 The original Battletoads game made for NES, Genesis, Master System, among a few other platforms, remains to this day one of the most polarizing games ever made. It has plenty of positives, the game looks and sounds awesome for one thing, it's got a fun cartoonish vibe to it that few other games at the time had, like when you're kicking these guys and you grow a giant boot to boot them out of the ground complete with a super satisfying kicking sound, you gotta love that. The Battletoads always felt like a bit more off than it could chew, the game starts out as a typical beat em up, then suddenly you're in a vehicle dodging barriers at insane speeds, then it's a standard platformer, then it's a race against an enemy, it's all over the place, the game just feels too ambitious and as a result each level and game mode has its own feel to the controls, which made the game frustrating for the wrong reasons, or another way to put it, it made the game really friggin difficult to the point that the game just isn't all that fun after a certain point. I can remember revisiting Battletoads as an adult and thinking man if only this game got its act together and had a little more focus and a little more polish then this would be a really great game, but lo and behold such a Battletoads game does exist, it's the Battletoads arcade game, also referred to as Super Battletoads are just playing Battletoads arcade and this is more like it. It's not some cash-in knock-off title either, it's developed by Rare and the music is done by David Wise just like the other games in the Battletoads series and this game was never meant for any kind of home console release at the time. It's an arcade game through and through and that means you get all sorts of blood and gore that you wouldn't see otherwise and I gotta say it fits in perfectly with the Battletoads universe. That's the first thing that stands out here, the art direction and presentation is off the charts great, the attacks look awesome, the backgrounds look incredible like this weird alien lair that houses this snake boss or this stage where you have to dodge these balls coming at you and look at the sheer size of this boss sprite, so cool. Plus you can boot enemies at the screen kind of like turtles in time only there's extra touches of detail here like a boot mark on their ass, now that's funny and like I mentioned earlier the gore here really catches you off guard or you can drill their faces until they somehow turn into a skeleton, hey it works for me. It goes both ways though like when this snake catches you, oh man that's brutal. This game is multiplayer supporting up to three players with rash pimple and zits all appearing as playable characters. There's six levels to get through and most of them are of the beat em up variety but the fourth level is a vertically scrolling level where you descend down into whatever these things are and the last level has you commandeering a ship and shooting everything that moves and best of all since this is an arcade game the controls are really simple nothing too complicated here and there's not too many ridiculous jumps or level layouts or gimmicks or anything like that. I should mention however that Battletoads arcade definitely still has a level of difficulty you should expect from a Battletoads game it's not laughably ridiculous like the NES game or anything but it's still pretty dang hard. There's a few instances where it's a simple matter of knowing what's coming and the only way you'll know is you know by playing it and dying and remembering to avoid it next time plus there's enemies like these rats with laser guns these huge guys that just flat out overpower you plus I mean just look at the sheer amount of enemies here that you got to deal with in certain spots jeez Louise. Thankfully you've got plenty of weapons at your disposal you can actually take those aforementioned lasers and use them yourself plus there's no nonsense blunt objects like these exploding crates you toss at enemies and these giant hunks of concrete you can use to smash the hell out of anything in your way it's so satisfying. Plus there's enemy specific attacks like wait a second did he just grab this guy's junk and whale on it? Okay I can't help but laugh at that. The sound design here is also absolute top-notch I especially like the sound your character makes when replenishing health with flies and like I mentioned earlier David Wise did the soundtrack here so it is quality throughout. So yeah Battletoads Arcade is such a fun playthrough I didn't even know this game existed until a few years ago and it feels like the Battletoads game I'd always wanted it looks and sounds fantastic the boss fights look especially spectacular all the classic cartoonish attack animations are here like the football helmet or the spiked front end combine and since this game is three-player co-op the amount of carnage you can create on screen is absolutely insane it rivals games like Alien vs Predator in that regard plus even better there's no friendly fire in this game you only hurt enemies not each other if you want to play this one today it's available on the Xbox one rare replay collection that was released in 2015 sadly as of 2020 this is the last Battletoads game that was made but damned if they didn't go out with a bang all right I want to thank you for watching and I hope you have a great rest of your day