
And, by the end, I was still relieved to get off the bike and move on. My wife and I found more fun via our own failures on the goofy bike section than exploring new levels and progressing the story. I remember that laugh vividly, but I couldn’t tell you a single written joke. The combination of her frustration, and the very good sound/animation of a Battletoad hitting a wall had me laughing so hard I needed to pause to avoid crashing myself. During my few hours, a line or two got me, but the funniest part of the game had less to do with the game’s writing and more with Jamie’s inability to stay alive during the motorcycle level. Rash chatting in a spaceship Image: DLALA, Rare/Xbox Game Studiosįrom the second I started Battletoads, it was trying to get a laugh from me - throwing numerous jokes my way before I’d even have a chance to laugh at the first. Battletoads tries too hard for its own good It exhausted me, and despite all the effort, I never found Battletoads fun. The animations, enemies, and toads are all silly, absurdist, and weird, with each toad transforming into various animals, machines, or robots mid-combo.īut the game’s over-complicated mechanics and oppressive art style tried too hard to keep my attention. And thus, the Battletoads formula cemented itself.Īs we progressed through the rest of the game’s first act - which took about two hours - we played a few more beat-’em-up levels, another silly minigame, and a boss fight. The two of us rode at high speeds through a long tunnel, jumping over and dodging between obstacles. The third stage took us into a flying motorcycle level.

Stage 2 wasn’t much of a stage at all, opting for a silly storytelling vignette of the Battletoads doing menial jobs to make ends meet - which just forces some simple button presses to finish the minigame. After we’d learned the basics, the first mission tossed us into a battle against a giant pink pig that we nearly mistook for TMNT’s Bebop. There’s the standard punch, an uppercut to finish near-death enemies or juggle them, a charge attack to break shields, a tongue lasso to pull enemies nearby or pull me to them, and the ability to slow enemies by spitting gum. Battletoads taught us a variety of different techniques.
