Tag: retrospective

Battletoads (1991)

One thing I’ve made a point of talking about elsewhere is the myth of objectivity in games criticism. Any piece of art can be critiqued with some degree of objectivity, but only to a point. In the case of video games this can mean things like dodgy framerates, reproducible bugs, dropped inputs, and so on. What you can’t quantify, and is significantly more important in an interactive medium, are the subjective elements. Gamefeel, execution of its mechanics, the quality and payoff of strategic (in this case I mean long-term planning) and tactical (short-term) decisions, and the satisfaction of performing tasks within the framework provided by the designers are just a handful of largely-if-not-totally subjective elements that carry massive weight. This is largely a matter of personal preferences, skill level, familiarity with the conventions employed, and a million other things that are a waste of time to get into here, but I think you probably get the gist.

All of that preamble – and believe me that’s the truncated version, I could easily go on – is to say that while I can find many things worthy of praise in Battletoads (GB) on a technical, “objective” level, none of this surmounts how much I cannot fucking stand playing it. I love a good beat ’em up, and Battletoads has not and will never be a good beat ’em up.

When you consider how early in the Game Boy’s lifespan this arrived, Rare pulled some frogdamn magic here. The sprites are massive, they animate smoothly, they use a lot of convincing faux-3D, and the performance is so much better than many games that came after it that honestly beggars belief. They even went so far as to make an entirely new set of levels here, despite the name match, that broadly work better on the Game Boy than the NES levels would! That said Rare eventually did go on to port the NES version with a different subtitle because sure, why not double dip on fucking Battletoads?

Just…god, actually playing this thing? Sliding around everywhere? The total lack of significant animation cancels? Those awful rope sections? Obnoxious vehicle after obnoxious vehicle that all handle like a bar of soap? Having to memorize the fast sections because there’s no room for error? Bigass cartoon limbs with borderline improvised hitboxes taking half your health from nowhere? Ew. Ew. This game is fucking grimy, dog. It just feels bad in the hands, and as impressive as its technical aspects are, the bile starts bubbling up as soon as I see it in motion because that probably means I’m touching it.

I’ll go one further. Moreso than many BEU franchises, Battletoads has a lot of defenders that are quick to get into the difficulty discourse. I’m going to head off anything git gud-adjacent at the pass with two points:

1) I’ve already beaten Battletoads. Multiple Battletoadses. The NES one and this one. I am one of you! I still think this franchise sucks!

2) This version? For the Game Boy? Actually pretty damn easy by comparison, barring some bits at the very end that you could just slam your continues into if you really needed. Hell, there’s an entire section in the back half where you just run from a boulder and are in basically no danger if you know what’s coming up.

A game being challenging is a perfectly fine thing! What it isn’t is inherently virtuous. I fully understand that completing these games is a satisfying feat that comes with a side of bragging rights among those in the know, but that doesn’t make up for the game being so much worse than its contemporaries to actually play, as far as I’m concerned. Fuck the skin condition toad trio and the jet skis they rode in on. I’m glad their parents are too busy with Sea of Thieves to play with them anymore.

2/5

01/08/2026
Motocross Maniacs (1989)

Extremely funny that Konami eventually redistributed this as just “Bikers” years later. Guess the Overton Window of what qualifies as “mania” shifted from the 80s to the 90s.

This game is basically Trials’ dad, only the courses are entirely designed around using bursts of nitro to make jumps. On a design level there is something fascinating about creating what’s essentially a platformer where hops are a limited consumable. Where do you add more? How many? How far should you be able to get without them? Do you demand perfection, or make it more of a speed game with emphasis on creative solutions and routing?

Konami answered all of those in the following ways:

Q: Where do you add Nitro?

A: Almost exclusively in locations that require Nitro to reach.

Q: How many?

A: Enough.

Q: How far should you be able to get without them?

A: There will be a ramp on every level that is impassible without use of Nitro.

Q: Perfection or creativity?

A: Get the fuck out of our office.

3/5

01/07/2026
Mario Tennis (2000)
Look – I hear you. The Game Boy/GBC had so many excellent RPGs, yet my list thus far has been devoid of any. Don’t worry! I got you! First RPG down, and it’s one of the best on the system. Classic single party member ala Dragon Quest I, even! Just a bit of an unconventional battle system is all.

My history with Mario Tennis is involved but not especially complex. I played the 64 version to death, always heard this was great, and never tried it until now. Every MT entry after the year 2000 was worse. Shame, that. Camelot, on the other hand, I have plenty of experience with, and I don’t just mean their iffier sports entries. Consider how confident they had to be to make both versions of Mario Tennis only to barely feature any Nintendo properties in one of them! That confidence is earned. Oh my god did they earn it.

As an aside, one of my weaknesses as a reviewer is that I’m better at taking things apart than building them up. It’s easier to praise a game when you have criticisms to use as a springboard, you know? This review will likely be a bit weaker written than some of my others for this project because, spoilers, I barely have anything negative to contrast the positives with. The best I can do is note that I don’t like the font choices, or more specifically the shadows behind them, on a tiny Game Boy screen. I also find myself missing the ridiculously crunchy serve sounds from the 64 version; I swear hitting a Nice! serve in that sounds like a horse chomping into an apple. The Game Boy can’t really do that! These things don’t matter much, not really. The closest thing to a genuine issue is how the game handles leveling/stats, but I’ll talk about that later.

This game has some of the best spritework on the entire GBC. The sprites would have been top notch on the Neo Geo Pocket Color, but they’re here! On the god damned Game Boy! Every player sprite is incredibly expressive, chock full of characterful details, to the point where they’re entertaining just to see in motion. Combine that with the smooth scrolling of the court in play and little to none of the fake 3D depth issues thanks to the immaculate spriting and lack of slowdown, and you’ve got genuinely excellent handheld tennis.

Any game with Motoi Sakuraba music is going to be a joy for the ears and this is no exception. So many quality jams. This version’s rendition of Break Point is simpler but still gives me chills, especially when the rally goes long. Rare is the game that gives you your own boss music, but Camelot was operating on an entirely different level. Music that makes you want to black out and spike the ball directly into a child’s schnoz. Powerful stuff.

God this game’s tennis plays so well, too. Almost everything I internalized from years of the 64 game was immediately transferable. You can steal so many points with an angled serve, drop shot, and crosscourt shot combo. Admittedly that’s true in real life too! What surprised me most in the gameplay itself isn’t its quality, it’s how different the opponents manage to feel. They nearly feel adaptive, even though I know that’s likely not the case. The way they shift to an easier center serve after hitting a fault or start running to the baseline more after getting schooled at the net feels more convincingly Tennis-y than some sim games I’ve played.

The RPG elements are light but certainly felt. Speed ends up being the key stat because you always need to cover the court, but you will need another specialty to close out the tournament arc. Each level lets you boost one of the four areas of your game, but they often come at the expense of others, leading to some awkward break points where you’ll be more interested in what does the least harm VS boosting what you actually want. It’s not perfect, but it is interesting and forces you to adapt to your weaknesses rather than grind them all to dust. Levels don’t come the quickest from just playing matches, so after a few wins in the junior league I entered the Hyperballic Tennis Chamber that is the training building and climbed some double digit # of levels by whacking the ball into a wall 200 times. I made my PC a speed demon with a downright devious net game and my doubles partner became a nuclear gorilla who could barely move, but could plant the ball anywhere on the court at Mach 3. Not that I played much for doubles, mind. I will generally avoid having 3/4 of the game’s participants be bots if I can help it.

In terms of escalation it goes intro, team rank/promotion arc, tournament arc, and The Post-Credits Introduction and Subsequent Destruction of Super Freakin’ Mario. Despite characters being chatty and full of personality there really isn’t much plot to speak of. I’m fine with that, to be clear! I suspect I wouldn’t be a huge fan of there being even more talking between matches. Some folks have complained about said matches being too long, which is a funny way to say you just don’t like Tennis. I do, which means I want to play the titular sport, and Camelot understood that they couldn’t have both words in the title be disingenuous.

I do kinda love the Mario Section though. Spoilers? I guess? Do we really care? Have a courtesy warning, but I will think a smidge less of you if this is a legitimate cutoff.

After the award ceremony ends and credits roll you find yourself back at the academy standing in the headmaster’s office. Out of absolutely nowhere he informs you of the following facts:
- Mario exists in this setting. He has been offscreen, watching from the shadows the entire time.
- Mario is the single greatest tennis player to ever do it.
- Mario has taken an interest in you specifically, because your defenses are impregnable and your style is impetuous.
- You must take a flight to Peach’s Castle immediately. The headmaster will not take No for an answer. I tried.
Once you arrive it immediately becomes clear that you’re out of your depth. There is some kind of political situation going on, and I don’t mean the kind where the video game has women in it. The room has been split into factions, good and evil specifically, and the latter is absolutely intent on having your character play and defeat Mario on the court upon arrival as they haven’t managed to. Bizarrely, the imperial side informs the villains that Mario actually just invited your character there to chill post-tournament, which…isn’t true? As far as we know? This is clearly an attempt at deescalation, truth be damned.

Anyway. The brothers Wa and Bowser insist that you do battle on their behalf. I accepted, of course, because I know where my loywalties lie. Mario was destroyed in straight sets and it wasn’t particularly close. The game ends abruptly afterwards, presumably due to committing the equivalent of a tennis-themed Franz Ferdinand assassination. My love of the game transcends my general aversion to causing international incidents. Obey Wario. Destroy Mario.

4.5/5
01/07/2026
Galaga: Destination Earth (2000)

Hey, quick question for Pipe Dream Interactive: why? Why this? Why any of this? Galaga is basically a perfect video game, why would you do this to it? Hasbro was going to approve whatever you turned over, that much was clear, but have you no pride? Failing that, no shame?

This is a godawful Space Invaders game with a spotty Galaga coat of paint. If it wasn’t for the tractor beams and double ships it would be unrecognizable as Galaga. It’s a horizontal scroller for some reason so you can’t see all the enemies at once, there’s a mild amount of sprite jitter only when it can do the most harm, the technicolor background jpgs look like shit and are so visually busy that they make it hard to see the bullets, and every time you finish a wave it does a stop/start transition that makes the whole thing just feel awful.

It’s not even satisfying once you adapt to how rickety it is! If you get a double ship it’s a breeze, if you’re down to a single it’s a Sisyphus reenactment on crutches, and either way you’re going to want to fling yourself down that hill. There’s just no fun to be had here beyond poking fun at its ugly-ass menus and stage transitions. I’m sorry I said Backloggd users don’t actually play games, alright? Y’all got this right on the money, this sucks ass.

1.5/5

01/07/2026
Armorines: Project S.W.A.R.M. (1999)

1.7? One-point-seven average score on Backloggd, and that’s after my rating??? Do we not actually play the video games we rate on there? When Mario kills a thousand turtles it’s “cute” and “peak” and “formative game design”, but when Acclaim/NEON has you shoot a couple dozen it sucks? Boris Triebel was the director on this, did you think one of the creators of P. P. Hammer and His Pneumatic Weapon suddenly forgot how to make a damn video game?

A terrible opinion that I earnestly, sincerely hold is that Acclaim was overall a good publisher. Good, not great, but good! Sure they were a license farm for the most part and stuff like Chef’s Luv Shack is indefensible, but a lot of their output represented better attempts at adaptation than most in their heyday could manage. Armorines, though, may as well had been one of their original IPs for all it mattered. Even Valiant doesn’t consider Armorines worth remembering; you have to hit up the Wayback Machine to see it acknowledged on any of their sites. These people want you to remember Bloodshot and they can barely be bothered to add this to their long-ass list?

Anyway, Acclaim realized the Armorines squabbling with their handlers in D.C. wasn’t going to make for much of a video game and opted to just make Dollar Store Satire-Free Starship Troopers for the 3D consoles. The GBC game developed by NEON took the same tack, but turns it into a top down shooter that’s far better than most on the system. The criticisms I’ve seen of it are that it’s easy to get lost, is annoyingly hard, looks ugly, and repeats itself. I’m here to tell you that exactly one of those is true.

Armorines GBC sees you playing as an exterminator named Sgt. Snider having a terrible, horrible, no good, very bad day. The escalation of said day is fairly gradual and your power scales to match. At the start of the game you’re using a glorified bug zapper, weak and limited in range. The enemies are similarly tiny, both in size and number. Not the best first impression! Fortunately you get guns fairly quickly, the enemies get more dangerous, and the reasons to complain start to fade. You even get to destroy a few oil derricks midway through! Armorines confirmed based!

Your inputs are movement, A to shoot with free aim while moving, and B to shoot while strafing. Being able to swap between both is a godsend as several rooms demand that flexibility, though for whatever reason you can’t strafe while aiming diagonally. The last button of note, select, pulls up a reminder of your current objective in case you took a bit too long of a break. Nifty! It’s a simple control scheme without any kind of movement tricks and the gameplay is built around that, opting to gradually increase the difficulty of its combat encounters rather than do too much with level hazards until the late game. There’s even a nice QoL touch where enemies announce their awareness of you with various squawks, even when entirely offscreen, so you almost always get a heads up before things get spicy.

Environmental interactables only require you to walk into them, so you’re unlikely to miss important items or objectives. This is further assisted by a color palette that makes good use of the GBC, meaning it’s the polar opposite of its 3D counterpart, which loves nothing more than dumping you into the darkest bug-filled caves this side of an Earth Defense Force game. It’s surprisingly easy to parse for a Game Boy game, and I never found myself unsure of how to progress with one exception in the second to last area, which was only because I needed to walk up a cliff and just kind of assumed I couldn’t because it was the same color as the walls. Look, I’m dumb as hell and got through this, you can do it too.

Odds are if you’re on this website you won’t struggle either. Armorines is honestly pretty easy past like, level 2. I didn’t lose a life until I touched an instant death trap in the last area, and was shocked when the game informed me that I had 11 more banked that I ended up not needing. Health pickups are generous, enemy placements are fair, their respawns are nonexistent for the first 3/4 of the game (in a nice touch they wait until there’s a thematic justification for doing so), and your weapons get crazy powerful by the end. I was a particularly big fan of the short ranged plasma gun and the laser, and the game likes to hand you special weapons for boss encounters so you’ll never be stuck with something that doesn’t work. The greatest sin this game commits in terms of its gameplay is having a fairly weak spread gun, but you’ll make do. My only piece of advice is to break out the Ghouls & Ghosts tactics and skip picking up the lightning gun whenever it shows up, that thing never gets meaningfully better.

The only notable criticism I have for this is fairly obvious – all you’re ever really doing is moving through levels and shooting guys to secure the prize. I’d be more annoyed if the areas weren’t varied or if the game wasn’t so short. We’re talking a couple hours tops here, and while they aren’t amazing or anything they’re hardly dull unless you just don’t like the gameplay in its own right. If this came out on the NES it’d be heralded as a “hidden gem” on every retro YouTube channel, but instead it was a Game Boy game with an Acclaim logo, which means it can’t possibly be good, right guys? Like and subscribe so you won’t miss when your next opinion arrives!

I will always advocate for playing games past the first level. First impressions aren’t everything, especially when you’re sampling seemingly-infinite roms for games that were meant to be stuck with, not taste-tested back to back. I just wanted to play an action game a bit better than Annihilator – imagine my shock when I was actually having fun! There’s a very real chance this is the best piece of Armorines media that’s ever existed, and you know now that I say that, maybe Valiant was right to chuck it into the memory hole.

…seriously though, Acclaim released some of the best games of the era. All the Turoks are good, even Rage Wars, and Shadow Man is better than Ocarina! I’m not afraid to say it! Fuck you, nostalgia police! Re-Volt is better than Mario Kart 64! I liked Iggy’s Reckin’ Balls! Get your hands off me, you pigs! Just wait until I tell you how South Park Rally isn’t even a bad game! AIIIIIIIEEEE!

3.5/5

01/07/2026