Austin

Always great to see new Wii U owners enjoying the system. It's a nice system with a lot of solid games.

Yeah, it can be enjoyable but I agree completely, it pales in gameplay compared to the first two. Parts of the last stage aside, it's basically one long corridor after another and enemies just appear and funnel towards wherever you are, rather than being placed in the levels deliberately. It ends up being very lackluster overall in the "level design" department. Oh, and screw the final boss.

All right, so I fired it up last night and finished it. Yes and no, to that statement. The transformations are kind of useless for the chain whip and throwing star, at least on the later levels. If you can get to the last level with the sword, then yeah, I can see that being the case, since it lets you turn into the dragon which is OP. I did not. Game is alright. Not great, but not bad. Second form of the last boss has an odd pattern that took me a while to figure out.

You giving up on a NES game makes the prospect of me trying it much more intriguing. I'll have to fire it up soon..

Looking at it strictly from the perspective of an inexperienced player who's only into modern gaming, I do think they would appreciate the N64 more than the NES. The N64's 3D graphics have a lot more in common with the average game today than the 2D sprites of the NES, and I bet they would also be less likely to put up with the insane amount of slowdown and flicker NES games tend to exhibit. That said, I personally go back to the NES way more often than Nintendo 64, for its more simplistic (but still satisfying), challenging experiences.

I still stand by the game itself being trash, and I did play it. Though to be fair about it, I never had the desire to go back and play it on the normal difficulty setting. My one experience was on the hardest.

King of Dragons for me, then Final Fight. Haven't put enough time into Knights of the Round to say one way or the other. Seems a bit on the "cheap" side but then again I don't really know how to play it well. Still need to sink time into Ninja Warriors as well as it looks like an awesome game, but it's more an apples-to-oranges comparison without that Z-axis. I generally lump it in with other similar games like Altered Beast, Kung Fu Master or Vigilante.

Yeah, totally. The pacing is awful. Things drag on and on and on. The first turbo tunnel wasn't bad on the hardest difficulty, but the last one at the end, that was pretty rough. Mainly because there are zero checkpoints and it goes on for what feels like ten minutes.

Disclaimer: I played the game on the hardest difficulty. At this moment I do not know what the lower difficulties are like. Enjoyment for this game might increase on the lower levels. I too was enjoying myself in the early beat 'em up sections. I enjoyed the early gameplay mix-ups as well, like the third-person Turbo Tunnel style section and the side view sled mode. Good throwbacks to the old games. But then the beat 'em up sections disappeared completely until the second to last level. A shoot 'em up section appeared. Then the game turned into a puzzle-platformer where I wasn't even playing as a Battletoad. And then it switched back for another shooter level. Then back to puzzle-platformer. Then back to another shooter level, again. The shooter levels aren't even fun. Everything takes a ridiculous amount of time to kill and the checkpoints aren't particularly good, causing major tedium. The biggest issue with this game is that it just doesn't know when to stop. Levels are stretched out to ridiculous levels. Remember how the original Battletoads (and Battlemaniacs for that matter) took around an hour to beat? One single level in the new 'Toads will take a third of that. And there are 25 of them. A couple to be fair are simple QTE games that don't last very long, but they are the minority in terms of stage length. It took me seven-and-a-half hours to beat the new 'Toads on my first go around. Streets of Rage 4 felt too long as it was, and that was only two hours. Battletoads 2020 waaaaay overstays its welcome. There is one QTE level that should have lasted 2 minutes, but goes on for 15. What. The. F*$%. I feel like the developers had no idea what made Battletoads games what they were. Yes, I get they were trying to appeal to a younger/newer audience, but that doesn't excuse the pathetic flow of the game, all the unnecessary gameplay modes (QTE levels, puzzle platformers, among other things). Don't even get me started on the control issues. Forced analog controls for 98% of the playthrough. Shmup mode? Analog stick. Beat 'em up mode? Analog stick. Rat Race inspired level? Analog stick. Then, ironically, out of nowhere for one stage, you're forced to use the d-pad. The developers that made this game are dicks with no sense of consistency. There are other minor polish issues as well, like on the shooter levels where the border covers up bullets, causing you to not be able to see them coming at you. Sadly the cutscenes are the best part of the game. They are genuinely funny and of high quality. They are moments of joy, before you're plunged back into the cesspit that is the game itself. I do wonder if things take less time to kill on easier difficulties. If so, some parts of the game will be considerably more enjoyable.

Scratch creating an official Team page on Twitch. Apparently only Partnered (not Affiliate) accounts can create one. Unless someone here is a Twitch partner? https://help.twitch.tv/s/article/twitch-teams?language=en_US

I like the idea of live feed functionality on this site. For instance, if there's a bar somewhere showing who's currently live (for those users that have, say, a Twitch account linked to their profile). As far as a stream team, how would you go about handling it? Some channels have multiple members that stream to that same channel. Maybe on a schedule. The stream key is shared between members. You would want to make sure the key is only shared with members you trust. Or, you can start an actual Team page on Twitch, link streamers to that page, and when they stream they will appear on that page. You can just permanently link to that Team page somewhere on this site. Example: https://www.twitch.tv/team/twitcharcade Something else regarding sharing streams, is maybe starting a stream thread here where people can share when they go live (instead of having a thousand different threads spamming the forum). This seems standard for a few forums I am on.

FPGA consoles are great. I only use my original hardware now when I get the random urge to play on a CRT... and with my current setup, that's not very often. AVS, Super NT, Mega SG, they all look and play great, and are more convenient. I'll get a MiSTer sometime in the near future as well.

Needs an option for "Both". Some games sound more natural to me with PSG and I prefer that. Others have improved soundtracks via FM and I prefer them there. It varies from title to title.

Yep, and the other way around, you can use the NES and SNES Classic controllers with the Wii and Wii U. The SNES ones are excellent when paired with GBA games on the Wii U Virtual Console.

Congrats! This is still a really fun game. Pretty sure I always had at least a little bit of help with this one, even back in the day.