Toxic Crusaders (NES) Playthrough - NintendoComplete

A playthrough of Bandai's 1992 license-based beat 'em up game for the NES, Toxic Crusaders.

Toxie, made "kid friendly" in this game based on the cartoon that was surprisingly based loosely on his ultra-violent B-movie Troma days as the Toxic Avenger, is thoroughly mediocre, but still quite entertaining in short spats.

It desperately tries to mimic the style of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles games with its shallow array of attacks, the super-bright graphics, and the endless stream of cloned enemies that flood the screen in waves.

Of course, it's nowhere near as good as TMNT 2 or 3, but usually it plays well enough to do its job. The fighting consists of little but punching or swinging your mop (which drops a level every time you get hit!) at the bad guys, and making sure that you are never lined up horizontally with your enemies. If you forget that rule, you're guaranteed to catch something in the face when you least expect it. The game is fairly easy, though the balance goes totally haywire with a few of the bosses thanks to the lousy collision detection and the awkwardness of having to use the select button for your strong attack move. It keeps itself simple enough that these things usually aren't too much of a problem, but a few of those bosses will have you spitting nails.

I'm looking at you, Geiger-esque submarine boss.

The graphics are okay, though they aren't anything too special for a 1992 NES release. They look similar to some of Bandai's/TOSE's other later-gen NES releases, featuring the same gritty, garishly-colored graphics we saw in games like Frankenstein and Demon Sword. They sorely lack in detail and animation in comparison to its contemporaries like TMNT 3: The Manhattan Project, released in the US just two months ahead of Toxic Crusaders.

Still, the game manages to have a fun bit of personality, the cinematic scenes look pretty nice, and most of the game is tame enough in its difficulty that you can sit back and have some fun with it. It's only when you're making a serious bid to beat it will it having you occasionally throwing a controller.

But given how many terrible license-based games the NES had, and especially considering what a terrible (or awesome) license it was based on, it's nothing less than amazing to see how not terrible Toxic Crusaders truly is. It's not great, but I'll gladly play this over Attack of the Killer Tomatoes or Batman Meets Radioactive Man any day.
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No cheats were used during the recording of this video.

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