20s you're like oh there's an NES at a at a flea market I'll just buy and play through some games I remember I did something like that or like a friend had an NES and he had Battle Toads and that was like the first time I played it since I was a kid and that's when I started see those little things you just mentioned like yeah this this feels just a little not that polished in

terms of this area this air there's all this ambition but it it just doesn't hold up all that well like gameplay wise yeah it actually reminds me of the earthworm gym games i think those games are a little easier but in that like every level is a different idea but none of them are developed enough to be that great or fun and some of them are just very unfair and difficult i think this game works really well when it's just a brawler yes but it's just a brawler so rarely that you don't really get to enjoy those parts and you're you know you're thrust into uh like a race or or like doing some crazy platforming that, you know, if you had Mega Man controls and precision

would be challenging. But here were these like floppy-footed giant toad dudes so, so frustrating. I can't believe I actually like beat my head against this game until I finished it. Well, I'm impressed. Like childhood, man, it's wild. Before we talk about, sorry, Stuart, go ahead.

It's just to expand on that really is other than Regner Rock's Canyon, the first stage, and the beginning of the turbo tunnel only like the first minute of the turbo tunnel I'm pretty sure that the whole rest of the game is just one mistake in a step you've done I don't think there's any leeway from that point to the end it's just completely demanding

That's absolutely true And co-op doesn't make it any easier because of how you share lives Like it I didn't play that that many like things On my NES with like friends It was only when we got like a everyone got 16 big consoles where that was more I just have a memory of everyone playing

more co-op stuff then but for for this it like did not make it I think I I think it's harder in co-op I someone told me like it's actually the way it works it's better to play in single player than co-op yeah I think there's friendly fire in co-op I didn't play co-op for this podcast but I think you can hurt your your friend when you're playing with them if you punch them too if you punch too close to them or attack too close to them I think there is friendly fire in this game but I mean okay so there's not much that's what makes a brawler there's not much more history to go over in terms of Battle Toads because, like, 1991 is the first game, 1994 is the arcade game. The arcade game does so poorly that Trade West is like, we don't care anymore, and all of the

ports of the arcade game for home systems are canceled. The Game Boy One is finished, and it's just never released, but apparently it's finished. It's bug-free. They have it at rare. I don't know if it's been leaked or not. But, and then in 2020, there's the relaunch Battle Toads, which did relaunch with some merch. So the game came out in 2020. in the fall. There was a three-issue comic series and also Fan Gamer did some merch and I must say that I have

been compromised because my wife, Nina Matsumoto, did the cover of the first comic, I believe, and also the hoodie and the speeder bike pin for fan gamers. So all of my opinions are tainted. I really want the hoodie. I saw the hoodie and I'm like, oh, that was so cool, though. The hoodie is some great, like, 90s skater gear. Yeah. I will say there was a very small amount of merchandise made available like five or six years ago at Comic-Con, back before the video game vinyl craze really took off. I-M-8bit

published the Battletoes soundtrack on vinyl. I bought a copy of it, which I wish I had kept because it's probably worth a whole lot of money now. But the great part about it was that it had a gatefold cover, even though it was a single disc. And when you opened it up, it had a sound chip inside that played the

pause. I was going to say, so you'd open it up and it would just go that's so great. I was going to ask. Over and over. So good. I was going to ask if just one side of the LP was the pause music and that's it. I don't remember. I didn't have a record player accessible at the time. Like, if they didn't do a locked groove with the pause theme, they missed their opportunity.

You don't need a record player. What you need to do is open it and listen to that pause theme for hours on that. Yeah, basically. That pause theme has got to be on Spotify, if it's not somebody upload it. But let's talk about... I think I gave that to someone. So I'm very generous and you're welcome. I think I fell in love with someone listening to that pause music once.

Wow. I mean, it does inspire emotions. But let's talk about the first game. So, yes, June 1999 for the N.S. The plot, there's a bit of a plot in that this game. I've totally forgot Battletoes has a princess character. There's Princess Angelica. So not only is Angelica kidnapped, but also Pimple as well, the larger, burlier Battletoad. And they've been kidnapped by the Dark Queen. It's been too big for the NES, basically. I think that's why you can't play as him. So, yeah, he's kidnapped. Angelica's kidnapped. by the Dark Queen, which is the not-safe-for-work villain of the series. And I think that's one of the reasons that didn't succeed because you can beat up Shredder. It's hard to end a game with beating up a woman. And they do it in this one. But you'll notice you don't beat up the Dark Queen in the other games as much. They usually have a bigger stand-in.

So I feel like there's a too sexy character that's already a problem, but then she's also a woman. And that's hard to justify as your last boss in a game where you're just beating people up constantly. I seem to remember her sprite being very large. and you're like, you know, you have the, the moves such as just headbutting. So you're like headbutting, headbutting this large woman in the boobs. And it's, it's a, yeah, like looking back, it's a little offputting. I mean, it really feels like she, like, she's the evil in to Skeletor, but there's no Skeletor in the Battle Toads universe. Like, she is the Skeletor as well as like the evil in.

So even if you like, I don't know, she falls off something or she gets like, you know, defeated in some other less violent way it's like well no but that's there's no other boss after that sorry so they kind of like wrote themselves into a corner it's nice that it's different at that time like oh it's a female that's the final boss yeah i mean she she looks like that but it's 91 and you're a kid and you're just like oh that's cool i mean i think they were going for the 82 000 style kind of thing yeah yeah the british connection there makes exactly it's really confused who the final who the big bird of battle toads is because it's different in almost every game, I think. It's Volkmeier and the second one,

because you fight the Dark Queen or you hit her in the face with your hand, which is also an anvil over and over again, which is horrible. Then you've got a QTE, Eve, and boss with Volkmeier. Then in the Game Boy game, it's Robo Manus. It's always different. Yeah, I think the arcade game

you might fight Robo Manus in the end, too. But she's not a consistent villain, and it also made her harder to pick in children's media, because if you look at the Nintendo Power comic, that is made to set up the, you know, the story of the Battletoads. I re-read it for this, and in every panel, she's just covering up her chest with her cloak, and it's very awkward because she has to do it in a somewhat natural way,

but she's always either posed away from the camera or just covering herself up for no reason. But in the cartoon, she is still a sexy character, and she's still, she's not covering herself up. So I will say maybe that's why the cartoon didn't get made past one episode. So this game, I didn't know this until doing research, but the Famicom version, came out later. It's got a pretty cool cover, but this seems like the ideal version, if you want an easier game because I linked it in our notes.

This has like a hundred different changes in terms of level design that Japan looked at this game and said, you must make this at least manageable. And look, I didn't play the Famicom version, but looking at the changes, I was like, these are all good changes. Because I didn't replay the game for this podcast because I'm not a superhuman,

but upon watching a let's play, I was starting to get outraged. Like, I can't believe they expected somebody to do this. It's not fair. Yeah. I read that and every single change sounds good. I wish that they had backpored that to rare replay so I could play that version. Yeah, that's...

Wow, I just looked up the Famicom version on eBay to see what it's selling for and it's a pretty penny. So the definitive version of Battletoads, play it however you like Medes. And we're back, and we're back, folks, with another episode of Nasty Labs. Nasty Labs.

It's a show hosted by me. Kinsey Burke and my dumb-ass friend, Mark. Nasty Labs. This twice-monthly show about game development, Japan Life, being nice to people, and hey, maybe a few other things. Nasty Labs is a product of ChewaiLabs Brand Incorporated,

and now available for three easy payments of 4269, only on the Greenlit Podcast Network. Hi, we're Ellen, Stephen, and Mark. Hosts of Nice Games Club, the show where Nice Game Deves talk gaming and game development. Topics include programs. programming, design, tools, and more. We also do interviews and one of our game jams.

Listen to Nice Games Club, wherever you get to your... Whenever you get to your podcast, you get there. Or at nicegames.club. But we can break down the levels because, again, I only have experience with the first three, because I only write in the game. But they all have names, too. So the first one is Ragnarok's Canyon. And again, Jeremy, you're correct. And I think we all agree that the best battle-toed stuff is brawling.

And it's essentially a brawler with some light platforming. you get to ride like a little pig demon creature in a way I don't think you'd do later in the game and the first boss like sets it up in a very cool way where it's like oh the NES can't do huge sprites but here's a way to sort of like theater of the mind it where the boss you see one leg enter the screen and then you switch to the first person perspective of the boss

and I think Turtles in Time would come out later and do a similar idea and that you're seeing things from the boss's perspective and you're throwing things at the screen it's such a cool idea I do have a question though Is that boss Ragnarok? Is that character named Ragnarok? It's not really clear who is piloting that machine or what it even is. I don't know if that's ever defined.

It's just like you see one leg and then you see a view screen from the person's perspective. But they should not throw a ball at you that you can throw back. That's the one fatal flaw in their plan. It's one of the classic blunders. So yeah, level one, everything's going smooth, smooth sailing. I can do this. I mean, I'm nine years old. I can finish this level.

It's everything's cool. Then we get to stage two. It's called Wookiehole. and yes, they are allowed to do that because no one was looking too closely at these games and I do like this level it's cool because you're going down this chasm I watched a let's play

as like you did but like when I first saw this I was just like oh that's so cool the second level is different but then when every level is different then there is no level like the game doesn't really have an identity like we said but yeah just when the wiki hole starts you're just like oh that's so neat

because you're not expecting it as a kid and there's some cool effects in this I like how you can kind of feel, like sense the gravity and the weight of things. Like when you're, these crow enemies, you can whack them. You can keep whacking them and smacking them against the wall to get more and more points and one-ups. And if you hold yourself against the wall, you can turn into a bell to smash across the screen. And there's such a great feeling of impact and weight. Like still at this point, it's a manageable game that is still pretty easy to play.

It has a lot of cool tricks and is pretty fair, in my opinion. So, yeah, level two, good stuff. And now we get... Yeah, level two is, like, I, I, I feel like you kind of have to bungle the stage. It's actually pretty easy, and I find that, you know, the way I would fail at it most often is just by trying to grind for one-ups. So, you know, if you're not doing that, it's really breezy, like almost deceptively so,

almost cruelly so. It gives you the wrong impression. I want to point out that Wookie Hall is named after a cave formation in East of England, because no one else is ever going to point that out on anything. Wow, that's why you're here. So they changed it to Wookiee as in, you know, Chewbucka Wookiee instead of Wookiee. No, there's only one, there's only one E apparently.

Oh, really? It's legally distinct from the trademarked name. They can't sue. Then it's fine. Then it's fine. So now we get to TurboTunnel. And my theory is, and I don't think rare, this is me speculating, but 1990,

those are big years in which I feel like games were pushing back in a very hard way against the rental market. Lots of games from Japan were made much. much harder, especially in 1990, 1991. And to me, level three feels like, okay, the trial version of this game has expired if you're renting it. Level three is like the rental check. Did you buy this game?

Well, you might see the rest of the game. You might see the remaining nine levels. If you rented this game, this game ends at level three. So I feel like even if Rare did not design it that way, that's just how this game works. Yeah, it's the shareware portion of the game. Yeah. It's the part of the game that everyone knows. Even if they've never played a video game, they somehow know about it.

I mean, that's why, like, even when the Battletoes get, like, cameos in later things like Shovel Night or Killer Instinct, the speeder bikes are there because it's so synonymous with the franchise than almost punching, the brawling bits. I'm not sure if it's too sort of a choose to point out, but it's kind of, the first level has a warp right at the beginning that warps you to the turbo tunnel, which is one of the famous. was warps and it's like don't take the warp to level two and farm all the lives it's a trap it's a Kaiser trap don't do it but then level three does have a warp pretty early on in the turbo turbotunnel racing section so if you it's like five or six obstacles in and if you it is the 10th one oh the 10th one yeah I think it's the 10 plus six

that's almost 10 I've hit that walk by accident so many times but I mean that that warps you past level three and to you know equally difficult in different way type stages um but i will say that this this is going to sound like i'm you know making up my uncle from nintendo but when i beat this game the time that i beat this game i beat it by not warping because i found that when i warped there are several warps throughout the game i found that it would just like throw my concentration or my like i would get into the zone and then i would warp and i would lose that that you know whatever groove i was and end up, you know, maybe making it to the next to last stage.

One time I even got like midway up the final tower and ran out of continues, which was just infuriating. But, you know, mastering this goddamn tunnel and learning all the stupid jumps and double jumps and like, you know, un-telegraphed tricks and things like that, that's the way to beat the game. Like you enter the zone. You fall into a Zen trance going through the turbo tunnel and that that can power you through the remainder of the game. And I will never abuse myself that way.

That is in the past. The early warps skip you pass the levels that have the easiest one-ups to get as well. Like the ice caverns is quite a difficult level, but it has a lot of free one-ups that you can get. What I don't like about this level, I mean, obviously the speeder bikes suck and I don't like that at all. But I hate how it starts off with this just preliminary brawling stuff to get you in a different mood. I wish to just start it off. Here are speeder bikes ride them because when you have to replay this level, you have to do these like perfunctory brawling things that aren't fun. I mean, it's more fun than speeder bikes, but you just want to get to the pain so you can overcome it. And I hate that there's this weird little preamble with like these space invader enemies and these rats you have to like punch into the ground.

I just want just just give me the pain first and let me try to get through it. And that's not what this level does. And other other vehicle levels also have like, yeah, it's it's very much. much like the unskippable five-minute cutscene before a multi-phase final boss in an R-Pagee. I think this level also has the space invaders that steal your health.

Is that a thing that I... Oh, yeah, yeah. No, those are a thing. Taito's space invaders fly onto the screen up into the status bar, steal your health and carry it off. And you basically can't get it all back. It's just you lose some health. Not that it matters because if you hit an obstacle,

you die anyway, but it's still insult to injury. They make space invader noises in a way that feels not legal completely, but yeah, and then, so watching this, what I hate most about TurboTunnel is that watching the playthrough, probably right back to trying to play this over and over again, is that at first it seems

reasonable, but then it immediately becomes unreasonable and only gets worse from there, and it does go on far too long, and it does feel like they should have brought in someone who didn't make the game to try this level out, because that will be a recurring problem throughout the rest

of this very long, in varied game is that I feel like an outside perspective was needed to let them know like this is not a reasonably difficult game yeah like I think games of this of this era like 8 bit and 16 bit whenever there's

like a bonus mode or like you know like a different type of thing that you're doing in between the main thing that you're doing the best option is to keep them brief because the longer they go on the less interest you know someone would have and the only reason

in the turbo tunnel keeps interests is because it's so hard. So either going to be short and easy or like long and art and then Rare is just like well, we're going to go with the ladder here. And on the Rare replay collection,

does anyone, because it's, I, even though I have that collection, I watch all the interviews, I don't remember, do any of them actually talk about the turbo tunnel specifically? I think they do. I think, I don't really remember. I know that they, I can't imagine that they wouldn't, you know, it seems like have to. It'll be the elephant

in the room. Yeah, I think they said they got to the point where they could almost do it blindfolded but they couldn't get that far so they were a little too close to this to realize how difficult it was and I mean we are lingering on this because it is the one thing people talk about the most but we weren't ever in 1991 we weren't really talking

about difficulty there was no discourse about it. It was considered like ooh this game's got a high challenge factor and things like that and if if you were a kid in 1991 and bad and in this game was you know kicking your ass you would say like oh I'm just not good at this or it's too hard for me it would never be the game's fault

but I think we all realize like much later in life like oh that game was too hard and unfair I don't think we were thinking of that in the moment I just thought you know not getting past stage three like oh I need to get better at this not like there are ways this is not fair to me the person who has to interface with everything you're giving me here

I think if you're not playing it it's really funny like to actually see just how kind of asshole-ish. It gets... Yeah. Like, you'll get the gates that preview but they appear in the opposite side

of where they're going to actually land, then you get the bits where there are no ramps and you have to suddenly jump across the terrain, which is not in any way implied. That's going to kill you the first time it happens, guaranteed. And then, of course, the ultimate, the ultimate, which is when they just go, okay, no more previews and also the speed's going to

go up by about four times. And it's going to go on for like a full minute. of just this you have to go into a complete trans state to even get past that i don't think that you even though i don't think there's any way to really plan for it yeah i would have i would have really liked it if just for battle toads game pro could have reviewed it and had challenge factor added as a special category just for baltodes and it's the really excited little game pro face or his hair is going on the exploding hair yeah yeah i guess i don't think

howard uh it's harold phillips right the game master he was not with Nintendo at this point I don't think so we could not ask him if you finish this game but yeah like this I'm out guys I'm going to go valiant comics you know what the thing is though despite all of this I bet the Amiga version is worse

I bet the Amiga version is harder yeah there are lots of ports and some of the ports don't actually do this level because they just can't get it working on different hardware like only Rare could get this working on the NES and I think some of the ports don't actually

have this level and like the game boy game does not have this in it but yeah there's a reason why this is so notable there's a reason why it is this cultural touchstone there's a reason why the fan gamer merch you can buy is a little toad on the speeder bike like the one in my background here that's just like holding on for dear life and i don't know i think people call it the speeder bike level but i don't know if they ever use the term speeder bike in the game or in like the the uh instructions or anything like that. I don't know why we call it speeder bike, but it's turbo tunnel. That's the official title. That might have been a Nintendo power invention. Maybe.

Because they're not... I wonder if T-Burt says it. I skip all these dialogues, I have no idea. Could be, yeah. But I mean, they're like hovercraft, so they're not bikes. But, yeah, that's level three. There is a level four. There's video proof. And that's Arctic Cavern. So it's not a brawler anymore. It's not a racing game anymore. It's more of like what feels to me inspired by Super Mario Brothers 2 and that a lot of the action is, um, your toad has to pick up things and carry them and use those things to break down barriers

and this is also the introduction of InstaKill Spikes which will become a huge factor in upcoming levels and yeah again they're playing around with a new kind of take on a genre here and that there's not a lot of brawling but still it's not that great there are bits where you have to pick up these ice flows that are on the ground and throw them at walls so they rebound and if you hit the side of them that's it you're dead then there are bits

where they're already moving so you have to jump on them land on them to make them stop moving and then pick them up but if you are even slightly off you're just down and you lose a life and it's truly horrible

it's so it's so unenjoyable and it's funny that it's such a battle toads touch at like what is our first and only platforming level it's a nice level you're going to be sliding around

so that feels like an extra bit of Battletotes Ash wholenessness to add to this whole equation I mean, you make the Mario 2 comparison with the stuff you're throwing around but Mario 2 also, you know, the World 4 has slippery ice and it has spikes

but it never felt as hateful. I mean, for one thing you could play as like the princess and hover but it also had those little like M cannons that would roll back and forth and you could hop on those and go across the ice on those or the spikes. I don't know, I just felt like this stage doesn't give you any

leeway whatsoever. I mean, that's that's kind of the message of this entire game, but yeah, it's just hateful. It's like, are you proud of yourself? Oh, sorry, Stuart, go ahead. I think there's one particular part that springs to mind where you fall, you have to stand on an ice platform that then falls about

like the Terra Tower at Disneyland or whatever it's called. And then you jump off that through both ceiling and ground spikes that are so low that if you jump too high, you will die. That's the end of the stage, I think. So they immediately want to kill you For making it that far

Even better Sorry this is a little bit of a Jumping back in terms of topics But I looked up the The Battletoads issue of Nintendo Power And it turns out That was the final issue With Howard Phillips' editor

Oh So literally this game Drove him away He was like, no I'm going to Lucasfilm games Where they create games that never kill you I've had enough of this shit Have you played Super Empire Strikes Backer?

No, no, no. You know, this was the era of like, they didn't make that anyway. That was like, Oh, right. I got confused by the Lucas film thing. Right. No.

You're thinking of adventure games, right? I see what you mean. Maniac mansion. Where you literally can't die. Yep. So, anyway, that's a fun fact. He retired. He said, I'm supposed to finish all these games before we publish them,

but I have to leave the company now. It's just not going to happen. If my regards to Nestor, he can do all this crap. So, yeah, that was stage four. Again, yes, things are getting more difficult. Stage five is Surf City. It's another vehicle section like in stage three, only in this one it's not as fast-paced. You can see the obstacles coming, but they take up more space.

You have less room to maneuver. And for some reason, it's in the middle. You have a brawling section, and that's where the boss is in the middle of the stage. And then you have more of the vehicle section afterwards. It's very, very odd. I consider this to be basically a breather level. because it's really not that bad compared to everything that comes after it, which is like living through a nightmare.

It did seem fairly easy compared to everything surrounding it, like the next stage, which these all have very strange names, implying that other things are named things that we never see. So this is Carnoth Slayer in that I like the idea behind this. Like the idea behind this could be a fun mini game in another game, or it could be a level in a game that's done in a better way. But in this one, it's a series of little stages in which you are riding snakes or a series of snakes that are like snaking around the stage

and of course there's lots of ways to die like falling to your death lots of insta-kill spikes and you have to climb on them jump around them you have to move as they move to get to the exit and I feel like also can't touch their faces I didn't know that if their faces touch you you'll die I didn't know that and you know what you have to avoid the snake faces yeah right In general, you want to avoid snake faces, but in this game especially. And, like, platforms have moved like this in other games, like in Mario. But I feel like Mario, they show you the track, so you can actually see. So in this stage, you can tell where the snake will go because that's where the head is moving.

But the head is off and off screen. So it feels like now more than ever in this game, you must have memorized the patterns to actually do this in a way that's possible. Yeah. Or they just make the snakes way less. like way smaller than you can kind of see their path a bit better because they're so huge though. Like yeah, like you said, they constantly go off screen. They make you, you have to hang back on the snakes until you almost have no space left just to see where you need to be going. And when there's instant kill spikes literally everywhere, it's awful.

I have heard the rare developed game snake rattle and roll is very good, but I have refused to play it on principle just because this is what it makes me think of. And this is such a hateful, frustrating stage. Snake rattle and roll is good. It's very different compared to this. But I don't trust Rare to create snakes in a way that doesn't make me want to die or kill someone at Rare. They have that snake buddy in Donkey Kong Country, too. He's fun. Yeah, Rettling.

He's fun. Donkey Kong Country, too, either. See, it's the snakes. What? Yeah, all right. And I think one thing is the. So also, also really fast, another callback. I want to confirm that Nintendo Power did call the bikes speed bikes.

Speed bikes. Even though that may not be canon within the games, this is how so many people learned about the game, memorizing the jumps and everything. Like, I would not have beaten this game, I'm sure, without Nintendo Power's extensive maps. God bless whoever made that. They are a true hero.

They had to photograph all of those things. Yes. These are photographed screen maps. I don't know how they did it, but they're a goddamn monster, just amazing. like this person needs to be canonized We put speed holes in our bikes makes them go fast

That's true Just because no one else is going to note this And I'm sorry I think Carnath is a callback To Ultimate play the game Which was what rare used to be before they were rare A Commodore 64 game called The Staff of Carneth And then Carnath himself

Who is an actual named character Turns up in the arcade game And not once before Wow. Okay, so Karnath is real, apparently. And I think one thing that we might not even think about is that this snake thing is a pretty cool effect for an NES game. Like lots of big sprites moving around in a very fast and smooth way. That is more interesting than how the levels are designed and how it actually plays. I think they are more interested in the effect than in like, you know, how fun this was.

If you want to play a game that feels a lot better and has the exact same gimmick as they stole it, Baccio Hare for the NES, has this exact thing. Snakes that you can ride around that are nearly impossible. No, thanks. Not going to play that. So we're on the stage four, which is Volkmeier's Inferno. Volkmeier, do we know who that is? Silas Volkmeier is the final boss of Battlemniacs. Right.

It's implied he's the Big Bad, but they don't really do much to give that any way. I guess we forgot, like some part of the lore that's involved with the comics of this, one comic in the Nintendo Power issue, is that the Battle Toads are actually three game testers who go into this VR game, and it's not actually. a game, this VR system allows them to tap into a parallel world, so the humans are sucked into the world, and then on that side of the world, they're Battletoads, and they're stuck there. So that is essentially the lore that's not being told in the game, that you are human game testers stuck in a VR world that taps into the world of the Dark Queen,

which is a real world. It's very, very complicated. There has to be YouTube channels that specialize in Battletoads lore now. That's just going to my mind. Do you think that's like a meta-commentary on that? the fact that this game was clearly not tested. Oh, my God, that's a good point. Yeah, why would they involve game testers in this? Yeah, it's all about fictional characters all the way to...

Yeah. Brer, why are you not testing this? Because the testers are in the game, wink. But the reason I brought that up is because Silas Volkmeier is the villain in the comic. He's like the evil programmer who alters the VR because the Dark Queen comes out of the game and does stuff. I don't know. I mean, you can read the comic. It's online.

It's not very satisfying. I'm good, thanks. this is I'm going to read it this is like the speeder bike section but even worse in that you have more range of movement technically because you're it's sort of like a schmup but

you have so many more things coming at you so many more ways to die in the section and again it follows the same design as stage three and that you have a little bit of a brawling section but then you have this super intense dodging section in which things are flying at you from all over the screen and it's just like the spirit of bike section

but a lot more difficult and you're also still given like the slight tenth of a second of a warning when you're about to get hit by something but that's it. This to me, this does make the turbo tunnel like I don't know, Sesame Street or something. Like it's, there's a bit towards the end.

Basically you have these gates that are made of electricity that are closing or opening. If they're closing, if you're not already all the way over to the right side of the screen at the exact spot where they intersect, you lose a life. If you don't know that's coming, you will die. It is completely unfair and horrible, and I can't help but just respect the hell out of them for doing it.

I will say that Lifeforce did the exact same thing in the escape sequence after the final boss. And, you know, if you were on your last life, that was pretty infuriating. But if you weren't on your last life, then you would respond immediately just past it and, you know, keep you through the game. but yeah like that's a really nasty way to end a very challenging sequence of events yeah one of many ways I was outraged during the let's play was seeing this level just like you can't be kid like I have seen a long play of this before just out of curiosity like I want to see the remaining 70% of this game but upon getting to this part I'm like god I can't even imagine what I'd be thinking if I made it this far only to be faced with this sort of thing and that's this

is like halfway through the game and all the rest of the levels are hard It's true. Let's go through more of them. So we have intruder excluder. So there's some interesting ideas in that it's a pure platforming level where you're going up a long vertical shaft instead of going down like you did in level two. And it's a lot about avoiding projectiles and avoiding hazards. And through most of this, it feels like kind of maybe like Donkey Kong-ish inspired or something in that it's about a lot of platforming up girders and things like that. And there's like little moving gap. constantly going back and forth in avoiding like little hazards and stuff like that but it does look very difficult and it's like precision platforming in a game not designed for that. Yeah, one thing that

you're reading through all these levels and each one has a different gimmick and you just threw out the the Donkey Kong name. It's like it does, I don't think there was too much exchanging of staff members that worked on both Battletoads

and Donkey Kong Country because Battleto's Arcade was the same year as Donkey Kong Country released on the Super Nintendo but you can see like the rare thing of but honed so much better in Donkey Kong Country 1 and 2

where let's have a core like set of abilities for mobility like jumping rolling barrel rolling and blah blah blah but each level gimmick has something different like after the first couple levels in most Donkey Kong country games

than every level has a different gimmick. But the level does, but you have the same tight controls, or much tighter than battle. It doesn't work really well. But now that we're going up a large vertical shaft, you're never prepared enough to do any of this stuff. And like,

I don't even think as a kid I definitely didn't get this far ever. Even when I played this like a couple of years ago, I think I maybe got past a turbo tunnel. I think Carnot, I think the snakes is the last thing I saw. I lost all my lives. But it's just amazing how going down the list of levels, every single one is different. The worst thing for me about intruder excluder is it's mentioned in the notes.

There's platforms that move left and right with a gap in them. And basically, the way it works in this game is, when you want to jump through that gap to get onto the platform, it always blocks you. And later in the game, game when you need to drop down through it it's the it's the exact opposite whatever would be the least convenient thing possible but yeah the fact as you're scrolling up unlike some of the early levels if you drop down you lose a life you can't go back down i don't believe it's uh like

auto scroll except vertical yeah ratchet scrolling that's that's that's a great term and it's new to me and i'm learning much the game the games are very different but watching the platforming this or reminding me too much of ice climber just like oh it looks just so imprecise and painful. And you're totally right, Matt, about Donkey Kong Country. Like, they had Nintendo oversight, so they could not make a game like this. But also... That's true. That's true. The core set of skills in

Donkey Kong Country, I feel like they can be carried from level to level. Like, just because you're good at level 3 of Battletoes does not mean you'll be good at level 6. Because, like, every game is like a different game with a different skill set required. So, like, beating that level, the last vehicle

level does not mean you're going to be good at intruder or excluder. It's a completely new kind of game. with a completely new kind of like scheme to learn like you need to play this game with a team of 12 people each one specializing in that level oh god those poor bastards the ultimate multiplayer experience they're all on death row too uh so they're welcome for it yes they're waiting for the sweet kiss of death uh so stage nine is terra tube so it is uh as as the game uh you know implies it's a system of tubes you run through, but it is the always not fun idea of an insta-kill thing

chasing you, which they will use again in the future in this game. So that's the first half of this level. The back half is a pretty bad swimming section with just insta-kill spikes everywhere. It makes the swimming section in the first Ninja Turtles game

look like the easiest thing in the world. This... They absolutely when they were ripping off Ninja Turtles, they looked at that game and said, oh yeah, we can do worse than this. We can we can make you hate life like when i when i first played donkey con country and got to the swimming stage like i had PTSD from this like it's seriously like though those stages are you know they're so peaceful with the music and everything but i was just like this is going to be like

that battle toad stage this is the same people this is going to be horrible i don't want to do this there's a bit in this level that's so completely evil that it thrills me just to think about where basically you're being as you're being chased by what's essentially a big cog through these tunnels at the end there are cubby holes and doors and the cogs smash into the doors while you hide in the little cubby holes and then they don't then they stop doing that and if you go in the cubby hole the cog goes in the cubby hole and kills you and the door explodes anyway it's completely inexplicable and completely unfair and once again i do have to shake their hand for daring to put something so hateful into a video game intended for children. Bold. What a bold game battle shows. There's so much audacity on display here. Yeah, and you know, I would not believe, like so I recently, well, not recently, like 10 years ago for retronauts at one up, I play through Ninja Turtles the first couple of stages on a live stream.

And I was like, oh, you know what? The damn one is not that hard, actually. I think it's been overestimated. I think people exaggerate how difficult it is. If you were to tell me any of these stages, oh, it's not too bad. I would not believe you. But that damn stage, it can be done, and there are ways to do it. But nothing is as punishing as what we're talking about here.

I've lived this. I can tell you, like, I really was traumatized by this game. I expected games to be this hateful for a while. The thing is, if you have played through this, you can say, by this game standards, the turbo tunnel is not that bad. By the standards of every other game ever made, ever in history, it's terrible. It's the worst. Yes.

At the same time, if they, you know, they set out to make this hard or, you know, they didn't really realize how hard it was because they had to play it so much. It's like, I'm not even sure people would talk about Battletoads nearly as much if it wasn't this hateful as we've been throwing around the term. Because if it was just really like easy, breezy game, then I think it'd be even less remembered. And maybe they were right because they botched the merchandising and the, the, the marketing and like making the toad seem like a cool character. Like since that didn't seem to be handled that well,

not that I think they designed it to be purposely hard because the IP was a bit mishandled, but it seems to have kind of worked out for what otherwise would have been like kind of not memorable title in the grand scheme of things, especially in Rare's library. I will present a counter argument and that's Kirby's Adventure, which, you know, is a better designed game in this.

but it is also a late NES game has you know just technically excellent it's a technically excellent game and it's really pretty gentle like it has some moments but it's a you know compare this it's like

sleeping on a soft pillow and that game is deeply beloved the Kirby series has become you know an enduring franchise for a while until recently they were making like a new Kirby game every year Kirby is you know kind of a Nintendo mainstay.

I think, you know, it's perfectly possible for them to have made a game that was reasonably forgiving, not easy, but, you know, balanced. And with all the things going for this game, the visual style, the graphical detail, the cool pause theme, the sheer variety of gameplay mechanics, I think this would be really fondly remembered, but instead it's like, oh, it's that game with a stupid turbo tunnel. I think it works against this game's legacy. I think that making a game that was like, I don't know, 30% less brutal and maybe gave you infinite continues would have, you know, really changed this game's reputation.

So it's not infamous, but just beloved. You're not wrong, but then the later Battletoze games did get a lot easier and that didn't see, or maybe like because it was so difficult the first one, maybe it kind of ruined it from then on out. But all the rest of the Battletoes games, it's not nearly. punishing is this. I guess they knew. I think the ship had sailed by that point. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Sequels. I think the Lippus does what if you take this exact game Battletoes for the nurse and replace the toes with Kirby. Kirby would get chewed up. No, he's an elder god. He'd be fine.

I don't know if he'd survive level one. I feel like also if you're designing a game, especially today, like I feel game designers think, you know, I want my game to be challenging, but I also want people to be able to see all of the game because we worked very hard on it. And how many people just didn't see past level three? I would say probably like 75% of the people who play this game conservatively just didn't see most of the things that they put into it. And it feels like that's, that's not good if you're

making the game. You want people to experience what you made. Yeah, I think that's a good, you know, kind of makes a good case for the fact that they really didn't understand how horrible and awful the difficulty in this game is because you know a lot of times you see it a lot in arcades where like the first stage or two have all the ideas and then the rest of the game is just kind of like blah because they don't really like they just want to get people kind of up front and get their quick you know quick income whereas here like it reveals like they wanted you to see all of this like they saved the coolest gimmick the coolest visual mechanic for the final stage like you don't do that if you think, oh, no one's going to make it here.

They just really blew it. They really misunderstood, like, the capabilities of the average child playing NES. Yeah, I mean, but then why were a lot of RARE's games, like, I've never heard them be, you know, said to be very, very hard, all their NES catalog, some are obviously of an inferior quality. And they'd be unpleasant to play. But then why, like, out of all of them, why was this the one where they, the software designer was just playing it to

his level of difficulty versus all all of other arrares output. I feel like they were maybe just really sort of high on the idea of making their own kind of IP and they wanted to throw all of themselves into it. Is the one thing you can say about this game, no matter how much it kind of sucks, because

of how it turned out, there's a lot of passion in it. It really feels like they cared about this game, I would argue. Yeah, I think so. I feel like it's hard just by virtue of the fact that it got the most attention, and that attention involved fine-tuning it, which in their interpretation was making it as hard as possible, harder, a challenge for the people who know where everything is going to go and what challenges await you?

It's weird that they just didn't decide to put it like a difficulty set in, like easy, medium hard, like what, why not just do that? Hard is by the American version. Easy is by the Japanese version, I guess. And then you get five lives and five continues instead of three lives and three continue. And the levels are altered drastically to make it way easier. is rat race.

So it's just like level eight, except instead of going up, you're going down, and you're racing a character. And usually in these games, you're like, well, naturally,

the character you're racing will be a bit slower than the player. No, that's not true. He's actually faster. Yeah, I've played this game mostly using save states

and rewind, but the levels I've beaten, I've thought to myself, with practice, I do feel like I could do them. Maybe not in one straight shot, but I could do them. There's no way I could do this.

this there's no way it's horrible they hate it so much it's one of those levels where this happens a few times like in the usually when you watch a long play it's pretty flawless maybe a hit here or there but no the person playing this just died a few times this is one of the levels where they just died if that rat gets past you you can't win that's from how it seems to me no it's absolutely correct this is like this is the stage that ended the game more often than not for me like it's so hard you have to play with absolute perfect precision and this is not a game that really supports that like the the pixel precision you need is not compatible with the design it's so frustrating and yes if the rackets ahead of you uh past like the first maybe 20 percent

of the stage you're bone that's it it's just it's over and its stage goes on so long and you have to have every single Twitch, every single like platform, every single turn and bend in midair memorize. There are parts where you just have to drop without touching anything, without landing on anything, because if you do, you'll, you know, the friction, the kind of landing and then falling off again will break your momentum and you'll lose. It's so unreasonable. I wanted to mention those those bits where you're dropping because like psychologically falling through platforms and intentionally dodging flat ground is impossible. Like, you've got every part of your body wants to land on those platforms, but no.

Plus, you've got to hit the rat, so he does this tiny little jump. At the, specifically the end of these platforms, hits the wall and turns around. It's the only way to do it. And it's almost like an exploit, but you have to do it. Yeah. It's the worst. It's the absolute pits. Like, the Quickman laser beam trap in Mega Man 2 trained me for this, but it didn't

prepare me. No. Mentally. Based on the video I was watching, of course, I never got this far on my own, is that, you know, hitting the rat will buy you like tenths of seconds, and maybe that will even help you, but still, you're not given any advantage. And what I think is most annoying about Battle Toads, it's like you're always on the defensive. You're always avoiding things, dodging things. It's not a game that puts you on the offensive that often, which future games would do, which I feel like this is why this was not that appealing to me and why it's still hard to play now. It's like a dodging game for the most part.

It's not really battling anything. You're just doing stuff. In this level, they're not battled toads. Dodgel Toads. So, okay, that's level 10. We're going to get to the end of this soon. There are 12 stages, again, this is true. There's recorded video of this.

Klinger Winger. So this is another vehicle section in that you are holding on to this sort of unicycle with wheels that's like dragging you along. And it involves following this track very precisely that snakes are on the level. while this death orb is following you from behind and of course at the end of the stage you fight the orb and I say why not fight the orb first and then take your time through the stage

but no it's Battle Toads and this has a big bug in that if you make it this far with two players the game will just freeze so who actually did that no one has ever done it I don't think it's possible to actually make it here with two players just because of the sheer chaos of the game and you both have to be that good

to make it this far So they fix that bug in the rare replay version They fix it for the Famicom, the European release But it's still present in the original American release of this game Has someone ever done a two-player run of this game? Oh, I know someone who has They're called Liars Oh, I've met them before

I think if memory serves the gimmick for the The gimmick for this level is that the orb is faster than you On Straits, but it doesn't take corners quite as fast as you can So you can get right towards the end of the level Beyond the final straight Get caught up with and be killed I have to do the whole thing over And you know how I said rat race is the worst

This is also the worst Every level is the worst The co-shareholders of the worst Yeah this level feels like Almost an apology for the previous level The previous level is so bailful It is just like It is a hate crime

It is miserable like this one feels almost gentle by comparison and the final stage the crazy thing about the final stage is it's actually like surprisingly non-brutal compared to everything else in the game it's such a weird relief the thing I observed about clinging a winger is if you're not playing it on an original hardware

if you have input lag it's really really difficult because it really is entirely about those split second turns and I was wondering just for such a long time like why this impossible how are you supposed to do this what am I doing wrong and it turns out that having just the slightest

little bit of input like makes it almost impossible because every corner you hit you will stop for a split second you will slow right down it's awful I think every playthrough of Battletoads is a frame perfect playthrough just because it has to be

otherwise you will die completely yeah I think something the game lacks sorry I feel like something the game lacks is that like it needs Castlevania style level introductions like on Rondo of Blood that say like God

give me strength or like you do not see this thing. I want to see people saying that. One of the I guess one of the cool things that it does do that I like is a thing similar to Castlevania and that before you go into the stage you see this little blueprint that shows sort of where you are in the

world to like convince you there is more things to come. And I do like that. I think I think that actually you know that has precedent and Rare Zone work with Wizards and Warriors. Oh, right, yeah. Same thing. Yeah.

I forgot about that. And I looked it up, and in 2015, the Mexican runner and J.C. 583 did a co-op warpless run of awesome, you know, for awesome games done quick. Let's see. I'm trying to figure out what the code is here. It's not a tool-assisted attack or tool-assisted play. I have to watch this.

No dev commentary, no handicaps. So they beat it and have to. half an hour. Wow. Okay. I'm watching this over lunch today because I did not see that. I did not believe that was possible. If anyone can do it, a Mexican runner can. Yeah, they're great. So the final stage of Battletoads is State 12, the revolution in that you climb up the Dark Queen's Tower. It's a very cool graphical effect before Kirby's adventure did the same thing and that you're going up this tower. It's convincingly spinning as you're going up. And one thing about Battletoes I didn't mention is that like the enemies are not very iconic and they're often very lame in some

cases like one level you're there's these like evil rubber duckies that are floating around in this stage the enemies are um these like the little guy you see in the corner of old maps blowing the wind it's a lot of those guys floating around just trying to knock you off of platforms is that zephyr i think so but it makes sense because you're on you know a tower so the wind is trying to blow you off uh i will say though that this this mechanic or this this visual gimmick i think dates back to castellian in the mid 80s that kind of rotating you know fake rotation so you know kind of some precedent there

but at the time that I got to the final stage one I was like oh my god I can't believe I'm here but two I was like wow I've never seen this before this is awesome I don't need a super Nintendo yeah it was very impressive for the time this is the bleeding edge tag right here I think as you said it's it's surprisingly not that bad compared to the previous levels

it's not a breather but it has some cruel traps Like the bit, there are those, we didn't mention them at all, but there were weapons you can pick up, like, so early in the game, like poles. And on this level, those poles come back, you pull them off the wall, but there are bits where you don't, you're supposed to not do that. You're supposed to hold onto them, and then this little goblin thing will appear and blow wind at you. And if you're holding onto that pole, you will survive. If you've already pulled it off to use it as a weapon, as you have been encouraged to do, then you will be killed. And then- You're reminding me of some things, yes. I'm sorry, I don't mean to bring up these bad memories.

I did it to myself. This game is all about bad memories And yeah, you reach the top of the tower You fight the Dark Queen This feels like the only boss fight That actually has design behind it Because outside of the first one Because there are boss fights in this game

But it feels like you just do your attack in the enemy And then they bounce off the wall You do it again and again and again There's no like oh This is how they move Yeah Like this is how they move These are what their attacks are

It's not like a Mega Man boss It's just like well here's just a bigger sprite For you to knock around But with the Queen at least There is like a boss design here and she's like a very big spright that turns into a tornado and moves around. She's only vulnerable role when she's in her human form. It is a boss fight with some design put into it, so I'll give them that.

Wow. This game came out at the same time as Final Fantasy 4 in Japan, which also has a woman boss that turns into a tornado. What are the odds? It's a fun idea. It's a fun idea. But yeah. And then when you beat the game, the ending is very stupid. It's not exciting.

for the amount of time you put into Battletoads there should be at least like some new artwork a new song but that's just not happening at the end of Battle Toads I was... I feel like it should the ending screen should just be a screen that says buy Battletoads or like

a therapy or it should be just like a therapy hotline like do you need help or do you need someone to turn to? Please call this number now because clearly there's something wrong and Battletoads is not the answer sir. Just a black screen on white text that just says we didn't think you'd get here so we didn't do an ending bite. I was planning on going. I have lots of notes for other Battletoads games,

but we are like almost at an hour 30 in our recording and we only have so much time. So I guess briefly I can just go over some footnotes of these games. And if anyone wants to add anything after I talk, please do about the other Battletoads games. But there are two Game Boy games. There's the Battletoads game called Battletoads. That is an original game with some concepts based on the original NES game. That's a completely original creation. The second Battletoads game called Battletoads and Ragnarok's world, that is actually a compromised port of the NES game. So it's very confusing in that the actual port of the game is not called Battletoads, but Battletoads for the Game Boy is an original game. There is also Battletoads and Battle Maniacs. That is the

SNES game, and it feels to me like it is a Castlevania 4-style remake of the first game and that things are bigger. It's slower, prettier, more awkward, obviously not as quality as Castlevania 4, but a lot easier just because things are bigger and slower on that platform. If I played this one, I played this one I played first. This was one I played first. If I had bought Battletoads for NES and for some reason thought it was amazing, it was like my favorite game ever, and then I bought this follow-up to it, I would feel so ripped off because four of the six levels are just almost exactly the same as the Ners game except with nicer graphics. And the speeder bike stage is in the game and it's not slower or clumsier. It's still fast and

punishing, although I don't think it's as hard as the NES one. But yeah, and other games to follow, Battle to the Double Dragon, that is where I feel like that's the sweet spot of the series in which it is, the vehicle sections are very light and they put you on the offensive. It's mostly brawling and some very, very light platforming. Still some annoying stuff, but it is kind of the perfect medium between brawling and platforming and vehicle stuff. And for whatever reason, Rare decided to make this at least of a moderate difficulty.

They weren't pushing it over the edge with this game. And then the final game is Battletoads Arcade. That was 1994 published by Electronic Arts for some reason. This game is a more violent, just very, very brawler, intensive experience with the Battletoads. There's some shooting in it. It's very edgy in a 90s way. And this is when Battletoads, the plug was pulled on them because apparently this game did very poorly. I never saw it in the wild outside of like retro gaming conventions.

but this is when Trade Whist was like we don't want to deal with Battle Toads anymore we're not going to release these ports for this arcade game nobody cares and then Rare obviously would get into bed with Nintendo with things like Killer Instinct and Donkey Kong Country and all through that era so that is my like super wrap-up

of the Battletoads. Any other comments on the games I mentioned very quickly I have a lot of notes but obviously not a lot of time to talk about these Yeah I just I like just I mentioned a bit before Battle Hodes Double Dragon is indeed like kind of the

I guess the diamond out of all of them just because it's so it's so balanced and it has a lot of the stuff that makes like the the bits that are very memorable from Battletoes like the transforming fists or whatever the bosses are really fun the NES version of Battle of those double dragon is like stunning and some of the more

graphical effects that it pushes on that like it looks almost as good as the 16 bit of versions and Battle Toad's arcade I'm always sad that that didn't do well because that again, a 1994 2D game is just stunning to look at with all the sprite scaling.

It is again, like, super impressive to look at graphically and I'm always a bit sad. I'm very glad that that's coming back from Arcade 1-Up. They're making that Killer Instinct cab that has Battle Toads Arcade and I'm actually psyched to get that. But that game

is very, like it's too much in terms of wave-based enemies and just sucking quarters. out of you like it's actually a little bit too hard in terms of a brawler but um that's all i got on rare replay they talk about the battle toads arcade game how the final boss doesn't even register any damage that you inflict on it for the first like some like four minutes yeah you can just pour like laser into it and it doesn't do anything because they just wanted your money they're very transparent about that they said that was their game design what i love about battle toads arcade really quickly

and this is very specific and i apologize for that at the beginning of each stage, you've got a little cutscene of the Battle Tode activating its little risk communicator and looking at who the next boss is going to be. And in order to pull that up, it has to press like 15 different buttons. And I just want to say, I find that very inefficient. And I'm never going to have that outlet to say that. It's a really, it's a really cool animation, though, the finger like jamming all the buttons on the risk communicator thing. It's neat. Music's good too. I love how edgy that game is. It's full of horrible violence that you really don't want to see you visited on the Battletoads. No, enemies explode into,

like skeletons and things like that. And one thing I found interesting about this whole series of games is that they're all basically developed by the same small team of people, even the arcade game. I was watching the Rare Replay documentary on the arcade game. And like the people at rare, they were making their own hardware to run the arcade game on. They were not using existing technology. They were figuring this all out. Like arcade games were new to them.

And arcade game design was new to them. And these were all the same people from the very beginning that were, you know, designing the characters and writing the music and designing the last. So like the Battletoads team was always a core team of people working together across all of these different platforms. I found that very interesting. Yeah, no, it is because Rare had like two arcade games, well three, I guess technically, KI1 and two, and this. And then they just never, never went back to the arcades at all, as far as I remember. If you ever play this game ever, get to the second boss, the snake, intention to get killed by it,

because it's just the most horrific thing I've ever seen. The violence is absolutely unnecessary. It was, I implore you to go and see it. Very much the Mortal Kombat era of gaming in 1994 in arcades. And, I mean, I think it failed because it was a brawler in 1994, and that was not the way to go, which is why Rare made killer instinct in 1994, and that was their big hit. And briefly, for a few minutes, there was a 2020 reboot made by DeLala Studios, which had an existing relationship with Rare. I believe they did some content for them on Sea of Thieves or something like that. But before that, there was like a brief Battletoads revival.

Things like Shovel Nights in which the Xbox One version had RASH sits and pimple as bosses you could fight in very Battletoads appropriate stages. And also Rash, I believe, was a fighter in the Killer Instinct reboot for Xbox One. So there was a few things before this. But this was the big revival. I will say I did play a bit of this game. I like the idea behind it because the entire premise of the game is, can you believe we made this? Like, what even are Battletoads? They're so ill-defined. Nobody really remembers it outside of the one stage. I like that, but it's not a very compelling idea to base a game around. And I found that while very well animated, the graphics often got in the way of the brawling, which was my favorite part. And there were far too many mini-games to put up with in between that. So I think a lot of work went into it, but I think some of it was misguided in terms of what to prioritize.

The thing is, you just described the perfect battle toad game. They nailed it completely. They made a massively flawed game with loads of poor ideas that nonetheless shows passion went into it. I didn't beat this reboot, but I did play halfway through it. And I thought it was much better than I assumed it was going to be because Microsoft went silent on this for like a full year. like they had their big press show that they did like that may and then absolutely no mention of battle toads at all and then battle totes came out like three months later but i thought this was like pretty clever for what it was but i do agree that visually it's it's way too busy um but i still because when they announced that we're bringing battle toes back the first thing that popped in my head is how do you even do this you have to do a megaman uh 10 you have to just do an old school nes version of it what else are you you're supposed to do. That's the thing that people most remember about those. And they didn't do

that. They did something completely different. And it wasn't terrible, but I don't know how well this did. I think it Microsoft put out a thing saying, it actually sold pretty well. It was a success. But I don't think they'll be going back to this anytime soon. I basically found myself

playing through it just to get to the next cuttings. I kind of enjoyed the humor and they're getting more than the actual game. Yeah, I agree. Yeah, we'll say this is actually really funny. It was surprisingly funny. I like, again, they're playing with the ideas, like, who even are these people? So, like, they're introducing the Battletoads. It's like, yeah, pimple's the big one, and Zitt is the cool one, and Rash.

He's the one with sunglasses. So they know, like, there's nothing to these characters. So they have fun trying to play with that idea. Like, they're just unwanted by the world. Sorry, really briefly. They also made the Dark Queen safer work, so that was appreciated. That's true. And you know what?

I don't know how I feel about that. Because I feel like, just let her be sexy and put a sexy man in the game, like, as her counterpart, if you want to. but she's covered up in a very distracting way. Like she has never been more covered up. It's like very Victorian almost. Yeah, they could have played with that and say like the toads could have been like, whoa, like have her as sexy as she was.

And they're just like, oh, and she's always being funnily covered up by other things. Like in the foreground, you could have like played with that, but they just kind of, you know, redesigned her and then just didn't really mention it that much. So it was more distracting that way. Yeah. It's a real 180 from her design in a distracting way. But hey, you know what? They tried, and I'm glad that, like, after almost 30 years,

there's another Battletoads game out there. So maybe in another 30 years, we'll have nostalgia for this, but who knows? But that was our take on Battletoads again. Fun to talk about, but just the first game is the most notorious one, the most popular one, and notable for just the third stage. But you know what? Just like in life, it gets worse. It gets worse every step of the way.

It just keeps getting worse and worse. So Battletoads is really teaching us all a lesson about the modern world, I think. It's a metaphor. It is. It really is. That's what we're ahead in mind. So yes, this has been another episode of Retronauts. Thank you so much for listening, folks.

Please find us online as Retronauts on Twitter. And, of course, we are supported by fabulous listeners just like you. If you want to support the show, please go to patreon.com slash Retronauts. If you sign up for three bucks a month, you get all these episodes one week at a time and ad free and at a higher bit rate. But if you sign up for five bucks a month, You get two full-length bonus episodes every month and also a weekly podcast and column by Diamond Fight. And when you sign up, you immediately get access to all the exclusive ones we've made so far,

which is now like a year and a half and change worth a bonus episode. So I guess that's like over 30 at this point. You probably haven't heard. If you're not a $5 patron, and we have tears on top of that, of course. And it's all happening at patreon.com slash retronauts. Before I talk about what else I do, let's go around the virtual space here. I'm stuck in the turbo tunnel but let's hear what everyone else is doing

Let's start with Stuart Stuart where can we find you and what else are you up to I'm stuck in the Teratubes And you can find me on Twitter at Stubacabra I wish I'd just got at Stuart Chip to be honest But too late now Too late now

Then you can find my stuff on The Retronauts website Or in Nintendo Life Sometimes in RetroGaming magazine And I do lots of stuff You can go on my Twitter And ignore my tweets And just try and find

The things that I do because you really don't want to be reading those tweets. They're not very good. And Matt, how about you? You can find me on Twitter at Matt McMustles or on my YouTube channel. Also, Matt McMilless. I do video essays, some gameplay stuff. And if you're into Brawlers at all, the game of the Takeover just released on the PSN store just a few days ago.

I'm very excited about that. And a physical version of that game is also coming out. So, yeah, living the dream right now, Bob. Awesome. And Jeremy, what about you? When I am not kicking a rat repeatedly to prevent it from detonating a bomb, I am in Retronauts podcast, working at Limited Run Games, and producing a weekly video series on YouTube.

Look for Jeremy Parrish. That's my name. You can find me on social media on Twitter's Games Fight. So look me up. I'm on the internet. I'm inescapable. And if our listeners haven't had enough plugs by now, I also do other stuff outside this network.

I have the Talking Simpsons Network of podcasts, of course. So that's all happening at patreon.com slash talking Simpsons. We have Talking Simpsons, a chronological exploration of The Simpsons, and also what a cartoon. We look at a different cartoon from different series every week. You can find those wherever you find podcasts or go to patreon.com slash Talking Simpsons. Sign up there for exclusive episodes, you know, advanced access and also access to all of our limited mini-series we've done on things like Futurama, King of the Hill, The Critic, and so on. But that is it for this episode of Retronauts. Remember, there was always light at the end of the TurboTunnel.

Thank you. I'm going to be able to be. I'm sorry. I'm You know, Thank you.