Battletoads is one of the earlier games made by British developer Rare and it has a reputation for being one of the hardest games on the NES – these two facts meant that I was quite keen to give it a try for myself. Having now played it, I can say it certainly lives up to it’s reputation in terms of difficulty…

I think I should probably talk about the difficulty first, because it is a enormous aspect. I played the game via the compilation Rare Replay which brings with it two modern conveniences: the ability to create multiple save states and the ability to “rewind” the game if you make a mistake. You would think that with these features, any game would be extremely easy, but you would be wrong. Even with constant save states and rewinds, I still really struggled to beat Battletoads. Perhaps I’m just terrible at games (and I am) but this is definitely something to keep in mind if you’re going to play the game on a NES. I think you would literally have to spend hundreds of hours playing the game in order to complete it, because you’d need to master some really tricky strategies.

Anyway, now that you’ve been warned about the difficulty, let me tell you about what this game actually is. You play as the big tough guy Battletoads who fight their way through a space army (ruled by the Dark Queen) who have kidnapped a princess and one of your friends.  The story may be very generic, but I feel like the toads are given a nice level of characterisation through their animation (which was quite rare for the time) and the Dark Queen has quite a lot of dialogue too, which I also liked.

In terms of gameplay, it never really seems to do the same thing more than once. Sometimes you’re riding vehicles, sometimes you’re on foot. Sometimes you can move in all directions, sometimes you can move in two. There’s a nice level of variety which keeps the game fresh. But one thing every level features is enemies which you have to fight though. The fighting in this game is quite entertaining as the toads’ hands and feet grow to comical sizes as the deal powerful blows. It’s quite a satisfying combat system actually. There are two levels which I would like to warn you about in advance: one where you’re racing a anthropomorphic rat and one where you’re riding a unicycle which can go up walls. These are very, very hard (especially the unicycle) and if you want to beat them without assistance, it’s going to take an incredibly long time. The game also has cooperative multiplayer, but this is only going to make things harder (not that it’s not impressive.)

While it’s not that relevant to the game as a whole, I’d like to talk about how this game looks through they eyes of a Donkey Kong fan (me.) The soundtrack by David Wise is sure to put you in mind of Donkey Kong Country, which he also did the music for. There are also small little things here and there which will bring to mind small little aspects of Donkey Kong Country. It’s nice to look at Battletoads as a kind of prototype for the later game. Interestingly, there was also a bit where you’re on red girders jumping over barrel-like objects which could have been a reference to the original Donkey Kong (which is possible, since there is an obvious Space Invaders reference in it too.)

Overall, I enjoyed Battletoads. The earlier, easier levels are very fun and if the whole game had been like that it would be thoroughly enjoyable and accessible to all – but it’s not and this might spoil it for a lot of people. I really struggle to know how to score this game, but I think it’s important to say that my overall impression was a positive one. If you love hard games you’ll love this, but if you hate them, you’ll hate it.

Rating: 7.7/10 (I guess)

Buy it here.

(Don’t miss today’s Finger Puppet Show!)

In 2003, the Super Mario series had had two forays into the world of RPGs. First, there was Super Mario RPG: Legend of the Seven Stars and then there was Paper Mario and these two games were both quite different in a lot of ways and had their own distinct tone and style. Mario & Luigi: Superstar Saga gave us a third, equally distinct interpretation of an RPG for the franchise.

As always with the RPGs, the story is quite interesting. Princess Peach has her voice stolen from her by Cackletta, a visitor from the nearby Beanbean Kingdom and then Mario and Luigi venture there in order to retrieve her voice. Thing get more complicated as they progress. The change in location provides lots of interesting new additions, most significant of all are the Beanish people who live in the Beanbean Kingdom and aid the brothers on their quest. It’s interesting to be introduced to a whole different race and culture in the Mushroom World and there are even Beanish variations on common enemies, which are fun to see.

The story is full of entertaining humour (the game starts with Toad walking in on Mario taking a shower, for example) and I think it really benefits from having Mario and Luigi work as a team. I love Luigi and I always appreciate it when he is given more of a focus, as he is here. The two of them interact with each other quite often (speaking in an incoherent mock-Italian) and these scenes are always delightful. Luigi, especially, is very expressionate. I also really liked Bowser’s characterisation and, honestly, felt sorry for him at times, which was interesting. A new character, Fawful, is also introduced. Fawful speaks in broken English and is supposed to read like his text was poorly translated. A lot of people absolutely adore him, but I’m kind of indifferent.

Something else which I liked quite a lot was the mixture of classic Mario gameplay with more traditional RPG elements. You walk around on the over world map, jumping across bottomless pits and avoiding enemies like you would do in any other game. If you make contact with an enemy, a turn-based battle starts. When you attack, you can time your button presses to do as much damage as possible and when you are attacked, you can jump and counter attack, making it possible to avoid harm entirely if you are very skilled. It makes you feel a lot more involved in battles than you would in other RPG games. There are also a lot of puzzles to solve as you go on: most of them quite clever and some quite hard.

On the whole, it’s a game that I enjoyed. The story is full of fun little references to past games and features cameos from a number of other characters. You encounter a skeletal Kong at one point, there are posters for Wario and Kirby on the wall in one area, Geno (from Super Mario RPG) even makes a small appearance. These are just a few small examples and I won’t mention them all to avoid ruining the surprises, but it’s full of references and connection and it makes the universe of Super Mario games feel a lot more real and coherent.

If I had to fault the game it would be for two things: firstly, I think that the later bosses in the games are ridiculously long and difficult, which spoiled the end of the game for me and, secondly, I feel like things started to feel a but boring as they went on too. The actual finale is all very good (other than the bosses) but before things picked up, I was starting to feel a bit bored of wandering around the Beanbean Kingdom. But those are only two small points and this is still an excellent game. I should also quickly mention that it contains the remake of Mario Bros. from Super Mario Advance which is nice, but I will review that when I review Super Mario Advance.

Rating: 8.5/10

Buy it here.

(Don’t miss today’s Finger Puppet Show!)

After the Mario Bros. Game & Watch (which I reviewed last week) Nintendo later released the Mario Bros. arcade game, which was then ported to numerous consoles. This is the game that most people think of when they think Mario Bros. and it’s one that was actually very popular.

As with many early games, it’s quite simple on the whole. The story goes that Mario and Luigi have gone down into the sewers to clear out some monsters that have appeared there and that’s about it. There are a set of platforms with pipes at the bottom and pipes at the top – enemies walk from the top to the bottom and you have to hit them from underneath the platform they’re on. This flips enemies upside down and you have to walk into them (and kick them off the screen) before they can flip back up. If they get to the bottom, they go through the pipes and come back out of the top.  There are four kinds of enemies: Shellcreepers (very similar to the Koopas in later games), Sidesteppers (a type of crab which have to be hit twice), Fighter Flies (which are harder to hit, because they keep jumping) and Freezie (ice creatures which can freeze platforms but which are much weaker and do not need to be defeated to win.) Every time you defeat all of the enemies, you go on to the next level, which will have a few more enemies and it just goes on forever.

It’s quite a fun game, particularly because you can have cooperative multiplayer, with one person as Mario and the other as Luigi – this is especially impressive considering when it was made. It’s also quite nice that this story kind of depicts the journey of Mario and Luigi from Earth to the Mushroom World. The main thing holding it back is that it’s controls aren’t really that great. Mario and Luigi both feel a little too slidey, This coupled with the fact that you don’t get much variety in gameplay means that I’m not enormously impressed with the game as a whole. It’s better than some other Nintendo arcade games though.

Rating: 6/10

Buy it here.

(Don’t miss today’s Finger Puppet Show!)