Battletoads made its presence felt at Gamecom in Cologne, Germany, this year with a 4K demo available to attendees.
Battletoads was long rumored to be in development at Rare before being formally announced at E3 2018 that Rare and DLaLa Studios were indeed working on it. Then, at this year’s E3, gamers finally got a gameplay trailer in addition to a playable demo at E3 that featured much of the same content at Gamescom. However, the Gamescom event was the first time influencers and press were allowed to capture gameplay footage and share it with fans outside the show.
The eight minutes of gameplay highlights the three Battletoad brothers, Rash, Pimple, and Zitz, as they are on the hunt for a gang leader named Porkshank. The three trade one-liners as easily as they do fists with the enemies that fill the screen. They then finally catch up to Porky, and the expected boss battle ensues.
The side-scrolling, beat ‘em up action appears reminiscent of the same gameplay that made the franchise famous in the early 90s. Additions like mapping particular moves to individual buttons, and each toad featuring a wide variety of “morph” moves, look to deliver far more gameplay depth than what was had during the NES days. The new art design also looks great in 4K, as the cartoonish style really pops off the screen.
It’s also been confirmed that this new Battletoads will feature three-player couch co-op, and at least one hoverbike level, again harkening back to the franchise’s NES roots. Whether or not this new game will match the original’s infamous difficulty level is yet to be seen.
Even if it falls short of that lofty difficulty mark, fans of the series are likely just happy to see the Battletoads back in some form or another. If the new Battletoads hits its 2019 release window, it will have been 25 years since a standalone Battletoads game, Battletoads Arcade, was made available to the public. There were cameos made by the Battletoads in Shovel Knight as bosses, and Rash in Killer Instinct but if anything, it only whet the appetite of fans even more so to have a standalone entry in the series again.
Battletoads is slated to drop sometime in 2019 for PC and Xbox One.