My sister's 5th birthday was a disaster.
Mom baked a cake using a mold in the shape of Ernie from Sesame Street, which she was hand decorating. I kept sneaking icing while she was decorating, a lot of icing, so much icing in fact that I became extremely ill the next day. Picture this, if you will: my sister with her friends trying to enjoy a small party at the dining room table with me only a few feet away laid out on the couch playing Battletoads in Battlemaniax, occasionally vomiting directly into a small trashcan I was keeping nearby.
This review is not about Battletoads in Battlemaniax, because that game sucks so much that the only way you can compel me to play it is by giving me nothing else to do while suffering from the effects of acute icing toxicity. I bailed a few levels in and replaced it on my Retro Bucket List with Battletoads & Double Dragon, a game I remember playing often at a friend's house around the same time I was ruining my sister's life. That friend also had Cyberia, and I remember us once spending at least an hour trying to get past the part where Zak Kingston is asked to slowly lower his weapon at gunpoint. Even the slightest input on the mouse is enough to get blasted, and I only found out well into adulthood that you can only lower your gun safely during a very slim and specific window immediately after being told what to do, so there we were for an eternity getting shot in the face. We also played a lot of The Lawnmower Man for the Sega CD. Weird childhood!
Anyway, this time I played Battletoads & Double Dragon with a friend of mine named Danny. Danny has like, three thousand hours logged in Warframe, so I insisted he play something else for once and this is what I put him up to. Danny has not been back to my house since I put him up to this. I really do make everyone's lives miserable.
Personally, I think this is just mediocre. Equal parts a Battletoads game and a Double Dragon game, designed to appeal to the very specific cross section of kids who were into both of those things circa 1993. Exactly what it says on the box. Unfortunately, that means you'll be bouncing between some very weak combat that fails to stand up to other beat-em-up games on the Genesis (Streets of Rage this is not), and the usual garbage you'd find in a typical Battletoads level. Not a big fan of either, really. It is also just a very uninteresting game, visually. Lot of greys, lot of sprites that look like something out of the Genesis Addam's Family, just very budgeted and bland. Occasionally there's a cool effect or boss design, but nothing so impressive that it'll stick with you.
I've spoken poorly of this game elsewhere and was met with some pushback, but I'm starting to wonder if people knew I was talking about the Genesis version. This page is pretty barren (as of the time of this writing, I have the only review), but the NES version seems more popular, and for all I know the SNES version of the game is way better, too. All I know is that the Genesis Battletoads & Double Dragon is pretty poor when stacked up against other beat-em-ups, even by 1993 standards, and it's only really good as a Battletoads game because the bar was never set high there to begin with.
When Danny reached 3000 hours in Warframe I made him a celebratory cake. Once again, I consumed too much and fell ill, only this time I did not play Battletoads & Double Dragon. At some point you have to recognize there's a cycle and break free from it.
Join me next week when I review Cyberia for MS-DOS.
Mom baked a cake using a mold in the shape of Ernie from Sesame Street, which she was hand decorating. I kept sneaking icing while she was decorating, a lot of icing, so much icing in fact that I became extremely ill the next day. Picture this, if you will: my sister with her friends trying to enjoy a small party at the dining room table with me only a few feet away laid out on the couch playing Battletoads in Battlemaniax, occasionally vomiting directly into a small trashcan I was keeping nearby.
This review is not about Battletoads in Battlemaniax, because that game sucks so much that the only way you can compel me to play it is by giving me nothing else to do while suffering from the effects of acute icing toxicity. I bailed a few levels in and replaced it on my Retro Bucket List with Battletoads & Double Dragon, a game I remember playing often at a friend's house around the same time I was ruining my sister's life. That friend also had Cyberia, and I remember us once spending at least an hour trying to get past the part where Zak Kingston is asked to slowly lower his weapon at gunpoint. Even the slightest input on the mouse is enough to get blasted, and I only found out well into adulthood that you can only lower your gun safely during a very slim and specific window immediately after being told what to do, so there we were for an eternity getting shot in the face. We also played a lot of The Lawnmower Man for the Sega CD. Weird childhood!
Anyway, this time I played Battletoads & Double Dragon with a friend of mine named Danny. Danny has like, three thousand hours logged in Warframe, so I insisted he play something else for once and this is what I put him up to. Danny has not been back to my house since I put him up to this. I really do make everyone's lives miserable.
Personally, I think this is just mediocre. Equal parts a Battletoads game and a Double Dragon game, designed to appeal to the very specific cross section of kids who were into both of those things circa 1993. Exactly what it says on the box. Unfortunately, that means you'll be bouncing between some very weak combat that fails to stand up to other beat-em-up games on the Genesis (Streets of Rage this is not), and the usual garbage you'd find in a typical Battletoads level. Not a big fan of either, really. It is also just a very uninteresting game, visually. Lot of greys, lot of sprites that look like something out of the Genesis Addam's Family, just very budgeted and bland. Occasionally there's a cool effect or boss design, but nothing so impressive that it'll stick with you.
I've spoken poorly of this game elsewhere and was met with some pushback, but I'm starting to wonder if people knew I was talking about the Genesis version. This page is pretty barren (as of the time of this writing, I have the only review), but the NES version seems more popular, and for all I know the SNES version of the game is way better, too. All I know is that the Genesis Battletoads & Double Dragon is pretty poor when stacked up against other beat-em-ups, even by 1993 standards, and it's only really good as a Battletoads game because the bar was never set high there to begin with.
When Danny reached 3000 hours in Warframe I made him a celebratory cake. Once again, I consumed too much and fell ill, only this time I did not play Battletoads & Double Dragon. At some point you have to recognize there's a cycle and break free from it.
Join me next week when I review Cyberia for MS-DOS.
2 Comments
Obviously I am just kidding, I will not be reviewing Cyberia. I don't even know how people are capable of beating Cyberia, I look at gameplay of that the same way I do Olympic athletes in competition. I marvel at their feats of strength, they are golden gods whereas I am but a man...
appreciations
1 year ago
You'd think Battletoads + Double Dragon = $$$ but I'm 99% sure going back to it would just feel like the worst parts of both!