Game:

Battletoads Arcade (1994)

Duration: 8:34

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12

This level is a MONSTER! There are so many waves of rats and they do a ton of damage on this difficulty. Fortunately, they are rather generous with health refills so I can afford to get hit once or twice. As you can imagine, this video isn't perfect, but it shows the general ideas for most of these waves. My grouping failed in a few spots, so I had to do a lot of damage control, but I expect this is how it'll look in attempts.

This stage introduces a new enemy: the giant rat. They have an actual name but I don't remember it. Giblet maybe? Anyways, there are three colors of them in this stage, each one getting progressively more aggressive and with more health. They counterattack with a kick after every 2 hits, but I found a really clever loop with Pimple and Rash that abuses this (seen here). Basic smash attacks (headbutt and anvil) do "1 damage" and the nutgrab+smash does "3 damage". The rats have the following health (in multiples of "anvil damage"):

Purple: 8
Orange: 16
Dark purple: 24

The goal is to bring them to 3 health and then finish them with the nutgrab. I use this basic loop on them until then because it is completely safe and very very fast. It also works on pairs of giant rats, which is critical because they can very quickly kill you if you let them move. Using the stick is PERFECT for initiating the loop because I can force them both into counterattacking and then I have an easy startup while they're grouped and kicking.

There are a lot of really tricky things in other parts of this level, but the only wave I really care to mention is the green+pink gas mask rats on the bridge. For some reason, if you throw a green rat into a pink rat as it is spawning, he does weird stuff. Usually he either disappears or falls through the floor, but in some cases (seen here!) he'll do some weird screenwrap nonsense and appear to the left. I don't understand it really. It is fastest to use two throws and instantly kill the pink rats, but if one screenwraps then I can be put in a dangerous situation.

The boss of this stage is pretty simple except for that third phase. I can safely loop phases 1, 2, and 4, but the 3rd phase has this really weird counterattack that I simply cannot predict. Sometimes he is just not recoiled from my attacks and he will just kick me straight away. Other times I can smash him with the stick, kick stuff at him, and hit him however I like. Losing an entire health bar to him is EXTREMELY rare, but it is not uncommon to get kicked once during that fight. I can recover a bit of health in stage 4 before it is a problem, but ending with 1 health would pretty much end the run.

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