Battletoads In Battlemaniacs [SNES]

"General
This is a remake of the NES game called Battletoads which was a humorous multi-style platform game. A hugely enjoyable affair with great variety and a great deal of challenge to go along with it. This game was really tough and I never finished the NES version; getting to level 8 or 9. You control one of the Battletoads to fight, drive and jump through varied horizontally and vertically scrolling levels. This remake has a smaller number of levels and the difficulty is down a notch - but it is still a challenge.

Gameplay
This is a blend of a number of genres. Level 1 is like Double Dragon; a horizontally scrolling area with plenty of bad-guys to deal with. The toads have only a few moves; basic punch and kick; but they are presented in amusing ways depending on the situation. Their hands and feet tend to morph into giant boots, anvils etc. when dealing out blows. There is just enough variety to avoid it becoming boring and the look of the attacks helps as well as they tend to change from level to level. Battletoads is a health-meter based game. Each hit you take removes a few marks from your character’s meter – when its empty you lose a life.

Other levels feature speed bike races , riding on the backs of giant snakes through maze-like levels etc. and, as I've said, the challenge tends to be consistently high throughout.

There are a couple of bonus levels where you pick up objects to earn extra lives. The objects in the first bonus level are skittles (pins). Red pins give you 1 point, blue pins 5 and black skull pins take 5 points off. The level starts easy enough with your character sliding across a polished surface on a what looks like a checker piece (that’s draughts for the UK) avoiding enemies and picking up pins. If you get hit often enough the bonus level ends. The background has a board game theme with playing cards and chess pieces scrolling by. The pin placements later in the level get tough with, for example, blue pins sitting between black pins. Extra lives are awarded at the end of the level for every 100 points you make.

In the simultaneous 2-player game, there is the option of being able to hit the other player which, while provides lots of laughs, makes the game not last as long as accidental hits tend to happen during the lively action and its hard to resist not getting your own back !

Graphics
Given the age of this game, the graphics look well and are big and clear with no slowdown/flicker. The enemies are well drawn but don’t feature a high number of animation frames. However what is there is well done and adds to the humour of the game. The game does have a comical look – for example there are enemies in level 1 that look like some sort of pig creature that have a belly-based attack

Sound
Good smack/punching sounds accompanied by a good cheesy rock soundtrack which adds to the atmosphere of the game

Overall
A very good game which could have been done very badly and ended up being boring - as many scrolling fighters are after a short bout of gameplay. Any game that successfully incorporates 2 players simultaneously get the thumbs-up from me; especially for younger players. Make no mistake though, beyond level 2 this game is very difficult. This game has aged extremely well. Recommended.
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