The Weekly Beat-'Em-Up 12/7/14: Mighty Final Fight

Everyone needs to let off a little steam sometimes. We here at GNG find that it helps to beat up as many people as possible at a regular interval. Luckily the video game medium has provided us with a safe, harmless environment in which to release our overflowing rage. That's why Golem and I are taking on one classic arcade-style beat-'em-up a week and bringing you this action-packed... questionnaire.

Game: Mighty Final Fight

Year: 1993

Developer: Capcom

Publisher: Capcom

Platform: NES, GBA, 3DS VC, Wii U VC

Ah yes. Baby's first Final Fight. Up through the mid-1990s, Capcom was supporting the NES alongside the SNES with original games continuing familiar properties. Hence Mega Men 5 and 6, Disney games like Darkwing Duck, and our own Mighty Final Fight. This one takes the same characters and locations of the arcade hit and instead of pixelating down the artwork, replaces it with a super-deformed style not totally dissimilar to Technos' NES hits, River City Ransom and Double Dragon.

Though a contemporary of Final Fight 2, Mighty suffers the same shocking limitation as the original SNES port: no cooperative play. As such, I'll be "flying solo" for this particular WBEU.

So anyway. Can Mighty Final Fight translate the visceral thrills of second-wave beat-em-upping to the unfamiliar 8-bit world or capture the terse challenge of its NES brethren? Fight on and find out.

How is the game's aesthetic appeal?

Yourself: It's a late NES game, so of course it's pretty technically competent. There's no slowdown or clipping to speak of (uh, unless they were fixed in the VC version), and the sprites are more colorful and detailed than the standard fare. Still, the boring (if colorful) urban/industrial settings of Final Fight are really not very exciting to look at. The chibi look captures a sillier side of familiar characters, but it is honestly a bit hard for me to look at these visuals and not wish I was just seeing the arcade Final Fight.

The music strikes a similar balance: it's well made and chipper, but none of the songs are particularly interesting beyond a beepy hook.

How was the control and move variety?

Yourself: The basic moveset is bog-standard: walk, jump, punch; if you really feel like it jump-kick. Touch to grapple is here but dashing isn't. As with the older, wiser Finals Fight, combos have what I guess you could call a long suspension time. That is to say, in both this and Streets of Rage, if you push attack three times quickly, your character will jab twice then uppercut. In Streets of Rage, if you stutter (or move) for a split second between button presses, your character will repeatedly jab, never moving past the first attack of the combo. In Mighty Final Fight, you can jab twice, hold off for almost a full second, then attack again to get your uppercut. This serves two purposes: 1.) it lets you re-position mid-combo or stun an enemy on one side of you while quickly knocking another down, and 2.) it prevents the player from infinitely chaining their quick jab which stuns the enemy without knocking them down or back.

Sorry, this game is so boring to write about I figured I'd get technical. Also, there is a level up system similar to Double Dragon's - kill enough enemies to gain a level which increases health. I think special moves are unlocked each level, but honestly I only figured out how to do one (with Guy): hold right while comboing to get a less useful two-hit kick combo. I noticed not every enemy gave me the same amount of experience, which seems cool, but I couldn't figure out what was affecting that. Didn't seem to be strings of flawless kills. 

How is the player character variety?

Yourself: Variety is one of Final Fight's strong suits, with the ever-popular town boyar Dan Haggar providing grappling mixups the likes of which Streets of Rage never dreamed. Mighty Final Fight sorta has that. We've got all three fan favorite dudes: the fast-walkin fast-punchin Guy spews out fists of fury that provide a wide cover window, Hagrid walks so slowly I couldn't even play as him, and Cody is your regular middleman. Enemies have so much health (like six to seven knock-downs worth of health) unfortunately that the power trade-off for Cody just isn't worth it when Guy is so much survive-worthier. I really couldn't play as Haggar. I made an honest effort and I lost three lives on the first level and the embarrassment just couldn't continue that way, which is sad, since in Main Final Fight I main final Haggar.

How is the pick-up variety?

Yourself: Oddly enough, the pick-ups are character specific. Once in a very great while (as in maybe 3 times in the course of the game) the player will be bombarded with angry barrels that if punched will yield tasty treats and a weapon or two. Cody gets his famous knife (an obvious Street Fighter IV nod), Haggar gets a sledgehammer (unfortunately giving a cold shoulder to his more famous pipe from Marvel vs. Capcom 3), and Guy gets shuriken because what else can a ninja do.

The sledgehammer is your pretty standard slammer with a fixed durability, while the shuriken provide 8ish projectiles with instant knockdown. Fittingly for Cody T. Balanced, the knife sits in between, useful for a few jabs or a single toss. The problem with the weapons is that there's no dynamism to their placement - each is so overpowered that it's basically a guaranteed kill against the next 3 or 4 enemies, but they only ever spawn in the same place in each level

How is the enemy variety?

Yourself: I think there are four enemies? Maybe five? There's the normal guy who just walks up to you and punches, a speedster who walks up to you quickly and punches, a woman with no distinguishably unique behavior, a knife guy who flips over you and throws knives, and a big dude who has longer reach. There is not a lot of depth to the individual foes and they behave 90% the same as each other. The big guy does a lot more damage, so he's at least a more serious risk. The knife guy is the most unique, as he seems to pace a bit to try to get you in his sights instead of mindless charging. He can also do a flip to cover a lot of ground and get behind you.

Oh, when I looked up screenshots I was reminded there's also a guy who blocks. The trick to him is grab don't punch. Which is already the trick to winning. He's like the enemy that tells you how to beat the game. 

How does combat work one-on-one?

Yourself: It is hard to honestly say. The fact is, enemies in this game are extremely easy to stun-lock, and after that they're extremely easy to wake-camp. Let's explain these semi-made-up terms, since they help elucidate what makes combat games work.

"Hitstun" is the term for the period of inactivity in the recipient of an attack after the attack lands. In Mighty Final Fight, every punch causes a short (~300ms) period of hitstun on an enemy. Though this is not true in every situation in every game, in Mighty Final Fight, a stunned enemy is vulnerable to another attack. "Stun-locking" is the activity of continually attacking the opponent while they are stunned to keep them in a stunned state. There are a lot of ways to counterbalance stun-lock, one of which being the forced third hit knockdowns I discussed above. When the enemy is knocked down, they're invulnerable for a moment and can get back up and get a new chance to attack.

Except not in Mighty Final Fight. That's where wake-camping comes in. "Wake-up" is the act of a character rising from a knockdown (usually invulnerable) state. Wake-up often grants a short period of invulnerability to allow the character to regain equal footing with their opponent. When there is no wake-up invulnerability, as in Mighty Final Fight, it is possible for the player to stand next to a downed opponent and attack just before they wake up, catching them in an attack before they have any chance to react. This can be called "wake-camping".

Because every enemy except bosses can be stun-locked and wake-camped until they die, the only challenges in Mighty Final Fight are landing a first hit and managing two foes at once. I'll get to the latter in a second. Landing a first hit is a simple timing affair. Often it's easiest just to approach an enemy from above or below and walk right into them for a grab - this shortcuts past their attacks. With everyone but the knife and big dude, Guy has a long enough punch to hit them from outside their range.

The problem with avoiding this tactic (as many beat-em-ups have cheese methods, like jump-kicking in Double Dragon) is that taking any damage at all, particularly in the later stages, is immediately damning. Recovery is so rare that if you take just a single punch from each enemy, you will run out of lives before the end of a stage. So the only way to win is flawlessly.

How are enemy groups formed?

Yourself: This is an NES game, so as they say on TV: "Three's a Crowd". And one of those three is you. So it's just two enemies at a time. In fact, unless it's the very last enemy in a round, I think there will always be exactly two opponents on screen. Like types are never paired, so even from the start you're always fighting a Regular with a Speedy. Of course, only 5 enemies means only 10 possible groupings, so, considering there are more than 10 fights in the game, there is a lot of repetition. Knife guys are kind of the only real threat, as they tend to keep their distance while you're trying to bug the other guy.

How does combat work against crowds?

Yourself: Continuing from above, what you're trying to do is get both of them into the same stun-lock wake-camp loop. As with most beat-em-ups, the player can attack two enemies at a time if they're both in range, so the strategy tends to be to get the two together. The best way to do this? Throw one at the other. This will knock both down and they'll land almost right next to each other. All you have to do from there is wake-camp both at once.

How is the stage variety?

Yourself: Very dry. All of the enemies have been introduced by Stage 2. Stage 4 doesn't even get its own boss. The only mixup in the mix is Stage 3, which has something so shocking I had to do a double take: pits. Yes, the gimmick feature from every single beat-em-up ever made, the one that was even in Renegade, is back for another round. The large pits that take up most of the walkway are admittedly probably the hardest part of the game, leaving very little room to maneuver. Knife guys in particular have an easy time knocking you in with one toss. Since it's possible to punch - but not grab - an enemy when they're partially off-screen, it is difficult to utilize the small space to throw enemies into the deep.

There are also occasional barrel parts (<1 per level) where steel drums roll in from the edges of the screen and you can punch them for a health item or weapon. There are even two bonus stages based around this minigame, where a high hit rate can grant an extra life or even a continue. 

How is the boss variety and how do boss fights generally work?

Yourself: There are four bosses here, all borrowed from Final Fight proper. I don't remember if Abigail was a muscley punk dude in the arcade game, but that felt weird. The first and last guys like to stay to the sides of the screen - the first bounces his way back and forth across and the final boss (as must, legally, every beat-em-up final boss) shoots a gun. Both can be defeated by the same trick: keep out of their horizontal plane to avoid their attacks and move in for a couple punches and a grab when they are recoiling.

Mass Effect fans can try their hand at talking their way out of fights!

The middle of this boss sandwich is composed of guys that pressure you and occasionally charge. Again, there's a simple trick for both: run away until they do their bull rush, then dodge and quickly get behind for a punch and a grab. Abigail in stage 3 is a bit harder than Samurai Dave in 2 just because s/he pressures more and I think charges faster. Stage 4 repeats both of these bosses, separately.

How is the learning curve and difficulty?

Yourself: Pretty much what you'd expect from such a low enemy game (see Burning Fight or Cadillacs and Dinosaurs for the closest comparison). Since you'll get plenty of one-on-one time with each new enemy, by the third or fourth conflict you'll have a pretty good sense of each's timing and range and exactly how to handle them. That is to say, by Stage 2 the enemy learning curve has ended. Perhaps knowingly, Stage 3 is your big "gimmick stage", so the challenge lasts one level longer, but 4 and 5 are a real drag.

Play again or recommend?

Yourself: This is about as solid a "pass" as you're going to get. I've never found myself a fan of the Capcom school and Mighty Final Fight does not improve on the formula - sparse enemy variety, redundant conflicts, and a bare-bones move set. Even a Capcom fanatic will find little to love, as the game is absent the iconic giant sprites, meaty stuttering combat, and 2-player shenanigans that make their games favorites. I guess for an NES Final Fight, Mighty is all you could expect - I just don't see why anyone (in 2014) needs an NES Final Fight. Try one of the dozens of SNES or arcade Capcom games if you really need a fix; even the lackluster Cadillacs and Dinosaurs is significantly more enjoyable than Mighty Final Fight.

The Weekly Beat-'Em-Up 4/13/14: Alien Storm

Everyone needs to let off a little steam sometimes. We here at GNG find that it helps to beat up as many people as possible at a regular interval. Luckily the video game medium has provided us with a safe, harmless environment in which to release our overflowing rage. That's why Golem and I are taking on one classic arcade-style beat-'em-up a week and bringing you this... questionnaire.

Game: Alien Storm

Year: 1990

Developer: Sega (AM1)

Publisher: Sega

Platform: Arcade, Genesis, SMS, a bunch of home computers no one cares about

We've done Capcom, Konami, and Technos, so finally it's time to hit Sega. What better way to kick off the greatest developer ever's great line of beat-em-ups than their most famous work of all time, Alien Storm? I don't think any information in that last sentence could be considered actual. Unlike Golden Axu and Streets of Rage, not even a Genesis port could save Alien Storm from being lost to the ages. Probably because Alien Storm isn't really a home port kinda game. It's all about frilly flashy action with it's advertised three modes of game play: beat-em-up, shoot-em-up, and shoot-em-up again! (in a different way!).

So is Alien Storm a hyperactive schizophrenic mess, or is it a roller-coaster ride that makes the most out of its many modes of play to keep hearts a-pumpin' and brains a-throbbin'?

Pro-run: 7 credits each, died on stage, uh, I don't know, pretty early. (The first running stage, if I remember right.)

Is the game aesthetically appealing?

Yourself: I love this game's aesthetic. From the goofy Ghostbusters intro with the characters serving up fresh-cooked "alien dogs" to the giant mutant snails with trash cans and phone booths on their backs, there's a vile sense of humor paired with the grotesque artwork that sells the whole thing as '80s-style horror comedy the likes of From Beyond, Dead Heat, or Killer Klowns from Outer Space. Golem said he couldn't look at the monsters and see anything but Basketcase, and I couldn't come up with a more perfect description. These ghoulies look like a mix of gargoyles, a mad scientist, and the most heinous rubber masks come to life.

The soundtrack is clearly trying to evoke a funky Ghostbusters mood - though it succeeds in doing so, I can't say it offers any memorable tunes in the process. They definitely could've used the composing talents of a one Danny Elfs-man on this one.

Golem: When Yourself asks if Alien Storm is a hyperactive schizophrenic mess, that brings to mind this game's sense of animation. Something like Golden Axe has a very sensible look--you swing an axe, a guy doubles over. Alien Storm, though, has this stilted feel that I can't put my finger on, like folks just pop in and out of zany animations. It probably didn't help that I spent most of my time as the robot character, who will swap between back-mounted missiles, a laser whip, and a bazooka in the same span (and button presses) that Gilius Thunderhead would've landed a couple axe swings.

For the creepy, weirdo feel this game seeks, it finds matching FM sounds, blending funky bass and haunting high-pitched synths.

How is the control and move variety?

Golem: My character's distance from an enemy would activate different attacks. At close range, Scooter goes into a sweep attack using his laser whip, and far away, he sends out missiles. There are also a few attacks between, and placement is so fine that I often had difficulty knowing exactly what attack I'd trigger. It keeps the pace pretty manic, since I was concentrating on how many pixels I was away from a monster at the same moment that I was watching five other guys crowd around me. Most attacks cost energy, though, and when I ran out, Scooter could only swing a sword.

Anyway, there is also a dodge move and a dash move. Attack while dashing, and you get a dash attack; dodge while dashing, and you jump; attack while jumping, and you get a jump attack (Scooter's jump attack dropped bombs directly downward). I'd like some more practice using that dodge move, come to think of it. Finally, there is also a screen-clearing special move that cost lots of energy.

Which is only to talk about the brawling parts. There are shooting gallery stages where all you can do is shoot. Alien Storm also has two chasing stages, where you run on a brawler-esque plane, but the dodge button always jumps and the attack button always shoots lasers.

Yourself: The dodge is key - because of how fast enemies move, your main tactic to avoid being surrounded will be to roll out of the way. It functions similarly to the TMNT games' ultra-lofty jump - while it's faster and can't be canceled into any type of attack, it creates crowd manipulation based on positioning rather than stunning/clearing attacks.

How is the player character variety?

Yourself: Continuing with the Ghostbusters motif, one of the characters is a blue-clad Ghostbuster equipped with proton pack, one is Sigourney Weaver (in her Aliens attire but hey she was in Ghostbusters), and the other is I think a Cylon. Unfortunately they all play essentially the same. There may be slightly different attack ranges and C-3PO seems like the fastest, but there's nothing distinguishing enough that I could strategize around it. 

How is the pick-up variety?

Golem: The arcade version only has energy pick-ups to power attacks. While they're rare in the brawler sections, they're all over the place in shooting galleries, and players can fight over who gets the energy pick-up--shoot it, and it slides towards your end of the screen; if another player shoots it before it reaches your end, it'll slide towards him or her instead. The Genesis version also features health pick-ups.

Yourself: While limited ammo and pick-ups could theoretically lend to unique gameplay, the overabundant starting energy supply and relegation of pick-ups to secondary stages pretty completely undercut that. 

How is the stage variety?

Yourself: Alien Storm's attract reel goes so far as to throw in a line about "TRIPLICATED GAMEPLAY!", and that's really the order of the day here. In fact, if I knew just how triplicated the game is, we probably would've left it out of the WBEU along with the NES Battletoads. The game is set over three types of stages: beat-em-up side-scrollers, shooting galleries (a la Operation Wolf or light gun games), and auto-running run-and-guns. The field of play in the run-and-gun levels is restricted to the same small vertical belt as in the beat-em-up levels. After each beat-em-up stage is either a shooting gallery or a run-and-gun.

The first-person shooting segments are a bit more complex than their corollaries in Shinobi. Some enemies will hide behind boxes and store shelves, others will fly toward the screen in a parabolic arc, still others will pop up in the foreground for slashing attacks. The player has 8-directional control of their cursor and the screen even scrolls left and right a bit to show a wider view of the gallery - it isn't Wild Guns, but it's dynamic enough to feel like more than a bonus stage.

How is the enemy variety?

Golem: I'll admit that I mostly only noticed enemies varying in body size and attack range. The snails hiding in trash cans are pretty slow and small, so I had an easy time placing Scooter precisely for a strong attack. Big, salmon-colored tentacle guys demand more care, and I'd often take damage just walking close enough to get out an attack.

But then, you have exceptions like the flowers that regenerate and the kangaroos that shoot their offspring as an attack.

Yourself: There are a couple distinctive movement patterns (see one-on-one section), but generally the biggest factor used to escalate enemy challenge is speed. Enemies also have really skimpy health reserves, so most go down in a single combo or one or two heavy hits.

Though their appearances vary here and there, the enemies in the shooting gallery stages are pretty much the same group in every iteration.

How are enemy groups formed?

Yourself: As the enemy variety is limited, there aren't too many interesting combinations. Normally you see big groups of one enemy type, with different guys getting the spotlight at different points (most memorably, the kangaroos in the final stages).

Formations tend to come in big numbers - there are usually at least four enemies on screen and I believe up to six or seven. They come wave after wave too - this compensates for their short life-spans and requires you to be constantly adapting to new spawns. It also comes with a kind of tedious monotony, as it's easy to lose track of position and crowd control and just stop caring.

How does combat work one-on-one?

Golem: Alien Storm's tension comes from the exact space between your character and the enemy. Are you at the right range to do the attack you want? Can you press your luck and get closer, or are you going to worm your way in by starting off with distanced attacks? Finding a good range for an enemy usually works throughout the game. For instance, flying guys will piledrive you if it get too close, so that was a pretty clear indication to just plain stay outside of that guy's arm length.

Once you started on an enemy, if you got it in a decent stun, it was important to follow up with another attack to finish it.

Yourself: Enemies have a tendency to move in vertical patterns (for instance the fairy guys who basically move in a tight sine curve) which exacerbates the challenge in lining up mid-range shots. Very rarely will an individual simply walk straight up to you or circle around as is the typical beat-em-up pattern. Generally they attack by springing into charges or simply grabbing you when you stumble into their erratic path. In contrast, there are also flower-mines that stay planted and don't move at all. The way that contact is risky in and of itself and the enemies move almost unconscious of player position lends a shoot-em-up-like sensibility to the combat; the challenge is in staying totally untouched, then managing to quickly line up at the right distance and connect a hit - the follow-up is the easy part. 

How does combat work against crowds?

Yourself: It's basically about navigating that shmup-like flow, identifying safe spots amid the varying patterns. Your character is invincible during a dodge, so (especially in single player) there tends to be a lot of rolling around to get out of a crowd or behind enemies. The strategy largely comes down to picking off enemies one by one, trying to keep at a great enough distance that you can use the more powerful ranged attacks, then as the enemies close in, getting your way across the screen to hit them from the other side.

How is the boss variety and how did boss fights generally work?

Golem: There is one brawler boss, a fleshy blob that makes plastic stretching sounds every time it transforms. Each phase has one attack, and it ranges in space. For instance, the first form's laser alternates between firing into the space directly in front of it and directly behind it. I took plenty of hits, but I had an easy time observing why, and avoiding his attacks could easily boil down to finding a rote rhythm.

Yourself: The guy has three forms, but as Golem says, each is so simple that he's a bit of a joke when he shows up for a redux. On the positive side, the dearth of bosses certainly lends to the game's distinctive breakneck pace. Still....

How is the learning curve and difficulty?

Yourself: This is where the absence of bosses hurts. While the pace ramps up and more aggressive enemies (first the fairies, then the kangaroo-men) are introduced later on, Alien Storm serves to demonstrate that without the punctuation of hearty boss fights, a difficulty curve loses its potency. Optimally, bosses force players to re-evaluate the game mechanics; after the boss is defeated we're released back into a fiercer wild where we'll need that higher competency. Without these peaks, the arbitrarily ramping difficulty just feels tedious, like it's building to nothing. Then again, that's also a symptom of the lack of enemy variety.

Really can't believe I'm asking a beat-em-up to have more bosses, since generally I consider it a genre weak point. I guess I've learned something about myself. I guess we've all learned something about ourselves.

Interesting fact: the player characters are different colors in the Japanese version

Play again or recommend?

Golem: I'd like to play it again just to get a better feel for how to manage space, both getting the right attack and putting the dodge to use. This is a hard recommend because gameplay feels awful; you can't do anything cool with the enemies, and if you get hit, the attacks leisurely sap your health without as much feedback as your standard brawler. But then, getting a sense for the range of each attack was engaging, and while the game gets a little repetitive, it's not that long, either. It's more interesting than entertaining, I guess is one way to put it.

Yourself: However shallow, the speed of the game and the mode-switching certainly kept me fixated. Maybe it didn't give me much insight into beat-em-ups, but it's "a blast" [quotation available for advertisement materials] and - put it this way - if you're at the point where you're even considering Alien Storm, it'll be worth your while. 

The Weekly Beat-'Em-Up 4/06/14: Shin Nekketsu Kouha: Kunio-Tachi no Banka

Everyone needs to let off a little steam sometimes. We here at GNG find that it helps to beat up as many people as possible at a regular interval. Luckily the video game medium has provided us with a safe, harmless environment in which to release our overflowing rage. That's why Golem and I are taking on one classic arcade-style beat-'em-up a week and bringing you this... questionnaire.

Game: Shin Nekketsu Kouha: Kunio-tachi no Banka (New Hot-blooded Tough-guy: Eulogy for Kunio and Friends)

Year: 1994

Developer: Almanic

Publisher: Technos Japan
Translator: Aeon Genesis

Platform: SNES

Here's something different for you faithful out there: an adventure beat-em-up. A narrative-driven actioner meant to be played over multiple sessions with an overarching story setting up individual beat-upping scenarios. Sure, lengthy action-adventures eventually succeeded the beat-em-up as the main place to get combat kicks, but in 1994 a beat-em-up was pretty explicitly a one-session (arcade-style) game. Console games like Super Double Dragon and Streets of Rage may have taken many sessions worth of practice before you earned the ending (rather than a bottomless stack of quarters), but they almost always needed to be conquered in a single sitting. By contrast, Shin Nekketsu Kouha provides a continue password after every single battle, always allowing the player to pick up from where they left off in the 3-5 hour playtime. This structure is actually closer to what we see in latter-day beat-em-ups like Double Dragon Neon and Castle Crashers (which adopted the action-adventure pacing of their contemporaries).

Of course, if you like your retro games, you can probably name one other adventure-style beat-em-up: River City Ransom. While it's not obvious from the names, Shin Nekketsu Kouha is one of a handful of sequels to River City. In Japan these are known as the Kunio-kun games after the main character, Kunio(-kun). There are quite a few, spanning platforms, genres, and even developers - Super Dodge Ball, Nintendo World Cup, and Crash n' the Boys are just a small sampling. The only Kunio beat-em-ups to make it to Western shores are Renegade, River City Ransom, and the Game Boy version of Double Dragon II (oddly enough, a localization of Nekketsu Kouha Kunio-kun: Bangai Rantou Hen), but the Japan-only SNES sequels continued to explore action/adventure/RPG territory in different ways. Shin Nekketsu Kouha is the last of that original six-game run, featuring fairly straightforward action gameplay (no shops or level-ups or anything) and instead focusing on a thoroughly-developed narrative.

While most of the Kunio games were developed by Technos (you'll remember they're one of the beat-em-up kings - the Double Dragon guys), this one was handled by Almanic. Almanic would be a total no-name were it not helmed by the very producer, director, and composer behind the Double Dragon and Kunio series. So this is a Technos game in all but name.

So does Shin Nekketsu Kouha manage to uniquely iterate the beat-em-up formula over a multi-session experience, or does it struggle to find content to justify its extra-arcade length? And can the Commune do a podcast about it? (yes, the Commune did a podcast about it, which is why we played it in the first place, which is why we're covering a game so far out of the normal arcade WBEU wheelhouse).

Pro-run: This is a console game, so there's no need for a pro-run. It has infinite continues and passwords, but death means being set back to a checkpoint, meaning there's no way to quarter-feed.

How was the game's aesthetic appeal?

Golem: As is the usual for a Kunio-kun game, characters tend to have very similar-looking faces. When riding a roller coaster, Kunio and his sidekick Riki have the exact same sprite, just with swapped colors. However, it's a style that has lots of exaggeratedly frowny faces and giant fists, giving everyone a menacing, or at least severely annoyed, look. I can't think of much to say on the settings--they look really good, but aren't noteworthy--but the soundtrack plays off of setting well. Roaming around the amusement park, you'll get a cheery tune that doesn't fit the mood of beating guys up.

Yourself: The game is bright and colorful, even if the graphics don't exactly scream SNES. Animations had a nice cartoony look that's fairly unique in the beat-em-up universe, even if it isn't as immediately eye-catching in screen-grabs as Final Fight. Thought the music was absolute top notch, I'm humming the title theme in my head right now.

How was the control and move variety?

Yourself: The game puts the Final Fight standard to shame, making use of the entire SNES controller and even a couple special inputs on top of that. If you like pressing lots of different buttons, boy are you in for a treat. The basic attacks, each mapped to their own button, are punch, kick, and back-attack. The difference between the first two is subtle: punch is a bit quicker, kick is a bit longer, and kick stuns faster. Stunning is key, as a stunned enemy can be uppercut/dropkicked to the ground or grappled for some free hits and a throw. There's a pretty fair trade-off between the attacks, where I tended to use kick for playing cautiously, trying to poke enemies from afar to stun them before they had a chance to counter-attack, and switch to punches when the enemy had left themselves vulnerable after a miss or a diversion. Needing to choose between two superficially similar attacks like this caused me to think more about the strategic variables in play in both my and the enemy state rather than just waiting for cues. Every attack opportunity became a decision beyond just recognition of an opening, even if those opportunities did often come too fast to make the smartest choice every time.

The back-attack and the special attacks (performed by pressing block then any attack/jump button) were more situational. While some were basic heavy-damage-dealers (such as Riki's block+kick machine-gun punch), most had some performance detail or effect that allowed them to change the flow of battle. These included a tornado kick to knock enemies across the screen and create space, a jumping knee to instantly stun a foe in front, and the ever-useful back-attack to knock down anyone sneaking up from behind.

The game also belonged to that rare class of beat-em-ups with a block input. The block had to be timed to incoming hits - the button couldn't be held for a standing guard. The block didn't vastly change the fighting landscape - to be totally honest I had a hard time making use of it - but it did add a third basic answer (beyond "punch" or "kick") to the "an enemy is coming at me, what do I do?" question. While there didn't seem to be many reliable means to predict when an enemy would attack, the guard was still a safe bet: succeeding meant avoiding damage and getting an opportunity to attack, and failing just meant the enemy did nothing or you probably would have gotten hit anyway.

There was one control oddity that bothered me too much even throughout a second play to leave out here. Holding down and pressing kick did a stomp attack, even if you weren't standing on top of an enemy, and holding down over an enemy with either Riki or Kunio caused them to kneel over their victims chest and wale on them. These two moves created a lot of awkwardness - the former meant you couldn't kick while walking down (you had to stop for a moment first) and the latter meant that the stomp itself was extremely difficult to pull off without immediately sequencing into a kneel, a state that was much more vulnerable to counters.

Golem: The block allowed me to interact with enemies even when I wanted to avoid them; it gave me something to do other than stand outside of their attack range. Also, the special attacks were, for the most part, well balanced. You might use Kunio's forward-launching block+punch attack to take advantage of an enemy coming off of their own attack. Or, you could use the speedy block+jump to seize a small window of opportunity.

How was the player character variety?

Golem: At most, there are four characters. Kunio and Riki, the two male characters, share standard move sets (their punches and kicks are the same), and Misako and Kyouko, the two female characters, share standard move sets (with slaps instead of punches). Kunio and Misako share most of their special moves, as do Riki and Kyouko, aside from a few tweaks to make the female characters play faster but with less force. As a result, I had an easy time adapting strategies from one character to another--Misako is Kunio but faster, and Riki is Kunio with different special moves.

You can swap between characters on the fly, and each one has his or her own health bar. So, if you're about to run out of health on Kunio, you can switch to Riki to get a fresh health bar. Having such similar characters made it easy to adapt strategies from one to another while still retaining apparent differences between them.

Yourself: More specifically, the ladies can't do grapples or sit on downed foes, but they have a convenient finisher on their kick combo that knocks enemies down toward them, allowing a chance to get in more down-attacks than usual.

How was the pick-up variety?

Yourself: There were no pick-ups in the game. The total lack of items lent a clean, straightforward feeling to the fighting, leaving the player only the option of mastering the combat system to proceed. It kept the tone of the fighting consistent and put progress in the hands of enemy and state variety.

I don't know where else to mention this but there was a mid-game roller-coaster ride to restore the players' health. It was, in a word, spectacular.

How was the stage variety?

Golem: There are a decent number of levels here (eight brawling levels), and during the middle of the game, you'll get some motorcycle levels just for variety's sake. Checkpoint placement was unique to the level's pacing. So, you've got to marathon it up a few floors without checkpoints when fighting through a school, but every time you switch screens in the amusement park, you get a checkpoint. The campaign became its most intense towards the middle, featuring one stage in a disco that's just two boss fights in a row.

Yourself: Just about every screen of the game introduces either a new enemy or a unique playing field. It's easy to recall all of the fights individually because each had some identifying feature: the fight in the school where the floors fall out and slope down, the fight on the pier where enemies can be tossed into the drink, the fight on the Ferris wheel where you can ride the cars up into the air and battle your foes five stories high. The slight details are minor enough that you can still fight with bread-and-butter tactics, so you can mix in the gimmicks at whatever rate you prefer. Throwing every biker off the pier is a satisfying challenge, but I didn't ever bother to use the meat-hooks in the warehouse for stationary kicks.

How was the enemy variety?

Yourself: The enemy variety was heavily tied to the progress of the story - each new area meant a new foe to fight. There weren't any Donovans or Breds who stuck around for the entire length of the game. Each breed had an identifiable moveset - the early school hooligans fight with basic punches and kicks, while the subsequent bikers expanded beyond that with heavy use of blocking and dashing. Though the late game did have a few grunt-type enemies - most memorably, knifemen who could cut straight through your guard - after about the halfway mark, the game transitions into a sequence of unique boss battles dictated by the plot. Because of this, the line between 'normal' enemies and bosses was pretty blurry. Very few tactics were effective beyond a single type of enemy, as they all substantially shook up the core dynamics - any time you thought you landed on a win-all strategy like blocking-then-special-attacking or infinitely jump kicking, an enemy would show up with a specific counter that forced you to go back to the drawing board. 

Golem: The enemy set also did well to explore the nooks and crannies of variation. For instance, that disco stage has two boss fights, but they follow the same basic idea: a fast and weak character accompanied by an overpowered enemy with tons of health. In the first version, the powerful enemy is a little more aggressive in how he approaches you, but his attacks are easier to weave between (the second guy attacks less frequently but is more dangerous when he does). Even the basic high school grunts get some cool variation, seeing them upgrade to bikers in the warehouse and knife guys outside the pachinko parlor.

Shin Nekketsu Kouha finds a way to demand reinterpretation of its mechanics just by making small tweaks to how an enemy works, and I felt like I got a lot of variety out of my technique without the game having to do anything too crazy.

How were enemy groups formed?

Golem: Outside of the intro segment, you'll never see more than two enemies onscreen. Segments would focus on one or two types of enemies, often just one. They're often subtle differences, like between the two school goons (I'm not 100% sure they even have different behavior, they just look different) and the two yakuza members. The disco fight, when you get one fast enemy and one slow enemy, is the only time I recall there being a dramatic difference.

How did combat work one-on-one?

Yourself: Shin Nekketsu was all about intense one-on-one combat - it's such a textbook brawler that it may as well be the definition. With only a handful of boss exceptions, enemies' skill-sets exactly match the players' and fights are distinguished by the AI's behavior rather than enemy mechanics. To fight one of the bikers from the warehouse the player needs to know how to block/dodge/override basic punches and kicks, how to interrupt dash attacks, how to block jump-attacks, and how to respond when one of their own attacks is blocked. Learning how to defend against your own techniques like this highlights their vulnerabilities and how they sequence together. 

How did combat work against crowds?

Golem: During the warehouse stage, you'll face a stream of bikers in each room. It was definitely easier to manage one type of enemy at once, since I could keep to one strategy and either focus on one guy at a time or just regularly bounce between enemies. Even if there were two enemies on screen, if they were the same type of enemy, I could hone one strategy to handle them both.

When the two enemies onscreen were of different types, I had to manage them more carefully. For instance, in the disco boss fight, I'd try to take out the fast character first. However, as I did so, the slow character would advance on me, and I'd have to decide when to turn my attention to him. This uneven pacing between enemy characters made certain fights feel dynamic and hectic.

Yourself: Generally I really only wanted to fight one enemy at a time, so my strategy revolved around disabling half of a pair and then engaging the other as quickly as possible to take advantage of the one-on-one time. Back-attacks and jump-attacks - anything that did a quick knockdown - were the most useful for crowd control.

How was the boss variety and how did boss fights generally work?

Yourself: The bosses were simply a continuation of the evolution of standard conflicts. I didn't need to substantially change my tactical approach or expect that they'd completely change the gameplay dynamics, though they did each have characteristic moves that provided personality to the fights.

For instance, the charging bull Misuzu had a special running slam that allowed her to cross space diagonally and do heavy damage much more quickly than other opponents. She was too dangerous to fight head-to-head, as head-to-head combat always meant taking a few hits and Misuzu's were so strong that her intermittent counters would kill you far before you could kill her. Without direct combat available, aerial attacks were typically the next option - Misuzu easily swatted those down as well. That's where her charging attack came into play - by that point in the game it was clear that a dashing enemy was locked into his/her pattern and had no means of counter. So the trick was taking advantage of that locked period, and it turned out that by keeping far away from her and circling around, it was possible to get behind her immediately after her charge and land some safe hits. The battle gives repeatable concrete feedback to your tactics and feels like a strategic puzzle to solve - there might not be a singular right answer, but there are clearly wrong ones.

As for the variety, the bosses built up on a similar scale to the standard conflicts - the large bosses were built from a similar set of moves with charge attacks, jump-kick blocks, and instant knock-downs, differing mostly in their tactical approach. Joe put on constant pressure with his charging attacks but was vulnerable interrupting counters, while Kinji played more defensively with his quick and deadly stationary kicks, requiring you to match his reflexes. The penultimate boss is a Kunio mirror-fight, a culmination of the near-equal-footing battles that make up the entire game, and the finale in the textbook beat-em-up Fist Vs. Gun. 

Golem: Bosses typically had more impressive attacks, such as Misuzu's charge and Shinji's hurricane kick. While this meant they did more damage, this also gave them more visible cues to attack, since you could spot vulnerabilities in their special attacks. The final boss fight takes this to its extreme, since his main attack kills you in but a few hits, but you can rush under it during a pretty generous window to knock him down.

How was the learning curve and difficulty?

Golem: Even at eight stages, it manages a few twists. The first several stages go from mindless grunts and drill down to intense, focused enemy encounters, but after that sequence, it plays around with both modes. I can't say anything too meaningful about the difficulty curve, but I definitely got the sense that it was always getting harder (aside from one memorable portion at the start of the final stage). The knife guys were generic grunts introduced right after an intense boss fight, but even these knife guys did well to upend my strategies by cutting through my block. I'll say this: the game found ways to develop difficulty by using clever variations on what it had already developed, and some of the later enemies were deceptively tricky.

Yourself: The game was pretty tough throughout, though that's somewhat dependent on how willing you were to take advantage of looped jump-kicks and special moves. Around the warehouse (mid-game), the difficulty hits a level where you really have to be taking advantage of all of your moves. It doesn't get significantly harder from there except for one or two boss fight spikes, but since moving forward always means there's a new enemy to learn, you can never rest easy.

The all-time famous line

Play again or recommend?

Yourself: I highly recommend Shin Nekketsu Kouha to fans of action-adventures, beat-em-ups, and Shenmue 2. It has a rich set of combat options and a great set of unique enemies that could even provide a backbone for a fighting game. This is a game that constantly presents the player with new challenges, making it perfect for replay. The dialogue drags down the pace a little (especially later on when losing a boss fight means re-reading the pre-boss cut-scene), but there's no reason anyone who likes a good brawl should miss this one.

Golem: Easy recommend. Because enemies are so hearty and feature so many moves, each fight feels significant. And, because there's a password system, you end up with shorter, more manageable sessions. That does mean there's not a lot of brainless fodder to toss around, though--by my reckoning, this is the farthest the genre gets from button mashing.

Hey look. Someone made this. Even though they were some kinda weirdo Russian.

The Weekly Beat-'Em-Up 3/30/14: Battletoads

Everyone needs to let off a little steam sometimes. We here at GNG find that it helps to beat up as many people as possible at a regular interval. Luckily the video game medium has provided us with a safe, harmless environment in which to release our overflowing rage. That's why Golem and I are taking on one classic arcade-style beat-'em-up a week and bringing you this... questionnaire.

Game: Battletoads

Year: 1994

Developer: Rare

Publisher: Electronic Arts

Platform: Arcade

Yes, what better way to follow the Ninjaturtles than their British counterparts, the Battletoads? Battletoads is perhaps the dweebiest creation of all time: the video game story of three video game programmers (coincidence?) who've obtained visually unappealing but unstoppable super-powers and have to save an innocent girl from a mean fetishized woman who's bullying them. Hm. No subtext there. The property managed to transcend (or perhaps capitalize upon) this dorky setup to become a cult favorite of a generation of repressed misogynistic nerds more likely to resent a woman for liking the same things as them (while being a woman) than thrill at the discovery of a girl-nerd.

Man why am I being such a dick? What does that have to do with Battletoads?

No, Battletoads (NES) is the clarion call of a generation weaned on games almost as hard as the Dark Queen made their pubescent genitals. It's one of those games where you considered a run a success if you made it to level 4 (of 12). It sucked. In fact it was such a sure thing you'd lose that there was more fun to be had beating the tar out of your buddies than trying to beat the game. But this isn't that Battletoads, because with only two or three beat-em-up stages, the original doesn't really qualify for a WBEU. This is Battletoads: The Arcade Game (it's not actually called that), the sorta sequel that finally brought the arcade gameplay to the forefront for an arcade release.

Pro-run: We didn't do a pro-run because getting three people to sit through a game twice is hard.

How was the game's aesthetic appeal?

Yourself: The game certainly starts off on the right flipper (toads don't have flippers but I think they have feet so I couldn't really make a pun) with a giant lazer space battle the likes of Return of the Jedi or the more famous Battletoads & Double Dragon. The bombast doesn't stop there, with a jingle-jangly Christmas-themed level and then a... space hallway... and then another space hallway.... There were definitely some cool details along the way (like portraits of the bosses in the final brawling stage), but generally speaking the backgrounds felt weirdly repetitive, like they were cycling way too frequently (as in the first stage where the backdrop advises the player "Double-tap the joystick to dash!"... about a thousand times). That's a nitpick though, in general at least Battletoads has a very distinctive grungy comic book look.

The distorted finishing moves that the 'Toads do are more awesome than ever, especially with the amped up gore we get here.

Golem: The best part of Battletoads is watching your on-screen avatar throw around and smash enemies both big and small. 

As for the music, played in reverse order, the stage themes get progressively more melodic. Stage 5 spotlights a synthesized guitar player that is reluctant to move its hands from one spot to another; you get a lot of repeated strums. (In the boss theme, the bass takes front and center with its repetition.) Stage 3 features some nice mood, though, and it kind of channels Donkey Kong Country 2's Mining Melancholy, at least by instrumentation. (It's got those industrial-sounding percussion instruments, I don't know the name for them.) 

Actually, instrumentation seems to be composer David Wise's biggest enemy here. When the song focuses on guitar, it tends to be repetitive. Stage 2, on the other hand, puts organs at the front of the mix--the same organs that are in the rest of the soundtrack--and it comes out with a hummable wintry melody. Which isn't to say the guitars don't have their place, since they back up the organs and lend a pretty awesome I'm-a-preteen-and-it's-the-90s edge. Throw in some sleigh bells, and it's definitely what you would play if the Battletoads crashed your Christmas party.

The only guitar-centric theme that comes out well is stage 1, but that's because it features the Battletoads series theme. 

Ezio: Battletoads is a charmingly ugly game. The game's juxtaposition of the awesome and the filthy has the ability to enhance both aspects of the games aesthetics. The exaggerated finishing moves exemplify this because on one hand you are turning your arm into a drill or your foot into a comically over-sized weight (which are both pretty sweet), but on the other hand you are repeatedly and gruesomely smashing rats to death with a '90s amount of gore (which scientists have theorized is the maximum amount of gore). However, this duality between cartooniness and disgusting could also detract from the game. This certainly happened with the music, where you had pretty jamming tunes but played in the style of that quintessential '90s synth/grunge with fake bass sound. Ultimately, the music was forgettable, and I focused much more on the interesting visuals rather than the audio. 

How was the control and move variety?

Golem: Your standard melee combo knocks an enemy around for a bit, and once that enemy is prone, tapping the attack button once more will hurl them offscreen with a comical attack featuring your hands turning into a giant bulldozer or something like that. Keeping an eye out for these effects is important because it means your kill count just went up, and it made the action kind of hard to follow with three players doing it on separate enemies all at once. Anyway, it's always nice to see a double tap to run, which had its own ramming attack. Most smaller enemies were also grabbable, but this delayed killing them and didn't have much use (outside of the ability to toss them into Rare bottomless pits--Rare as in twice in the entire game, by my reckoning).

There were a few context-sensitive aspects of control, as well. In order to deal large amounts of damage on certain big enemies, the toads would grab them by the zipper on their pants. Plus, there were a few stage-specific controls available.

Ezio: With the three of us playing, we took down enemies so quickly that all I really was able to use were my dash attack (GIANT HELMET SMASSSSSSH!) to gap close and my wailing on an enemy on a ground combo to finish enemies off. The game also had a throw, which inconvenienced me more than anything when I would accidentally use it. 

Yourself: An unusual aspect of Battletoads' control is the momentum/deceleration on the movement - or what we in the biz call "floatiness". This gives you the feeling that you're slip-slidin' around like a real life toad. It's pretty frustrating in the platformier NES game, but in this iteration I didn't mind coastin' into a big punch - it gives the game a nice smooth feel and makes the timing more challenging (and thus more rewarding). 

How was the player character variety?

Ezio: When the three of us played, we all chose one character and stuck with it throughout the entire game. I was matched with Pimple, formerly George Pie, the large and burly one. Yourself claims that all the 'Toads played the same in terms of speed/power, but Pimple played so agonizingly slow sometimes that I find this hard to believe. The characters were really differentiated by their finishing attacks. Getting to see all of the different moves is probably reason enough to play with all three characters, even if the moves functionally do the same thing. Pimple was also the best character apparently, since I did get the most kills out of everybody, and that is certainly not due to skill at beat-'em-ups.

Yourself: He's wrong, they all played the same. I fuckin' demoed the game for exactly the purpose of discerning whether the characters are different. I'm still laughing about "George Pie" though.

How was the pick-up variety?

Yourself: Naught but a pair of weapons that showed up frankly a little too often for my taste. The Clubammer totally took over the flow of gameplay and turned all enemies (and toadallies!) into defenseless peons. I'll let Golem talk about the sub-machine gun because he has a poster on the wall of our apartment that says "I really love when beat-em-ups have guns". The 'Toads naturally slurp up flies to restore health - I particularly like that the flies zip around the screen and require the player to mash the attack button to sling out their tongue and snap in their prey. It's little things like that that give the game personality. Of course, be careful what you wish for - contemporary action games have misunderstood why that was cool and now have you mashing a button or spinning a stick any time you want to turn a doorknob.

Golem: In a game with lots of really satisfying, really meaty hits, the guns feel out of place. Smashing an enemy or ally flat with a giant club gives great feedback, since you watch your toad wind up and then suddenly slam down the club. By comparison, pew-pewing enemies with a gun makes them recoil a bit while the toad stands there and holds down a trigger. While they were useful in terms of tactics, I had no interest in using the guns. Luckily, they were relatively Rare.

Ezio: The giant mallet/debris thing was the only way to have any friendly fire in this game. You better believe that every time I picked one up that I was going after Yourself and Golem with it so that I could pancake them. Hitting enemies with it was incidental. The other pickup, the blaster, saddened me because I could not shoot my teammates with it. 

How was the stage variety?

Golem: The majority of the game was spent beating up rats in standard brawler stages. Between those came stages that lacked the depth axis (as in, you can't walk towards or away from the screen). One featured an icy platforming stage, where down on the joystick became a ducking move to evade oncoming snowballs. In another, the toads wore jetpacks and flew around the room at will, spinning to attack enemies (but not each other, for better or worse). For the final variety stage, the toads operated laser guns aboard a spaceship, where we had 8-directional fire on obstacles approaching from every angle.

Ezio: The first two stages were rather memorable. The first one had a huge space battle in the background and served as an almost acceptable tutorial stage with its ONE tip on the displays within the stage. The second snow level mixed things up with sliding and snowmen sequences in which you had to avoid their snowballs and wait until the blizzard died down to attack. The rest of the standard stages blended together for me because being inside a hallway does not exactly grab my attention and lend itself to differentiation. The jetpack level and shmup style levels were nice reprieves from the standard brawling.

Yourself: The final brawler stage had a bit of internal variety - the kinds of death traps we've seen in a lot of beat-em-ups and most memorably a gigantic bowling alley where screen-tall 3D bowling balls flew at our heads and we had to run left and right into the tiny safe spots left on the screen.

The problem with the stage variety for me was that I found the normal stages way too repetitive and the unique stages far too unique - the vertical jetpack corridor in particular feels extremely out of place and doesn't develop any sense of gameplay depth so much as just shouting at the player "hey! dodge stuff!" The variety felt shallow.

The snow stage, which blended slippery slopes, ranged enemies, and giant crowds, was EXACTLY what a variety stage should be - and in fact was what I wanted the whole game to be. Each gimmick was tied to the core gameplay mechanics (being good at timing punches helps defeat everything) and each was developed with increasing challenge throughout the level. As the second stage, it showed a lot of promise, and ultimately left me disappointed that the game didn't follow through. 

How was the enemy variety?

Ezio: There were two rat-based enemies that made up about 90% of what we fought in the game. You had the mice which served as the traditional grunts that are a staple of this genre. They had different palette swaps and occasionally one would be using one of the blaster pick-ups, but other than that, they remained a static threat. The larger rats provided some variety when they first appeared, but became stale rather quickly. They had much more health than the other foes and focused their efforts on grabbing the player. Functionally this meant that combat with them boiled down to grabbing them first, dick-punching them until they threw you off, and then repeating for what seemed like forever because of their huge amount of HP. Other enemies tended to be more interesting than these two main foes, such as the snowmen in the second stage and the electro-mace wielding enemies in the first stage.

Yourself: What else is there to say. This isn't a game that has enemy variety. It has level variety. Each level type had it's own according enemies, but there was no cross-level development. So you basically had some type of grunt and some type of more annoying enemy in each stage.

How were enemy groups formed?

Yourself: With lots and lots of rats. With so few enemy types, there weren't a lot of variations the game could offer. Though the snow stage offered some interestingly clear groups (a swarm of dozens of midget ice-skaters, flanking gunmen, one snowman at a time), I honestly can't think of a single time in the rest of the game when we weren't fighting against a cluster of wimpy rats with a couple strongmen to support them.

Golem: Battletoads knows when it's got an interesting idea for an enemy; for instance, dodging a snowman's snowballs is satisfying, and snowmen were often on their own. Otherwise, it relies on the strength of its presentation: the satisfaction of tossing enemies around and drilling into rats. Having a bunch of guys run around plays well into that, making things look really hectic.

Ezio: The game is more fun when the groups are smaller and you can focus on eliminating a couple of threats while still advancing in the stage. 

How did combat work one-on-one?

Golem: I can't say I noticed this too well. Normally, even the fatter enemies could be dispatched reasonably quickly if caught in the standard combo of a few punches followed by a finisher. The trick was to get in the finisher during the available window. On the other hand, if you had to deal with a large muscle-bound enemy, that meant grabbing their crotch and going through several cycles of punching.

Ezio: 1 vs 1 combat revolved around the big rat enemy. The goal was to avoid him during his attack pattern then gap close with a dash attack and then grab him and punch the lights out of his dick. When he tossed you away, you repeated this process until he was dead. 

Yourself: Look enough about dicks everyone, this is the most groin-oriented piece we've ever written. 

How did combat work against crowds?

Ezio: Battletoads was hampered somewhat by its cramped crowd combat. With three players all having exaggerated attacks that took up half the screen after you completed a basic combo, jump attack, or dash attack, enemies were constantly flying everywhere around the screen. It was hard to get a basic combo off in time before the mouse you were wailing on was blasted to the other side of the screen by a bulldozer bash. This also created the problem of cleaning up the wounded enemies. Dash attacks and jump attacks were effective in hitting enemies all over the place, but less so in terms of damage, which was plentiful in the combo attacks. Being as hard as it was to finish a normal combo, the best way to finish an enemy off was the inescapable ground finishing move. So that one got a lot of play, and as much as I love watching Battletoads curbstomp rats, even I got bored by doing it every battle over and over again. Theoretically the grab move was supposed to clear space, but that was hardly ever a pressing need in this game.

Yourself: Yeah, there was really just no way to get a handle on the space without relying on the auto-smash dash attack, and that just scattered everything and led to ground attack clean-up.

How was the boss variety and how did boss fights generally work?

Yourself: The boss fights were almost hilariously monotonous. I think each of them had exactly one attack. I don't even know if I can qualify it as a pattern when, for instance, the first boss menaced us from the foreground, did a leaping attack onto the field of play that left him stunned and vulnerable, then hopped back into the foreground after taking his licks. In fact, the second boss was identical except that he preferred the background and had a much faster lunge. These built up to a shocking final gun duel with none other than Brain Bot (yes, THE Brain Bot) who slid back and forth across the bottom of the screen while shooting volleys of three slow-moving equi-spaced projectiles upwards for about seventy minutes. Honestly it's a contender for lamest final boss I've ever played. There's something to be said for brutally unfair baddies compared to one as comically easy as this. It just left the game on a very flat note.

Golem: It's pretty hard to care about any of the bosses here, but the infamous snake boss was at least memorable for its brutality. It reminded me of the optional dragon boss from Dungeons & Dragons: Tower of Doom, Flamewing, only it wasn't optional and it was absurdly early in the game. I wonder how many players slogged through it using real quarters. It's also the coolest scene in the game, featuring a cliff overlooking a giant rib cage through which the snake snakes.

Yourself: Come on don't bring Flamewing into this. That's like comparing prime rib to some garbage boss battle no one should ever play.  Flamewing had patterns and multiple vulnerabilities and there was strategy to predicting and dodging his attacks, even the one-hit kill. Snakesky here just tracks one player and snaps at them like an asshole.

Ezio: I am still confused why the primary antagonist, the Dark Queen, was not a fight in any form. The snake boss in level 2 scarred me for life. Its attack of reaching out its head and grabbing one of the frogs was successful on me an implausible number of times, it also felt like it went on for about 5 minutes too long.

How was the learning curve and difficulty?

Golem: The game had just enough enemy variety to progress challenge over the course of the normal brawler stages. Plus, the variety stages were well enough charted that they also gave increasing difficulty. The snow stage was pretty comparable to the normal brawling; the jetpack stage controlled differently from the rest of the game, but at least it offered a standard melee attack and a full range of motion; and finally, the spaceship stage offered little room for dodging--survival was mostly dependent upon stopping a hazard with laser fire.

Ezio: I died a whole heck of a lot of times. I blame that mostly on the misleading health bar that makes it seem like you can take a bunch of hits before dying. In actuality, just about one hit of anything kills you. I acted a lot more brashly than I otherwise would have because of that and it cost me a lot of lives since it took me a while to figure out. 

Yourself: Was there any real incline in challenge in the beat-em-up-proper stages or did they just increase the enemy count? I was left pretty bored with those by the end of the game. And while the variety stages worked internally (again, the snow stage was great) they were so long that they sorta broke the overall pace of the game. It feels weird to spend ten minutes learning how to descend a chasm with a jetpack and then never having to do it again, as if the game ends where it did just because it was out of ideas, not because it had reached a climax.

Play again or recommend?

Ezio: Battletoads has a few levels that I would like to revisit, but despite its short length (we beat it in under 50 minutes), I would be unlikely to play it again. The later stages fell flat for me and the change-of-pace levels while nice at the time, do not seem very appealing in hindsight. Coupled with the fact that the characters are all the same and the combat got a bit repetitive on the first playthrough, you will not see me playing this again anytime soon. For those who have not played it, I would give a mild recommendation, but a much stronger one to watch the pilot of the never picked-up cartoon of Battletoads.

Yourself: I'm honestly a bit surprised how small Battletoads felt. It simply didn't earn the degree of variety it tried to introduce - the lack of reprises and a compelling main gameplay arc left it feeling scattered. Also, I'm just not a fan of games that end on a lengthy stage of a different type than the rest of the game. That's pretty much outright abandoning your identity. And that's exactly my problem with Battletoads: I don't know what the hell it is or what the hell I'm supposed to want to play. If you're a fan of the series check it out, but I won't be surprised if you never play it again in favor of your NES treasure. For anyone else it's a lesson in how not to do variety. But it's not for beat-em-up fans.

Golem: While this is definitely the most refined Battletoads game, maybe that's a bad thing; without the trademark frustration and the killing-the-other-player-by-accident accidents, Battletoads has pretty boring combat and okay I guess variety stages. The most notable thing about the game is that it keeps track of how many enemies you kill. It counts them up individually at the end of each stage, pitting the three players against each other for a high score. Also, it has blood, but if you don't like that, you can turn it off with one of the dip switches.