Toxic Crusaders (Genesis) Playthrough - NintendoComplete
192A playthrough of Sega's 1992 license-based beat 'em up for the Sega Genesis, Toxic Crusaders.
Played through as NoZone on the medium difficulty level.
The Toxic Crusaders, a belt-scrolling brawler produced as a collaborative effort between Sega of America and Infogrames, was a US-exclusive release that was based on the kid's cartoon of the same name.
You can tackle the problems of Tromaville alone or in two-player co-operative play, and you are given your pick of Toxie, the neon-green janitor with severe facial deformities; NoZone, the blue guy with a massive schnozz and a wheel for a leg; and Junkyard, a half-dog/half-man that specializes in licking things until they've died.
If you ever loved the show or the toy figures, the heroes and their enemies should be pretty familiar. As odd as it is to have a kid's cartoon based on a series of schlocky, low-budget, and (very) R-rated films, the spin-off cartoon series had a lot of potential. It was funny and pretty creative, the action figures were sweet, and the Bandai games for the Game Boy and the NES were fun, serviceable titles. You can check out the NES game here: https://youtu.be/a6fWWROPSN4
But to be completely blunt, this Sega Genesis title does the franchise no favors whatsoever. The biggest issue is that the game is obviously not finished. The controls are sloppy and loose, and it's far too easy to send yourself flying straight into insta-kill hazards that you didn't even see. Compounding the problem is the erratic collision detection - your attacks will often miss despite visible contact being clearly made (especially while in vehicles!), but of course, the enemies can consistently hit you without any such problems. The game isn't difficult, though: the endless stream of power-ups it provides feels like a tacit admission that the developers knew just how broken the gameplay was. They just couldn't be bothered to fix it.
There's also no clear rhyme or reason to the stage progression or the backdrop themes, the text shown in the cutscenes only applies to Toxie despite being used for all three characters, and the game comes to an abrupt end with no sense of fanfare or resolution - there's barely an ending at all to speak of.
If you've ever played the Fantasia game (https://youtu.be/Ctc7i3Y9PPs ), some of these issues might sound awfully familiar to you. That's not a coincidence. Both titles were developed largely by Infogrames and published by Sega of America. Given that a mere fifteen months separate the two releases, it's not hard to see that quality was not among either companies' priorities. And seriously, if they couldn't be bothered to handle a Disney property like Fantasia with respect, what chance did Toxic Crusaders ever really have in their hands? Genesis beat 'em ups don't get much worse than this.
If you want to play a Toxic Crusaders game, grab yourself a copy of the NES cart instead of this mess. You'll have much, much more fun with it. I promise.
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No cheats were used during the recording of this video.
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