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Battletoads

NES · Any% · 1991

Current WR
14:37
First Known Run
~22:00

Battletoads is among the most notorious NES games for its difficulty, and its speedrun demands frame-perfect inputs through the Turbo Tunnel and Clinger Winger stages that eliminate even experienced runners.

Battletoads' speedrun is as famous for its failure rate as for its times. The Turbo Tunnel — Stage 3, the game's most notorious obstacle — requires memorisation and frame-perfect reaction to a series of walls at escalating speed. Even top runners fail it regularly in live runs. The Clinger Winger stage in the game's second half and the final boss add further near-frame-perfect requirements. Speedrunners use a warp in Stage 1 discovered in the early 2010s that bypasses three stages, and the Battletoads run is unusually routing-stable — there are relatively few glitches, meaning improvement comes from tighter execution of a set route. The game's reputation for difficulty means completed runs are relatively rare even in competition.

Famous Techniques:
  • Stage 1 Warp — using a specific hit-stun on the first boss to trigger a warp that skips Stages 2 through 4
  • Turbo Tunnel Memorisation — all walls in the Turbo Tunnel follow a fixed pattern; top runners execute it from pure muscle memory at the run's required pace
  • Enemy Phase Manipulation — hitting mid-level enemies in specific orders to advance to the next wave without completing the full wave
  • Rat Race Boost — using enemy knockback in Stage 5 to gain speed through sections requiring precise platform landing
Notable Runners:
  • Psychomaniac14 — world-record holder whose execution of the Turbo Tunnel and Clinger Winger at near-frame-perfect consistency has defined the category
  • Lord Tom — former record holder and routing pioneer who established the Stage 1 warp as the foundation of modern runs
  • aGameScout — prominent runner and content creator whose public runs introduced Battletoads speedrunning to a wider mainstream audience
Key Facts:
  • The Turbo Tunnel has a near-100% run-kill rate among non-specialists; even dedicated runners fail it in a significant percentage of live attempts
  • Battletoads has an unusual property in that it was never popularised at Awesome Games Done Quick until runners had near-complete consistency
  • The warp in Stage 1 was not discovered until over twenty years after the game's release, cutting the route significantly
  • Two-player co-op runs are a separate category due to the game's notorious tendency to let one player accidentally kill the other with large attack animations