Battletoads / Double Dragon

The Good
This is my review for the NES version of Battletoads and Double Dragon, which is more actually a sequel to the original Battletoads, featuring characters from the Double Dragon series (no, this is not a multicart). It's basically a beat-em-up game, with some minigames involved (but much less than in the original Battletoads). This game was developed by Rare, which developed Battletoads, with no significant support from Technos, which developed Double Dragon.

This game is extremely fun to play. It won't get you tired. You basically can play any of the 3 Battletoads, and any of the two Double Dragons, making 5 playable characters in total, which is awesome for a NES game, because most NES action games I played had only one or 2 playable characters.

The gameplay is very, very good. You have to beat a bunch of bad creatures (including humans, robots, and weird monsters) among seven very varied levels, the whole thing happening in a giant spaceship ! The enemies are a lot more varied than in the original Battletoads, because you can beat the same enemy in some different ways (you can "made up" special combos such as headbutt+big kick which is typically quick and fatal if done right). And all this is available with the B button, while the A button is reserved for jumping, unlike in the Double Dragon games where A and B were reserved for different attacks, and both at the same time would jump. Some may like it, some may dislike it.

The graphics of this game are really awesome, some of the best ever made for the NES. They are brilliant, varied and very detailed. There is something just "cool" about them. The sprites feature the very high level of detail of Double Dragon games, and the cartoonish look of Battletoads.

The music of this game is awesome. Catchy and fast-paced, perfect for a gameplay oriented action game like this one.

The Bad
The only real downside of the game is that they got characters from Double Dragon completely wrong (including the Double Dragon themselves, which doesn't look quite as cool anymore, they just lost their Japanese looks and looks American), and most Double Dragon's bosses are nonexisting or misnamed and seriously altered. Even the Battletoads themselves are gotten wrong : In the original Rash is green, Zitz is brown and Pimple is green just like rash, but is bigger (and all 3 have a yellow torso). Here, Rash is still green (unaffected), but Zitz became green with a dark red torso (unlike Rash who has a yellow torso), and Pimple became the same size as others, but brown just like Zitz was. This kind of errors really makes you wonder what Rare was thinking.

Also, the fourth level is the only one where you control a spaceship instead of controlling your characters. It's control was very unhandy, a bit like Solar Jetman, but much worse, and without the gravity.

Double Dragon fans would be disappointed to see so much stuff from Battletoads and so few stuff from Double Dragon. Some factors that made Double Dragon cool are just not present here, especially the fighting style which is 100% ripped from Battletoads, that may annoy some people.

The Bottom Line
Overall, Battletoads and Double Dragon is a very fun game for Battletoads fans, and may be less good for Double Dragon fans. It's not as tedious as the original Battletoads, it's actually completely different, even more fun and original. The graphics and sounds are perfect, and the gameplay is mostly good, but a little something lacks to this game to be really awesome. I'd recommend checking out the NES version of this game, because it's the best version by far.