Battletoads (Arcade)

This page details pre-release information and/or media for Battletoads (Arcade).

What the hell happened at Rare for the game to get released in the state it did?

GamePro Issue 42 (January 1993)#

Stage Order#

The magazine's text mentions the original intended level order, which doesn't match the final game's. Most notably:

• Dark Queen's Battleship was originally Stage 2, which makes way more sense to come after Stage 1 rather than the final game's odd placement of Christmas Grotto.
• Stage 3 was the cut Brain Chase level and it would've been followed by Cave Pit.
• Final Confrontation was not meant to be the final stage, it was going to be followed by a stage that was scrapped: it involved the players trying to find their way out of a maze while being chased by Robo-Manus.
• Dark Queen's Mansion was meant to be the last stage and was not only going to have the battle against Big Blag but also a rematch with Robo-Manus and lastly the Dark Queen, who very oddly is never fought against in the final game.

Screenshots#

Pre-release	Final

Due to the fact that it was originally after the cut Brain Chase level, the Cave Pit stage had a pink palette, giving it a fleshy look. The stage's organic elements remained in the final game, but the palette was changed to give it a cave-like look, presumably after Brain Chase was scrapped.

Pre-release	Final

Matching the old design of Cave Pit, the stage where originally Karnath was the boss, the boss area's floor had a different palette. The "abyss" where Karnath comes out was also originally red because it was meant to be blood, although the watery motion effect can still be seen with the final game's black palette.

As the caption next to this screenshot says, originally the game was meant to have mission briefing screens featuring Professor T. Bird, similar to the other games, but they were removed. T. Bird's sprite can still be found unused in the final game.

Internal Rare Images#

In 2015, lead designer Gregg Mayles posted an image from his archives on his Twitter account, which featured a screenshot of the cut Brain Chase level (which only has glitched graphics in the final game). He also gave some information in comments, mentioning that the level was to feature scaling effects such as different viewing distances and the sprites getting smaller.

Other#

This needs some investigation. Discuss ideas and findings on the talk page. Specifically: Find the source.

This screenshot shows a small glimpse at what the unused area for the cut Admiral Oink boss looked like, it can only be seen in the final game with glitched graphics.