Hippon Super Battletoads Review

A PRIMITIVE CHARM

When I first heard of this American-made action game that hit the big time, I was a little curious, nothing more. I watched some gameplay. It seemed kind of neat, but also unpolished. I'm more of a fan of brisk action games like Rockman, so I figured Battletoads wasn't for me. What made me decide to pick this game up and play it? Well, I was hanging out around the Famicom repository in the editing division office, hoping to play some Rockman 4, but for some reason the Rockman 4 cart wasn't there. What was I supposed to do now? There was a sample rom of Battletoads nearby, so I picked it up and stuck it in the Famicom. I'd only watched others play it before, so I figured what the hey, I'd give it a whirl myself. The first day I played it, I knew. I knew that this was the kind of action game we hadn't gotten in a while. The characters' actions and expressiveness, the sheer creativity put into the traps and enemies—I was awestruck. I tried playing two-player co-op. Two players don't get very far without a balance in their skill level, I thought. But even playing solo, I wasn't getting very far in. Was it because I wasn't good at the game? No, I started to think that maybe it was because the game was just that hard. Yes, Battletoads was a hard game. At first, I got stuck on stage 3. Then I got stuck on stage 4. Then stage 6, stage 8, stage 9, stage 11, and the last stage, stage 12. Lately I've been dropping games when they stop being fun, but not this one. Battletoads kept me playing to the very end. Why? I just couldn't get enough of it. The game's elements have this freshness to them that a lot of domestic action games lack. When I mash B, the character sends out a flurry of punches, then a flurry of kicks. Then they bust out a hard punch and send the enemy flying offscreen. You don't see that kind of action in most games. Same with the traps. You grab onto a speedbike and weave across the terrain's twists and turns. A big glowing circular object chases you from behind, and if it hits you, you're dead. It's such a simple trap, but it's terrifying. Watching this game or playing it, the word "polished" does not come to mind. If anything, it's the opposite of that. Yes, it's an unpolished game. But does that really matter when the game is fun? I would argue that its roughness is its saving grace. It's a game with many types of stages in a single game, yet it doesn't feel cobbled-together, largely because of its roughness and brilliant creativity. These primitive ideas are brought to life inside this gaming console.
Battletoads is an extremely hard game, but if you shy away from it because of its difficulty, you are seriously missing out. I drop a lot of hard games, and I do that because I can't progress in them. But Battletoads is different—every time the game throws a stumbling block at me, I can learn and get past it. That's a well-balanced game. You're also missing out if you skip this game because you don't like toads. Take it from me—I hate toads with a passion but I love this game.