12/6/2007 - Battletoads Wind Tunnel

A lot of video games these days are what I call rental games... meaning that they are so short that they are only good for a rental. A lot of times this is because they've dumbed down the games in terms of difficulty in order to attract a broader audience. That may be fine, but that makes those kind of games unworthy of spending $60, high-production values or not.

Back in the day (I can't believe I'm using that phrase), games were harder. A lot harder. If you went back and played the original Super Mario Bros. right now, you'd probably be surprised at how hard it is because the controls aren't as tight as they are now and the platforming is less forgivable than the newer Mario games. I've already mentioned Contra which was so difficult, they had to put in a 30-man code.

Probably the best example of this phenomenon was the game Battletoads. This game came at the end of the NES life cycle and the title characters were probably created as a response to the tremendous popularity of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. This game employed a great variety of gameplay. In fact, it put itself in pretty much every genre: beat-em-up, shoot-em-up, platforming, and vehicle play. The game wasn't very long with less than 20 stages, but it was hard. My God, was it hard.

Like Contra, though, it wasn't really cheap in its difficulty. The controls were pretty tight and you had a generous health bar for your Toad. Still, this game is a true test for your reflexes... particularly in the vehicle stages. Take this video for example. It's of the FIRST vehicle stage in the game and don't let this run-through fool you. It may look difficult already, but nothing would prepare you for actually playing it yourself. I remember my cousins and myself trying to complete this stage and I think it took the entire night into the next day. We would get further and further each time we played only to get our butts kicked after the checkpoint. And there was NO WAY we could ever accomplish what this video shows: completing it without dying once.



Again, I have to remind you that this is the first vehicle stage. The other ones were even harder than this. If you could complete this game without a Game Genie, you were a true hardcore gamer, and I would bow to you.