Rare Replay: Battletoads Tips

Rare Replay has just hit the Xbox One and for a lot of people that means playing Battletoads once again. While Dark Souls and Bloodborne dominate the throne of difficult to beat games, Battletoads was one of the many games that held the title back in the original Nintendo Entertainment System days. In fact, while many recall how difficult Battletoads was, when you play it again you might just realize it’s even harder than you remember. That’s not necessarily because you were remembering incorrectly, it’s because games are significantly easier these days compared to games on the original NES, so the difficulty of Battletoads is even more shocking since you’re simply not accustomed to such difficult games.

To help you adjust to the classic game, we’ve compiled a list of helpful tips. Check back with us tomorrow and next week for videos on the hover bike level and more tips for Battletoads and Battletoads Arcade.

Jump to Avoid Combos

When you catch an enemy in a combo they can’t get out of it unless another enemy interrupts your Battletoad with an attack. That’s not the case when an enemy is hitting you. Most enemies use a standard combo of two or three hits into a slightly delayed final attack. If you just stand there or try to move in any direction, your character will seem locked in place, forced to take the final hit the combo. However, if you jump into the background or foreground (up or down), you can almost always avoid the last hit of a combo and save some health in the process.

Back Away from Flies

A group of flies will appear at specific times throughout the game. You won’t see them often, but eating the flies is basically the only way to replenish lost health (there are situations when insects drop health cubes as well). This makes them extremely important in many situations because you’re likely to be taking damage pretty steadily throughout the game.

When you see the flies, if you just try to attack them (which changes your attack into a tongue grab) you’ll probably miss most, if not all of the flies. Your best course of action to grab the most flies in the limited time they’re on screen is to quickly back up so you have a better angle to catch the flies. If they’re right on top of your Battletoad it’s difficult to grab more than one or two, but if you start from a little bit away from the flies it’s much easier to catch them all.

Juggle Crows

During the vertical levels when you’re repelling down a shaft, birds will attack you. When you defeat these birds they fall at a moderately slow speed. You can attack them continuously until they fall to the bottom of the shaft. This is easier to do once you have a feather sword in-hand, but the more you juggle the birds the more points you can rack up. While this may not seem like a very rewarding feat, back in the days of the Battletoads, score meant a lot. The goal was not only to beat the game (which was hard enough), but to get the highest score possible in the process.

Don’t Jump on Ramps

When you reach the hover bike level, avoiding the stone pillars and blockades is easy enough if you have good reflexes or simply memorize the pattern. What throws a lot of people off are the ramps between platforms. The problem is that many of the gaps between land masses vary in size. People think they have to press the Jump button to make it across. The secret is that there is none. You don’t have to press the Jump button at all. Simply run the bike across the ramp and you’ll always travel the required distance.

KO Multiple Enemies at Once

There are many occasions throughout Battletoads in which you’ll have to face off against a group of enemies. In these situations you can make the battle a little easier by lining up the enemies so that your final KO attack (usually a big fist or boot) hits more than one enemy. This finishing attack inflicts a lot of damage to enemies, and in some cases that’s all that you’ll need to score a KO. However, you can’t generally perform these attacks without the combo that precedes them.

Back away from enemies until they’re spread out a bit, then attack the closest enemies as the others start t approach. Time your combo so that the KO attack hits just as the other enemies get close enough and you’ll make your life much easier. This isn’t the easiest thing to setup, but it’s quite rewarding when you do.

Come back tomorrow for a video that covers the hover bike level in the original Battletoads, but in the meantime check out our list of the best games in Rare Replay!