Battletoads

THE BAD:
Very high difficulty level. Problems with graphic flickering at times.

SUMMARY:
A highly hyped NES game at it's release time, Battletoads took the popular Double Dragon gameplay engine and put in talking, fighting frogs in an outer space setting with a weird storyline behind it. Supposedly these 3 dudes, Zitz, Rash, & Pimple, were awesome gamers until one day their sim machine went haywire and warped them into another dimension, where they became frogs, and now they must defeat the evil Dark Queen if they're ever to become human again.
The graphics are decent with a good frame rate-important because sometimes the action moves at a blindingly fast pace! There are problems with flickering when many objects are close together, which becomes annoying because if often happens during fighting. Sounds & music are very good-there's a nice mix of music in each stage, the sound FX are right on target, but the pause sounds quickly become annoying. Controls are nice and responsive, although sometimes it's a little difficult to jump & attack at the same time, especially in areas where precision jumping is involved. Gameplay offers a good variety, split between side-scrolling & vertical scrolling fighting, plus you ride an assortment of vehicles like surfboards, high-speed hovercraft, even giant snakes! 1 or 2 people can play together, but what makes multiplayer more fun is you can actually fight your partner during the game, which adds to the fun. The game starts out easy but at Stage 3, the difficulty gets major cranked up due to the first of the high-speed areas. Some later stages have obstacles that aren't impossible to clear, but will feel like it because they're that dificult. Some enemies are also ridiculously cheap too, but their attack patterns are easy to pick up on.
If you can live with the ultra-high difficulty level, this is a fun and unique game with plenty of replay value. And it's somewhat satisfying to "accidentally" throw your friend/partner off a cliff or make them "Kiss Your Fist" for no good reason.