Okay, now it gets serious. We're talking about Battletoads. And you don't f#@* around when you talk about Battletoads. If there was ever game that defined the sheer impossibleness (word?) of the NES era of gaming, it was this game. Known to be one of the most difficult, stress inducing games of its age, and is still feared among the old school gamer scene. So, you know when we talk Battletoads, its about to get real.
The whole game is pretty much an endurance match between you, and your NES. However, the second level is the one that people seem to remember the most. Not because its the hardest level in the game...no, no, no...it gets a lot harder. It's because its the level that everyone got stuck on, all thanks to one section. The speeder bikes.
Let me ask you a question. Have you ever tried to memorize every word in a Harry Potter book, and then recite them in front of an audience of barking dogs smoking cigarettes in your face? Well, I'd like to argue doing that would be a whole lot easier than beating this level. Well, maybe it's not that hard...but you get the point. The level isn't designed poorly, it's just that it throws you into the fray of things without any prior knowledge of how to perform the given task. The beginning of level 2 is simple enough. It's just the basic beat-em style game play that you got from the first level. Then the game gives you the speeder bikes and amps up the difficulty a million levels. And from there on out; welcome to hell.
The speeder bike section isn't designed poorly, in fact, it is done quite well. The problem with it is that, as I stated before, you're ill equipped to deal with the challenge presented to you. Up until this point, you've only seen the beat-em up portion of gameplay, so how are you expected to understand this section at all? There's no learning curve, and if you hit one obstacle, you die. That becomes pretty difficult towards the middle of the stage where you literally have to predict where each obstacle is going to appear. It comes down to memorization, but in the worst way. Memorizing a level in a game should only be done as a type of reward for playing the game enough times, it should never be necessary to beat a level.
As far as games go, Battletoads isn't anywhere near the worst game in all of history. It is, however, the one of the laziest games ever made. Looking past the second level, you'll see a game that has little to no focus, and it's obvious that the developers just wanted to create a difficult game...by any means necessary. The speeder bikes return towards the end of the game in a level called Volkmire's Inferno, which, I swear to god, is impossible to beat. And of course, if you run out of continues, you go all the way back to the beginning of the game. So, you'll never truly get good at this game unless you play it, over and over again. Pretty lame.
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