Battletoads - Arcade Zone #22 - Retro Review
From the beginning of the 90s the Beat 'em up dominated in a great way the arcade halls, from the famous and innovative Final Fight many developers chased that genre hoping to have a place in the great hall of the fame, many they obtained taking out games of very high quality (as Konami's Arcades) but others did not run with this luck, this is the case of one of the games that is the most emblematic in the Nintendo 8-bit console, but it did not have the same fate in Arcade halls , Battletoads.
A game that incorporated a great humor, gore and a lot of action that appeared in Arcades classrooms in 1994 developed by the splendid RARE, which already had a great record of excellent games, surprisingly this game went unnoticed with time, due to that others with much more marketing overshadowed this great cabinet, the game is one of his best pieces in the series of Battletoads, highly acclaimed by the critics of that time, but little known by the gamer public.
The sprites designed in Battletoads were really impressive, the quality and design of them were totally unique, in addition to their movements that left anyone amazed, the effects of impact against the enemies are very varied, they retain the main idea of their great ancestor 8-bit, by completely eliminating an enemy we can appreciate how one of the extremities of our character becomes a giant weapon (the form will depend on the character we have at that time).
There is a great variety of enemies with a very original design, each one has a different way of getting enough gray during the game, sometimes we will see the same enemy but with a different color tone, this is an indicator that their resistance and strength is superior, so we must be careful when facing them, another thing that I find very funny is that every time the enemy knocks you to the ground or you eliminate you will hear a laugh, making fun of us, but this is paid dearly when we convert it is dust.
The way we eliminate enemies will depend on its characteristics, for example, if it is the small mice that appear on almost all levels, we can cut off their heads with a mortal blow or crushing it on the ground, if they are some pigs which are quite fat we will have to make them fall on the ground, that way their butt will be fully exposed to give them a tremendous kick and send them off the stage (the sprite that forms on the screen at that time is very good ) or one of the funniest, mice with steroids, we must hit them with a strong blow by lowering their guard, in that moment the character grabs his balls giving him multiple hits until ending with a very strong blow, this makes the game have so much variety visible that makes it a guaranteed addiction.
Sometimes we can see the pre-rendered design that RARE used in most of its games, however, Arcade's Battletoads was the first to use this graphic technology which they later implemented in games like Donkey Kong Country or the famous Killer Instinct. can deduce that this Arcade was the initial test of the development with respect to the pre-rendered graphics, this we can appreciate in one of the levels where we must dodge some big balls that come from the bottom of a corridor, they look really incredible to be a game from that era.
There are two models of this Arcade, the difference between them is that in one we can play only two people and in another up to three players, the latter being the best version, since we could see on screen our three great heroes for the first time fighting together, this gives a touch of gameplay to the game that had many Arcades of the time, RARE wanted to take a piece of cake with this cooperative capacity that gave his cabinet.
The gameplay is very good, we have our typical jump and all the other offensive moves that we will do with a button, depending on the level it will change the game form slightly, as for example in the last part the game becomes a shooter (it is one of my favorite levels) where the jump button is replaced by a special power that sweeps all the enemies on the screen, I consider that RARE knew how to implement many modalities in the game so that it was not repetitive.
As usual in any game Beat 'em up we will see a boss at the end of their levels, they have excellent sprites and animations, the way to eliminate them is totally different, this makes us have to evaluate their attacks and patterns to not be eliminated among them, when their life goes down we can appreciate that their movements are very aggressive and their attacks stronger, this represents a good level of difficulty for the player.
Because RARE did not have to release a version of this game for home consoles I made explicit violence and quite funny animations for this Battletoads, for example, if we cut the head of some enemy we can see how a great stream of blood comes out of his neck , this by policies of many companies (especially Nintendo) could not be seen in any of their games due to the great censorship that many of us know they applied to them.
When you just listen to the welcome song that the game gives you when you press the Start button, it gives you to understand that the melodies in this game are just perfect, they fit very well with the type of game, they offer you the entertainment and proper attention to keep you active at all times, the same can be said of their sounds, an excellent job by RARE, which as we all know is one of the best video game development companies of the 90s.
It is a shame of Battletoads in its version of Arcade was not recognized at the time by the gamer public, this is due to the high competition that there was, the marketing of other companies completely overshadowed an excellent game that many were unaware, recently in one of the releases for Xbox One, Microsoft (current owner of RARE) released a compilation of games from this brand new company called Rare Replay, it is here when many people knew this fabulous game, being totally amazed at the hidden within the catalog of RARE, it's never too late to know hidden gems in videogames, if you've never given a touch to Arcade Battletoads I recommend it, it's a game of action, humor and addiction that will take you at least 1 hour of guaranteed entertainment.
Source
See You!!!
I like
It's perfect