Battletoads & Double Dragon

About Battletoads & Double Dragon

Battletoads & Double Dragon – The Ultimate Team (1993) is Rare's crossover beat 'em up in which the three Battletoads and Billy and Jimmy Lee storm the Dark Queen's spaceship Colossus.

Battletoads & Double Dragon in Depth

After her defeat, the Dark Queen fled to the outer reaches of the universe, but one day Earth's military is neutralised and the giant spaceship Colossus emerges from the Moon. She has allied with the Shadow Warriors of Double Dragon, so the Battletoads call in Billy and Jimmy Lee, and all five head for the Colossus. Its seven levels run from the ship's tail, corridors and base to an attack on it from outside in a small craft, where the game becomes a shooter as the Queen hurls asteroids, mines and UFOs; then the heroes board the missile hull in which she and the Shadow Boss escape, and fight each in turn.

It was the first Battletoads game with all three toads, Zitz, Pimple and Rash, playable, alongside the Lee brothers, and its engine and design come straight from Battletoads rather than Double Dragon. Players attack enemies, swing on ropes, fly spaceships and ride turbo bikes, and the toads have their usual exaggerated "Smash Hits", such as Kiss-My-Fist, Big Bad Foot, Nuclear Knuckles and the Battletoad Butt. There is a single-player mode, a two-player mode in which players can hit each other and one in which they cannot. As in Battletoads, there are only three continues and no passwords, and if one player loses all their lives both must restart the level.

Making Battletoads & Double Dragon

Rare developed it and Tradewest published it for the NES in 1993, with the 16-bit versions keeping identical play and two-button controls. Nintendo Power found its depth perception confusing but said "great action, graphics and theme" made it one of the year's strongest titles, better than Battletoads in Battlemaniacs, and nominated it for several 1993 Nintendo Power Awards, including Best Overall Game.