Allow me to set the scene for you. The year is 1991. You slip a cartridge into your NES system, the title on it reads: “Battletoads.” What you see are a trio of anthropomorphic, mutant space warriors named after skin conditions, Rash, Zitz, and Pimple. The goal, to defeat the evil Dark Queen and rescue your kidnapped partners. You instantly think “this is epic!”
Battletoads becomes an instantaneous cult-classic, spawning 5 video game installments (including a Double Dragon crossover) and an animated television pilot that was never picked up by any network.
The game has everything you’d expect from a beat’em up platformer for the time, great toad combos, robots, fly eating-health power-ups, and tongue lashing action. Sounds all well and good, you can’t get enough.
That one level!
Then you get to this one level that has your Battletoad on a hovering jet ski, called a Turbo bike. You’re cruising along as walls come at you causing you to leap and dodge out of the way, all the while the level gets faster until, WHAM!!! That wall you saw coming but couldn’t react in time gets you, your Battletoad flies off the bike, like a human through a windshield who wasn’t wearing a seat belt.
Not a big deal, you got a few lives left so you give it another go. You make it past that wall that had your toad remains on it, only to smack into the next wall, WHAM!! You try it again only to make it one wall past where you died before, WHAM!. And then…GAME OVER.
Flash forward 29 years later and you still can’t get past that level and you’re writing an article about that freakin’ game with that freakin’ level that haunts you to this day. And I’m not gonna lie, I tapped the game genie for assistance, typed in that infinite lives code and went to town. And you know what, I still couldn’t get past that level.
I died so many times I just had to walk away, my head hanging low in defeat. As a matter of fact, all my problems in life can be traced back to the hover bikes in Battletoads from ’91 (as well as the Lion King game for the Genesis)!
So when can we play?
Anyways, on July 31st Rare announced that Battletoads will be available on Steam and Xbox One on August 20th. The game will have everything you would expect from a Battletoads game, sweet savory beat’em up action and, you guessed it, racing fun! It even pays homage to the original with an artistic ‘90s cartoon style.
You can check out the trailer below: