The original Battletoads is known for being one of the hardest NES games and after playing it, it is indeed hard. I did not grow up or played Battletoads when it came out since I wasn’t born yet and nobody in my area talked about it and I didn’t hear about it until several retro game reviewers talked about it mainly the Angry Video Game Nerd. So how hard is this game, read the review to find out.

Gameplay- Most people tend to call Battletoads a beat ‘em up even though several of the levels are mostly platforming or racing. The first level is a beat ‘em up which is very simple and straightforward. The second level is a traversal level which is also simple despite having enemies that can kill you in one hit. The third level is where the game shows how difficult it is by introducing the infamous Turbo Tunnel which involves you riding a hover bike while avoiding obstacles and it gets faster as you progress. You have to be so precise with the dodging or else you have to start over at the last checkpoint if you die. This is the part where most gamers like the AVGN get stuck on because of how difficult it is. You have 3 continues and 3 lives per continue and if you lose all of them, you have to start over from the first level which is how difficult the game is. The sad part is that the Turbo Tunnel is not the hardest level in the game since there are several levels that are way harder. I did not play the game legitimately and used the rewind feature and save states featured in the Rare Replay version of the game to experience the entire game and for those that are going to call me a cheater or wuss for not playing it without those features, the game was still hard to beat because Rare made the levels hard on purpose. For me, the hardest levels are stages 10 and 11. Stage 10 is a race where you race against three rats and the third rat is extremely fast so you have to tackle it to knock it back giving you half a second to move and you have to do this multiple times to out run the rat which is frustrating since you have to get the timing to tackle the rat just right and there is an electric barrier that actives on and off at the end of the last race. Stage 11 involves you riding a unicycle to out run some vortex and you have to press forward the direction the bike is facing to move faster but there are several corners to turn and you have to be very precise on the turns. I had to pause the game on each corner to change direction just to move faster and I still died several times because their is some sort of input lag if you are playing the game on modern television since this game was never meant to run 60 frames per second. There are some boss fights at the end of some of the stages and they are easy once you figure out the pattern and aren’t as hard as the stages themselves.

Sound, Music, and Design- For an 8-bit game, the music is catchy especially the pause screen music which most games don’t have music for their pause menu. This is because the music was composed by David Wise who composed several soundtracks for games made by Rare like the Donkey Kong Country trilogy. The graphics are pretty unique for having a cartoony art style similar to Looney Tunes.

Conclusion- Battletoads is indeed one of hardest NES games and one of the hardest games that I ever played. Rare is known for making tons of memorable games but I really don’t recommend it unless you want to try it out to see how hard it is. I appreciate the graphics and the soundtrack even if the game wants to make rip all of my hair out and it’s not a game I would play constantly.

Final Verdict: 5 out of 10