What it was
The Psicone Corporation is showing off T.R.I.P.S., a virtual reality game system, at a fortress in northern Tibet. Mid-demo, a pig leaps out of the screen and carries off Michiko Tashoku, the CEO's daughter, and knocks out Zitz when he tries to stop it. Silas Volkmire appears on screen, announces he will turn the real world into his Gamescape, and lets slip that the captives are in the Dark Queen's hands. Rash and Pimple jump in after their friends.
Each of the six stages is a different kind of game. The first is a side-scrolling brawler; others put you on speeder bikes dodging walls, riding giant snakes to an exit, or racing on rails. Each toad has his own combos and finishers: Pimple's fists become a huge hammer, and Rash's foot turns into a giant spiked boot. Bonus stages after the second and fifth levels have you on a spinning disc, grabbing red and blue pins for extra lives and avoiding the black ones.
Where it sits in history
Rare developed it for the Super NES. Tradewest released it in North America in June 1993, Nintendo in Europe that October and in Australia the same year, and Masaya in Japan in January 1994. Almost every stage is a rebuilt version of one from the original NES Battletoads: the speeder bikes return from stage three, the snakes from stage six.
A Master System port by Syrox Developments was reviewed in Britain and then pulled before its 1994 European launch. Tec Toy released it in Brazil in 1996 in a rough state, some stages without music. The Super NES game missed Rare Replay on Xbox One and had no official re-release until Nintendo Classics on Switch in February 2024.
How it plays today
It is one of the best-looking games on the system, all chunky toads and huge bosses, and it moves fast. Variety is the hook: just as you settle into brawling, the game puts you on a bike and asks for memory and reflexes instead.
It is easier than the NES original, which is not saying much. The speeder bikes still want you to learn the walls by heart, and you will die doing it. The biggest complaint at the time still stands: if you played the first Battletoads, most of this will feel familiar. If you didn't, that doesn't matter at all.
Compared with
Why it matters
The speeder bike stage is not fair the first time. Walls arrive faster than you can read them, and the only way through is to crash, remember, and go again until your hands know the course before your eyes do.
Juul calls it the paradox of failure: we avoid failing in life, yet seek it out in games, because failure makes us stop, reconsider and come back better. Battlemaniacs is that paradox at full speed. Every crash teaches one wall, and the run where you finally clear it feels earned in a way an easy game never can.
Read: One must imagine Mario happy →
- Juul, J. (2013). The Art of Failure: An Essay on the Pain of Playing Video Games. MIT Press.
What you're levelling up
You have been training these without noticing. Here is how to do it on purpose, and where it pays off away from the couch. All the skills games teach →
Memory and routing
In the game. The speeder bikes want you to learn the walls by heart, and you'll die doing it.
Do it on purpose. Break the bike stage into three chunks and master each one before you string them together.
Off the couch. Speeches, names, recipes, the route home after a big night. Chunking a long thing into short ones works on all of it.
Teamwork
In the game. Rash and Pimple can go in together, one per controller, and two toads on one screen means deciding who takes which enemy and who hangs back.
Do it on purpose. Co-op only, and call every hazard out loud. Let the weaker player take the lead on one stage.
Off the couch. Every job's a co-op game. So's a relationship. Whoever shares the load and doesn't blame their partner is the keeper.
Hand-eye coordination
In the game. Just as you settle into brawling, the game puts you on a bike or a giant snake and asks for reflexes instead.
Do it on purpose. Play one stage with a rule: no panic presses. Every button has a reason.
Off the couch. Sport, driving, three pans on the stove. Being good with your hands reads as confidence, and nobody's put off by that.
Verdict · 8/10
A short, loud, gorgeous remix of the NES game, still hard but no longer cruel. Play it with someone patient.
