If you grew up in the ’90s, chances are you heard of the Battletoads.
Inspired by the wildly popular Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, the Battletoads were one of many copycat anthropomorphized cartoon characters. As their name suggests, the toads were amphibians instead of reptiles.
At E3, Microsoft announced a new Battletoads video game in partnership with Dlala Studios. An announcement trailer stated the game feature “body-morphing genre mashups, three-player couch co-op, 4K hand-drawn 2.5D graphics, and broad non-specific feature declarations.” Watch it below.
When it was first released for Nintendo in 1991, Battletoads was known for its vivid palette and insane difficulty. Let’s hope Microsoft retains both aspects.
Here’s What We Know
- Three-player Couch Co-op
This is the feature we’re most looking forward to. The original game featured two-player co-op (Rash and Zitz could team up to rescue their comrade, Pimple). Three-player co-op is a relative novelty — most games have two or four as options.
Later Battletoads games allowed players to pick from the three toads. We hope each character has unique skills and abilities, as well as combos.
- Body-morphing
In the original, the Battletoads fists and feet would enlarge at the end of a combo. These exaggerated features only added to the game’s fun visuals and we hope they return.
Here’s What We Hope For
- Comic Book-Style Storytelling
While there was never a Battletoads comic book, the art form inspired the game — as evidenced by the trailer’s speech bubbles and font. We’d love to see our heroes leap from pages (they are toads, after all) into action. Different levels or cutscenes could be accessed via an interactive comic book.
- Lots of Destructibles
If you’re going to have comic book-style action and giant appendages, you’re going to need destructibles. Lots of them. Titles like Just Cause 4 allow players to destroy the world. Who wouldn’t want to see a giant frog fist take down a wall?
- Varied Movement
The original Battletoads was predominantly a side-scroller, with a couple of tower-climbs and descent stages. We’d love to see different planes featured in a sequel.
- Turbo Tunnel Redux
Speaking of side-scrolling, the Turbo Tunnel mission was the bane of many players’ existence. The Battletoads would board a speeder bike that sped across the screen as physical obstacles would materialize upon the path.
The mission was so notoriously difficult that the developers paid homage to it in the E3 announcement. Let’s hope they include it as a homage in the upcoming game.
- Vulture Missions
Another vehicle from the universe was the Vulture, a bird-shaped spaceship that the Battletoads used for transport. While never pilotable in the game, it would be fun to take the helm in some flight missions.
We’ll have to see when the Battletoads game releases in 2019.
