Are Either BattleToads (SNES) Games Worth Playing Today?

There are two Battletoads SNES games you'll get to choose from, BattleToads Double Dragon and BattleToads in BattleManiacs. In today’s SNES review we’ll be seeing if any of them are worth playing today. We’ll be covering them in order of release date, let’s get into it.

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BattleToads in Battlemaniacs

First released is BattleToads in Battlemaniacs and just look at this sweet cover. If I was in a rental store I would for sure pick this up. Neverminded, maybe it would get lost in the back room somehow if I worked there myself.

It’s a sequel of the original Battletoads released on the NES and is somewhat of a remake?

Now right off the bat you can tell that this was given the 16 bit SNES treatment because it looks and feels great. The sprites are at least doubled in size from what the NES had to offer.

You’ll be smashing up pigs right off the bat with your over exaggerated moves. Check out this Fist Turning into a Hammer or Watch when you run and smash into an enemy with your ginormous ram horns.

If you look closely, the stages will look very similar to the NES versions. It’s got different layouts but mainly the same challenge. I did like the beat em up stages but the ones that were just platforming really make you put in way too much time to memorize and needed some really twitch reaction times. Just look at the turbo tunnel version two. Why did they have to put this as the third level in the game? It takes an insane amount of time to remember and practice this.

Keep in mind you’ll be dying and retrying as much as you can. Which You only get three lives, two continues and that it, game over. There is a cheat code that gives you five lives and five continues instead which I’ll leave in the description. But even with that, this has to be one of the top 10 hardest Super Nintendo games of all time.

There are a couple of bonus stages where your riding a checkers piece avoiding these rats while knocking down uh pins? Even the bonus stages are challenging, You cant catch a break.

The soundtrack who produced other classic rare games such as Donkey Kong country in David Wise and is really gritty and almost helps you not get frustrated from the amount of times you’ll be retrying since the soundtrack is really great. Could you image a game this difficult that also has a terrible soundtrack?

There’s also only two bosses in the entire game, You have the first stage Boss and then the Final Boss. Anything in between takes away from the standard beat your enemies to a pulp, face a boss and repeat and that’s what you want in a good beat em up. I don’t know, It’s hard to give Battletoads in Battlemaniacs a green light because it lacks being a traditional beat em up.

BattleToads Double Dragon The Ultimate Team

The next BattleToads SNES game is BattleToads Double Dragon The Ultimate Team. Hey, they shrunk down the sprites? What’s up with that? I mean the graphics are definitely a step up from the ones on the Nintendo,

but It would have been nice to at least keep the same size sprites as in the first SNES game.

So let’s set this straight, is it a BattleToads game or is it a double dragon game? To me it looks like a solid BattleToads game with double dragon playable characters. Keep in mind, each of the characters plays the exact same no matter which side you’re on. It’s not like the BattleToads are slower but more powerful and the Dragons move around faster but do less damage which would have been nice to see.

It’s still got that tough but at least manageable difficulty. I would say that BattleToads Double Dragon is the easier of the two, Even if it has it’s own variation of the motorbikes stage which can still be really frustrating and at times makes you want to throw your controller across the room.

The good news is there’s a level select password that can at least help you play through the stages you get stuck on and practice. This helps offset the difficulty of repeating the stages when starting from the beginning.

Gone are most of the more frustrating platforming levels and you get a ton of well rounded beat em up stages where you're picking up giant robot legs and smashing enemies over the head with it. Or Ramming guys off the screen with your bull horns.

Taking away from the standard beat em up levels was this stage where youre in a spaceship and having to shoot down other ships. It plays a lot like asteroids on Atari and feels like it’s paying homage.

In terms of bosses, there are a lot more bosses to see here. I like seeing that most stages ended in a boss battle and the reaction on their faces when the bosses arrive are priceless.

David Wise was back at it again with the hot jams in BattleToads Double Dragon. Man this guy was really on fire with the games he composed.

I also wanted to mention that both BattleToads in BattleManiacs as well as BattleToads double dragon are both two players. One where you can friendly fire is on and one where it’s off. Gosh come on, these games are hard enough, are we really going to bother with making sure to stay out of your coop partners way in order to not ram them off the screen? So yes, always choose Mode B if you’re going to play this with someone.

To me, I do think that both of the BattleToads games on the SNES are very playable games. BattleToads Double Dragon feels like the more complete game and would be my go to choice if you put me in a corner and made me choose.