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Battletoads (https://www.vgmaps.com/Atlas/NES/index.htm#Battletoads)
For this month's "Maps Of The Month" featurette, I wish to draw your attention to TerraEsperZ's Battletoads (NES) maps.
Ah, Battletoads. Rare's answer to the TMNT craze. Zitz and Rash, two of the three Battletoads, must rescue Princess Angelica and their teammate Pimple from the evil Dark Queen. That's a good enough reason for some amphibian action!
...Make that aggravating action. Some NES games are well-remembered for being quite difficult, and undoubtedly Battletoads is one of the most infamous in that regard. There are over a dozen stages, but I'm pretty sure very few people can get past the third stage. And that's a shame. The stages are quite varied; there's some platforming, rappelling, racing, surfing, riding on the backs of giant snakes, and a high-speed gravity-defying unicycle chase with a hypno-ball-thing on your tail. This game has it all! If you've never seen all of this game (as I imagine most people haven't) and its awesome graphics (the usual bright neon colours found in many Rare-developed NES games are actually well-balanced here), you can see for yourself here on VGMaps.com and save yourself the trouble of mastering the Turbo Tunnel. Check out the labyrinthine Terra Tubes - no doubt one of TerraEsperZ's favourite stages based on name alone.
I almost didn't want to honour TerraEsperZ again, after all, this is his eighth recognition in as many years. But I could not ignore the awesomeness of the animated "The Revolution" stage. We have a few other animated maps on this site, but none with the size and complexity as the penultimate stage of Battletoads. Absolutely mesmerizing. Sorry, that friend of a friend of yours, the only guy you know of that's claimed to have beat Battletoads, has got nothing on TerraEsperZ, who's mapped every angle of the Dark Queen's rotating tower.
So to recognize the difficulty put into mapping this infamously difficult game, TerraEsperZ's Battletoads (NES) maps will be known as VGMaps.com's Maps Of The Month for September 2011.