Game Debate #21: Battletoads

[G-type | 2,479]

1 hour ago, docile tapeworm said:

1cc is for babys. no death.

 

how about no hit.

[peg | 370]

There are plenty of circumstances where no-death runs are far, far worse than runs with tons of deaths.  Score is important.

 

R-Type is a perfect example, the world record tier scores all exhaust their stock of lives to boost up the score before clearing the game.  It involves doing very precise recoveries with completely unpowered ships and adds a tremendous level of challenge to the very end of the game.

[Hammerfestus | 3,822]

Never played a lot of it as a kid.  Didn’t have it.  I had a cousin that had it.  He lived in Virginia and I live in Ohio.  He also had Tiger Heli.  Suck at Battletoads now.  That being said I still enjoy the first few levels.  7.  

[AstralSoul | 502]

I think like many people I have a love/hate relationship with this game. I love the mechanics and the graphics and music. The game plays well and could've been a masterpiece...if the game wasn't damn near impossible! Now okay I'm not claiming to be an expert gamer but I've played plenty hard games before but Battletoads is next level hard. I always LOL @ people comparing all hard games to Dark Souls. Dark Souls is a cakewalk compared to Battletoads.

If I hadn't cheated using save states I would have never seen past level 3 in Battletoads. Couldn't beat Turbo Tunnel for 20+ years. A couple years ago I finally beat it the legit way, made a few levels further and that was it. I wanted to see the entirety of this game so I had no choice but to use save states.

i gave this game an 8 because it's pretty iconic, and fun at least for the first two levels, and a few after level 3 if you make it that far. I would've given this a 9 or even a 10 but a game can only be so brutally blood boilingly rage inducing before I don't even want to look at the game another minute without wanting to punch a hole in the tv.

Long story short, Battletoads, I love you. But also, FU.

Edited October 29, 2020 by AstralSoul

[ifightdragons | 234]

5 hours ago, mbd39 said:

Yes. There's 9 more levels. You really can't judge it on the first three. I enjoy the variety, the high degree of challenge and the level designs.

As for the game being unfair, there is a lot of stuff that will kill you unless you know in advance that it is coming. Trial and error and memorization are required. That could be seen as unfair but it doesn't bother me.

 

 

Yup, I know there are many more levels. I've watched it all several times, like I mentioned.

But I'm allowed to not like the game?

To be fair, I gave it high praise from a technical standpoint.

Edited October 29, 2020 by ifightdragons

[Gaia Gensouki | 1,067]

Outside of its technical merits this game is a complete mess. It doesn't know what it wants to be and just throws stuff at you to see what sticks. Had it stuck to a specific mode of play it could have been awesome, but at this point I consider it to just be better than average, like a 6 or 7 out of ten. And if it wasn't for the insane difficulty people probably wouldn't talk so much about it today.

[Reed Rothchild | 9,510]

Just now, Gaia Gensouki said:

Outside of its technical merits this game is a complete mess. It doesn't know what it wants to be and just throws stuff at you to see what sticks. Had it stuck to a specific mode of play it could have been awesome, but at this point I consider it to just be better than average, like a 6 or 7 out of ten. And if it wasn't for the insane difficulty people probably wouldn't talk so much about it today.

I agree on your last point but disagree with the first one.  I like when games constantly throw you curve balls.  I also find the early traditional beat em up sections to be some of the least memorable (and far inferior to the longer, tougher platformer-brawler hybrid levels).  Plus replacing Turbo Tunnel, Rat Race, Clinger Winger, or Snake Pit with traditional levels would of starved the game of its identity.

[Dr. Morbis | 2,088]

This is a true gamer's game; people who say it sucks are usually the guys who can't get past the turbo tunnel and then declare the game to be ungodly hard and unfair.  Well let me ask you this: are you playing on a CRT?  The reason I ask is because I'm pretty good at this game (my best ever run was a two-death 1cc), but I went to a friend's house one time and he had some sort of Rare compilation on a modern Xbox system and I could not beat the turbo tunnel on Battletoads.  Now, I am good at the game - real good - and I straight up could not beat the turbo tunnel on his modern flatscreen TV in like fifty attempts.

So long story short, I consider Battletoads to be in the same league as Mike Tyson's Punch-Out insofar as it requires such precise timing that the tolerance for lag with this game is ZERO.  If you do not have a ZERO LAG gaming setup, don't even bother booting this one up.   But if you're playing Battletoads on a CRT like God intended, man it is one awesome experience for the true gamers among us!

I wanted to rate it a 10, but I had to dock it one point for the various bugs, so 9/10 for me...

[mbd39 | 2,017]

3 hours ago, ifightdragons said:

Yup, I know there are many more levels. I've watched it all several times, like I mentioned.

But I'm allowed to not like the game?

To be fair, I gave it high praise from a technical standpoint.

You've only played a fourth of the game though.

 

[fox | 1,665]

meh.  I had a lot more fun with Battletoads & Double Dragon

[ifightdragons | 234]

5 hours ago, mbd39 said:

You've only played a fourth of the game though.

 

Okay, I wasn't going to say anything, but you need to hear this:

You are not Battletoads. People can criticize the game without you having to take it personally.

[ifightdragons | 234]

6 hours ago, Dr. Morbis said:

This is a true gamer's game; people who say it sucks are usually the guys who can't get past the turbo tunnel and then declare the game to be ungodly hard and unfair.  Well let me ask you this: are you playing on a CRT?  The reason I ask is because I'm pretty good at this game (my best ever run was a two-death 1cc), but I went to a friend's house one time and he had some sort of Rare compilation on a modern Xbox system and I could not beat the turbo tunnel on Battletoads.  Now, I am good at the game - real good - and I straight up could not beat the turbo tunnel on his modern flatscreen TV in like fifty attempts.

So long story short, I consider Battletoads to be in the same league as Mike Tyson's Punch-Out insofar as it requires such precise timing that the tolerance for lag with this game is ZERO.  If you do not have a ZERO LAG gaming setup, don't even bother booting this one up.   But if you're playing Battletoads on a CRT like God intended, man it is one awesome experience for the true gamers among us!

I wanted to rate it a 10, but I had to dock it one point for the various bugs, so 9/10 for me...

I play on a PVM, I'm a relatively good gamer, and I disagree with you.

But I do get why people love the game. There's tons of positives.

[Gaia Gensouki | 1,067]

9 hours ago, Reed Rothchild said:

I agree on your last point but disagree with the first one.  I like when games constantly throw you curve balls.  I also find the early traditional beat em up sections to be some of the least memorable (and far inferior to the longer, tougher platformer-brawler hybrid levels).  Plus replacing Turbo Tunnel, Rat Race, Clinger Winger, or Snake Pit with traditional levels would of starved the game of its identity.

I'm personally much more willing to accept games that are throwing curve balls at you, if they had unlimited continues. But if my memory serves me right the battletoads games don't have them. This means that you could be good at one part of the game, like the brawling sections, but suck at another part like the turbo tunnel and then never manage to progress because of that.

Instead of slowly introducing a new game style and increasing the difficulty of this particular challenge slowly, they throw you directly into a super tough challenge. Maybe the turbo tunnel would have been much more tolerable if they had started with an easier version of the turbo tunnel and then increased the challenge for the second time that you were in the tunnel. But what happens is that most players are just overwhelmed at this passage, see the game over screen and have to repeatedly redo the first two levels over and over again just to have another shot. That's imho not really fun.

As for the poin about the identity, I can't disagree about that argument. However, I think they could have implemented that better, like mentioned above.

7 hours ago, Dr. Morbis said:

This is a true gamer's game; people who say it sucks are usually the guys who can't get past the turbo tunnel and then declare the game to be ungodly hard and unfair.  [...]  But if you're playing Battletoads on a CRT like God intended, man it is one awesome experience for the true gamers among us!

This is honestly a very elitist mindset, in my opinion. I play a lot of games and have beaten a few difficult ones, but never got close to beating a Battletoads game. So I'm not a true gamer? I think gaming doesn't have to be a contest about who's the best or the most hardcore. If the game is designed in such a way, that the majority of people will never see more than maybe 25% of the game, then the game is deeply flawed and not worth of a high rating such as 9 or 10, imho.

Edited October 30, 2020 by Gaia Gensouki

[Jeevan | 8,909]

I have always heard this was a game to play, i remember seeing it as a kid.  Always into ninja turtles and never had the chance to rent this game.  Not sure I have played more than a few minutes of this game, so im not gonna vote.

[Sumez | 2,933]

Fun game, objectively kinda iffy with the way it tries to do all kinds of things while doing none of them well, but it keeps me entertained, and there's hell a lot of entertainment to get out of this game.

Annoyed by its "IMPOSSIBRU HARDO" reputation bound to the turbo tunnel stage, undoubtedly due to influence from AVGN.
If you sit down and practice that one you'll get it pretty fast, it's only the third stage. The game does get very challenging, but not until much later, and it's never unsurmountable. The primary issue I have with the challenge further into the game is how much it ends up relying on memorization, which can get very stressful especially on the Volkmire's Inferno stage.

7/10

Edited October 30, 2020 by Sumez

[Sumez | 2,933]

  

15 hours ago, mbd39 said:

If we're ranking difficulty based on how difficult a game is to 1cc, I would put Adventure Island near the top of NES games, and Battletoads wouldn't be close.

If you don't, it's kind of pointless to talk about difficulty. Or at least, you need some kind of context to do so, right?
Like if you're not looking at a 1CC, you can look at how difficult each individual section is, how difficult is it to beat a stage without dying, etc. Like SMB3 has some pretty challenging stages looking at them individually, but I don't think anyone would argue it's a hard game - you get so many extra lives and other things to help you out it's hard to really fail.

If a game offers continues, but only a limited amount, you can talk about how hard it is to beat the game using all of the continues supplied, but you need the context. If you can just continue infinitely, every game infinitely easy, which makes comparing difficulty pointless.

[Sumez | 2,933]

 

3 hours ago, ifightdragons said:

You are not Battletoads. People can criticize the game without you having to take it personally.

I don't think anyone does. At least, mbd seems pretty chill to me. It's true though, if you've only played the first three stages you don't really have any real impression of what the game is. If you've watched the full game many times like you say, that's fair. You still won't have the experience of playing it, but you're at least somewhat aware of what the game has to offer.

Like @Gaia Gensouki says, the game's M.O. is pretty much throwing everything at the wall and seeing what sticks. Though I also agree a lot of it is half-assed, the overall experience is a game that changes constantly, every stage is like a completely new game.
Usually that's pretty bad, and I can respect if people dislike Battletoads for that, but I think it manages to get away from it just unscathed enough to still be enjoyable.

You're allowed to dislike the game too, but should at least be aware that your impression might not be representative of the game when you do so.  

Edited October 30, 2020 by Sumez

[DoctorEncore | 3,690]

I never beat it, but it's a damn cool game.

[SpoonMan Abrams X | 697]

Love me some beat em ups, and this is a classic, hard as balls game

7/10

I'd actually gotten to the later levels a few times, beat it once. Still feels like a great accomplishment lol

[Kguillemette | 1,543]

Could have been a great game, but that speeder level was just badly designed. I can see how some masochistic individuals might love it, but not me. The game falls short of good to me. 4/10.

[mbd39 | 2,017]

Speeder level is not badly designed. People just suck at it.