Battletoads is a 1991 beat 'em up platform video game developed by Rare and published by Tradewest for the Nintendo Entertainment System. The first installment of the Battletoads series, it was released in North America and Japan in 1991 and in Europe in 1993. Ports without Rare's involvement were released on the Mega Drive and Game Gear in 1993, and on the Amiga and Amiga CD32 in 1994 (despite the former having been developed in 1992); a port developed by Rare for the Game Boy was released in 1993 as Battletoads in Ragnarok's World. In the game, three space humanoid warrior toads form a group known as the Battletoads. Two of the Battletoads, Rash and Zitz, embark on a mission to defeat the evil Dark Queen on her planet and rescue their kidnapped friends: Pimple, the third member of the Battletoads, and Princess Angelica.
The game was developed in response to the interest in Mirage Studios' Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles franchise. It received mostly positive reviews upon release, with critics praising the graphics and variations of gameplay; however, many critics were divided over the game's difficulty. It won seven awards from the 1991 Nintendo Power Awards, and has since been renowned as one of the most difficult video games ever created. It was later included in Rare's 2015 Xbox One retrospective compilation, Rare Replay, and was re-released on the Nintendo Classics service on November 26, 2025.
Gameplay
The game is a platform scrolling beat 'em up, with varying elements of racing, climbing and vehicle-based obstacle courses. Players start with three lives each time the game is started, which get replenished every time the player continues after getting defeated. The game contains no saving system or password features. The player has a maximum of six hit points that can be replenished by eating flies. While the levels of Battletoads vary greatly in gameplay style, the game is generally presented as a "beat'em up", in which players progress by defeating enemies while avoiding the hazards in the environment.
Most of the attacks in the game have a "Smash Hit" variant, which triggers after a series of hits, or as the final hit to the enemy, and delivers a powerful blow to the enemy, often enlarging the body part delivering the blow.
The Toads's regular hit is a regular punch, with its Smash Hit variant, "Kiss-My-Fist". Also, while running, which is done by tapping left or right on the D-pad twice in a row, the toads can deliver a head-butt. The head-butt's Smash Hit has the toads delivering a headbutt with giant ram horns, named the "Battletoad Butt". In addition, by standing close to them, most enemies can be picked up and thrown overhead.
Due to the variety of gameplay styles between stages, many of the attacks are only usable in certain levels. For example, while hanging on the Turbo Cable in the second level, the toads gain access to a kick, with its Smash Hit variant called "Swingin' Size Thirteens", a giant punch similar to Kiss-My-Fist, named the "Turbo Thwack", and "BT Bashing Ball" in which the character shape-shifts into a wrecking ball when hanging next to a wall. In 2D levels, the toads can perform an uppercut, and its Smash Hit variation, called "Jawbuster". Also, in certain levels, a move is available in which the toads clasp both hands to bash an enemy into the ground, named "Nuclear Knuckles". After an enemy is buried by Nuclear Knuckles, the toads can use "the Punt" which involves repeatedly kicking their head, ending with its Smash Hit version, named the "Big Bad Boot".
Certain objects can also be used as weapons, such as legs from defeated Walkers, beaks from ravens, pipes on the walls of Intruder Excluder, and flagpoles from the Dark Queen's tower.
Side-scrolling stages are generally presented as having an isometric perspective, while platforming stages that feature vertical progression are presented in 2D, which allows the player characters to crouch by pressing down. Several levels in the game feature sections in the form of an obstacle course, where the players must dodge a series of obstacles with speed increasing as the level progresses. Other types of level include two "tower climb" levels, a descent to a chasm while hanging from a rope, a level with underwater sections, a maze chase riding a unicycle-style vehicle, a platforming "snake maze", and a race level in which the players have to fall as quickly as possible through countless platforms to reach the bottom of a tower before an enemy does. Hidden in four of the levels are "mega warp" points, which, when reached, allow the players to automatically advance by two levels.
Plot and levels Professor T. Bird and the three Battletoads, Rash, Zitz, and Pimple, are escorting Princess Angelica to her home planet using their spacecraft, the Vulture, for her to meet her father, the Terran Emperor. When Pimple and Angelica decide to take a leisurely trip on Pimple's flying car, they are ambushed and captured by the Dark Queen's ship, the Gargantua. The Dark Queen and her minions have been hiding in the dark spaces between the stars following their loss to the Galactic Corporation in the battle of Canis Major. Pimple then sends out a distress signal to the Vulture, alerting Professor T. Bird, Rash, and Zitz. Learning that the Gargantua is hidden beneath the surface of a nearby planet called Ragnarok's World, Professor T. Bird flies Rash and Zitz there in the Vulture to rescue them. Between levels, the toads receive briefing comments from Professor T. Bird, along with teasing from the Dark Queen.
The professor drops the toads to the first level, Ragnarok Canyon, the surface of the planet guarded by axe-wielding Psyko-Pigs and Dragons that the player can fly on after taking them out; its boss is the Tall Walker, which throws boulders the heroes must throw back at it while avoiding its lasers. Then in the second level, Wookie Hole, the toads descend through a downward-scrolling impact crater, where they face the threat of ravens that can cut off the toads' Turbo Cable, plants named Saturn Toadtraps that eat toads, Retro Blasters that pop out of the wall and shoot electrical bolts, and Electro Zappers that form a line of 2,000 volts of energy.
Ride levels include the third stage, Turbo Tunnel, where the players dodges stone walls while riding on a Speed Bike and having to use ramps to get across long gaps; the fifth level, Surf City, where the player bounces on water surfaces on a "Space Board" while dodging logs, whirlpools, mines, and spiked balls; the seventh stage, Volkmire's Inferno, where the 'toads fly on the Toad Plane in a fire environment going through Force Fields and dodging fireballs and rockets; and level eleven, the Clinger-Winger, where the toads ride on the stage's titular unicycles while being chased by a hypnotic energy orb, named the Buzzball. All of them include a section of beat 'em up gameplay, with Surf City being the location of a boss fight with Big Blag, the chief of the Dark Queen's rat army that can squash the Battletoads with his weighty blubber slam, and Buzzball also serving as Clinger-Winger's boss.
The fourth stage, Ice Cavern, is a platforming level where the player has to use snowballs and ice blocks to destroy barriers while dodging those cold elements, as well as spikes and hedgehogs, and facing snowball-throwing snowmen. Level six, Karnath's Lair, is a set of rooms that each consist of only one exit and multiple snakes moving in varied, twisting rectangular patterns that serve as platforms that the toads must traverse while also dodging spikes. Intruder Excluder, the vertical-scrolling eighth stage, is a platform-oriented level involving several jumps on platforms, springs and through electric barriers between moving gaps in the platforms, avoiding obstacles such as rolling Big Balls, Snotballs, suction valves named Suckas and poisonous gas guns named Gassers. Its only beat 'em up consist of encounters with Sentry-Drones, The player must get from the bottom to the top of the level, where a boss fight with the Queen's genetically modified biogen Robo-Manus takes place. Level nine, Terra Tubes, is a mixture of a platforming and underwater stage, and the only instance of the toads swimming in the game; it involves the player going through the piping into the Gargantua, with sections including encounters with Mechno-Droids and Steel-Beck duck creatures that guard the tubes, chases from the Krazy Kog, and rivers infested with spikes, sharks, electric eels named Elctra-Eels, and instant-attacking Hammerfish.
The tenth level, Rat Race, is one of two levels in Battletoads located in the Gargantua, the other being the eleventh level, Clinger-Winger. Rat Race is a downward vertical-scrolling stage with the same hazards and enemies as Intruder Excluder. In the stage, the Dark Queen sends fast rodent Giblet to activate three bombs in the ship for it to explode, and the player must destroy the bombs before the rat makes it to them. After the bombs are successfully switched off, a showdown with the Queen's least quick-witted commander, General Slaughter who only attacks with his head, ensues.
The Battletoads escape the ship and, in another upward-vertical-scrolling stage named the Revolution, go to the top of the Dark Queen's Tower; the level involves the camera being fixed to the toads' position while the rest of the scenery rotates along with the circular tower as the toads go around it with a three-dimensional effect. In the level, a variety of platforms must be used as support in order to progress, including some that sink the longer the playable character is on them, those that disappear and re-appear, those that move around the tower, and springs; foes include oafs named Hornheads, Shadow Clouds that either harm the player with poisonous gas or blow wind to change the player's speed, Spiked Balls that rotate around the tower, and Swellcheeks where player are required to hang from the flag poles to avoid being blown away by their wind power.
Once the toads reach the top of the tower, they will battle the Dark Queen. Once defeated, the Queen claims it will not be the last they would see from her. She then turns into a whirlwind and flies into space, "retreating into the shadowy margins of the galaxy to recoup her losses". With Pimple and Princess Angelica rescued, the four are brought back into the Vulture and fly away from the planet.
Development and release
The game was developed by Rare and published by Tradewest. Rare founders Tim and Chris Stamper created the series in response to the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles craze of the early 1990s. To create a contrast to the popular media franchise and other beat 'em ups of the time, Rare added extra mechanics in the game to help separate it from these genres, such as racing stages and climbing courses. Rare decided early to take the game's art style and tone in a cartoony direction, both to distance Battletoads further from other beat 'em up franchises and to comply with Nintendo's restrictions on violence in games.
According to Rare artist Kevin Bayliss, the characters of Battletoads were conceived in order to "produce merchandise" on a mass scale, in a similar vein to Tim Burton's Batman. Bayliss claims that he did most of the work on sketching the game's characters while Tim Stamper was largely responsible for translating the sketches and artwork into sprites. Rare attempted to create variation through shifts in gameplay between levels, and intentionally made Battletoads "crazy hard" in order to increase its longevity. Bayliss frequently heard the team's programmer Mark Betteridge scream in anger after failing to complete levels he had assembled himself. Despite their own difficulties, the team's consensus was that Battletoads was possible to complete with practice and skill.