Battletoads was developed by Rare and published by Tradewest, designed by Tim and Chris Stamper with a soundtrack by David Wise, and built with the explicit goal of giving Rare its own answer to the era’s Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles craze. It released on the NES in North America and Japan in June 1991, arriving late in the console’s commercial life and standing out at the time as one of the most technically advanced-looking games ever squeezed out of the aging 8-bit hardware. Players control mutant toad heroes Rash, Zitz, and Pimple as they fight through a wildly varied set of stages, from straightforward side-scrolling beat ’em up brawling to high-speed hoverbike chases and platforming gauntlets, using cartoonishly exaggerated giant-fist attacks against the alien Dark Queen’s forces. Battletoads is now remembered as much for its brutal, borderline-unfair difficulty as for its inventive design, regularly cited among the hardest games ever made, with only quick reflexes, memorization, and a handful of hidden warp points offering any real relief for players trying to see it through to the end.