This Christmas morning I made a big mistake, I got out of bed.
Some kids were over for the afternoon and spotted my CRT setup and asked to play something, it was then I subconsciously went to turn on my Sega Genesis and moved the cursor of my MegaEverdrive's menu to Taz-Mania. I could've simply just put on Sonic 2 or even Rocket Knight Adventures as a form of kid friendly entertainment, but somewhere in my mind I was bent on destruction.
The joke was on me however, as after about ten minutes of them floundering about on the second stage not knowing how to traverse Taz-Mania's leap of faith style platforming, the controller found it's way back to it's owner. They had the time of their life after that, watching me immediately get flattened into the ground by the truck boss entering the stage without warning, and bursting into laughter at the hundreds of times I slammed into obstacles on the minecart stage that could potentially get Battletoads to respond to it's cacophonous mating calls that make up it's poor attempt at a dynamic soundtrack. It's a bit hard to describe, it's kind of like if the world's most flaccid digitized slide whistle accompanied your every movement. It's a far cry from Desert Demolition's masterful attempt on the same system.
I felled Taz-Mania this day, but at what cost? My stomach has exploded so many times from mean-spirited bomb placement, I've gotten hypothermia in real life from the amount of times I fell in frozen water, and have been zapped dozens of times by pulling the wrong lever.
Well... at least they had a good time.
Some kids were over for the afternoon and spotted my CRT setup and asked to play something, it was then I subconsciously went to turn on my Sega Genesis and moved the cursor of my MegaEverdrive's menu to Taz-Mania. I could've simply just put on Sonic 2 or even Rocket Knight Adventures as a form of kid friendly entertainment, but somewhere in my mind I was bent on destruction.
The joke was on me however, as after about ten minutes of them floundering about on the second stage not knowing how to traverse Taz-Mania's leap of faith style platforming, the controller found it's way back to it's owner. They had the time of their life after that, watching me immediately get flattened into the ground by the truck boss entering the stage without warning, and bursting into laughter at the hundreds of times I slammed into obstacles on the minecart stage that could potentially get Battletoads to respond to it's cacophonous mating calls that make up it's poor attempt at a dynamic soundtrack. It's a bit hard to describe, it's kind of like if the world's most flaccid digitized slide whistle accompanied your every movement. It's a far cry from Desert Demolition's masterful attempt on the same system.
I felled Taz-Mania this day, but at what cost? My stomach has exploded so many times from mean-spirited bomb placement, I've gotten hypothermia in real life from the amount of times I fell in frozen water, and have been zapped dozens of times by pulling the wrong lever.
Well... at least they had a good time.