Battletoads/YMMV

Battletoads -- the Video Game series

Awesome Music: The pause music. In fact, any song in Battletoads is made of win.
Breather Level: Not that the final level, "The Revolution", is easy at all, but compared to its predecessor, "Clinger-Winger"...
- Much like its "Turbo Tunnel" predecessor, "Clinger-Winger" isn't too difficult once you get a knack for it. While the final third of "Rat Race" is extremely difficult with even less margin for error and "The Revolution" is going to be arduous no matter what.
- Inverted with 2 player mode in PAL version (in which both players can beat "Clinger-Winger" and continue the game) - in that case, "The Revolution" becomes the hardest level.
- "Surf City" is pretty easy compared to the "Turbo Tunnel" and "Ice Caverns" levels before it.
Critical Research Failure: Out of all of Double Dragon's cast, only the Lee Brothers, Abobo and Linda resemble their source material, but Abobo shaved off his Badass Mustache for this outing.
Demonic Spiders: In the NES version of the first game, pretty much any enemy that can kill you in one hit.
- The sharks in "Terra Tubes". They chase you constantly, can knock you into spikes or kill you in three bites, and can only be killed after an insane amount of hits.
Even Better Sequel: The SNES title, Battletoads in Battlemaniacs, is a big improvement over the first game. Featuring more balanced difficulty, better controls, an amazing soundtrack and, best of all, the ability to turn the "friendly fire" option off. Sadly, not as many people remember this entry.
- The arcade game a.k.a Super Battletoads is often considered better than the games on the consoles due to easier (though more challenging enemies) difficulty, abandoning the gimmicky platforming or racing stages, and for having all three toads playable in the same game and not one of them be captured (other than Battletoads & Double Dragon). Not to mention they look and play differently enough from each other. The only downside is that you don't fight the Dark Queen in this title, and Robo-Manus is the final boss instead, similarly to the first Gameboy game.
Evil Is Sexy: The Dark Queen.
Fan Yay: Mostly Big Blag, who appears in gay fanart every now and then.
First Installment Wins: The NES version is the one that everyone remembers despite various rereleases later as well as sequels, and it represents the franchise in Rare Replay.
Growing the Beard: The arcade game amped up the violence while doing away with the nerve-wracking obstacle course levels. It's definitely worth a few of your quarters should you ever stumble across a cabinet.
Memetic Mutation: "Is this Battletoads?"
- "No, it's Doom 3."
- When someone on 4Chan asks for the name of an anime, the common response is a combination of Boku no Pico, Bible Black and Battletoads, leading to such titles as Boku no Bibletoads.
- Would Game Stop happen to have a copy of Battletoads?
  - Ascended Meme: In Rare Replay, the achievement for playing Battletoads for the first time is "Do You Have Battletoads?".
  - At GameStops promoting Rare Replay, employees wore buttons reading "Ask me about Battletoads". The pre-release box art for the collection also consisted of just the Battletoads logo.
- Fighting Frogs, Combat Amphibians.
Polished Port: The Genesis version. Among the improvements: the graphics are more colorful, the music is better (sounding more rock-inspired than the NES), there are some bug fixes, and most importantly, the game is more forgiving than the NES version, particularly in the levels "Turbo Tunnel" and "Volkmire's Inferno".
Porting Disaster:
- The Amiga version and its CD 32 offshot, though the remixed music of the latter is pretty kicking'.
- Some fans said this was the case with the Rare Replay version of the arcade game in regards to the sound emulation, as all of the game's audio plays at a higher pitch. The issue was since been remedied with a patch.
That One Boss: Since Karnath of the Arcade version can kill you in one-hit, you'd better hope that you're quick enough to dodge his nasty bite or else you'll be out several dollars worth of quarters.
That One Level: Nearly every single level, but several levels particularly stand out:
- The most infamous level is the "Turbo Tunnel", the third stage of the game, which is when the difficulty goes through the roof for the first time. You ride on a hoverbike, with walls and enemies heading towards you. At first it's pretty reasonable; the difficulty curve doesn't try to actively kill you until after the second checkpoint. What gets most people is when they place several short double walls in succession, as they require consistently timed jumps, or the section near the end with a bunch of high single walls, as it requires a delicate rhythm to weave through. Of course, once you finally manage to get through it, some of the later stages turn out to be be even harder.
- Level 6: "Karnath's Lair", otherwise known as the snake pit. Giant snakes come out of the tunnels in the level, and you need them to climb to the top of each portion of the stage to advance. It becomes stupidly hard, even with a Guide Dang It because in the later segments you must drop from one snake to the next, and it must be timed perfectly or you will miss the next snake and land on Spikes of Doom. Also, good luck on the fourth room. The Genesis version is arguably even worse, mostly due to malicious changes in the physics that make your foundation to stand on disappear faster, as well as a newly installed glass ceiling in the fourth section that forces you to take the long way to the exit. Thank God the second room has a megawarp, which will also allow you to skip...
- Level 9: "Terra Tubes". It's one of the longest stages in the game, and it's full of nasty instakill traps (spikes, wheels, robots that explode if you try to get past them, and duckies).
- Level 10: "Rat Race". The first two aren't that bad by Battletoads standards, but the third race is an extreme endurance test. You race a rat named Scuzz, whose pattern is running straight until he hits a wall, and then turning around. The problem with the third race is that most of it consists of beams whose openings are at the other end, then falling down to another beam with its opening at the opposite end. Since Scuzz runs faster and falls faster than you, your only bet is to headbutt him on every beam so you can push him up a little and prevent him from falling. The problem is, this requires consistent timing, and you're expected to do this nearly 10 times in a row! There are only two sections of this race where it's a zigzag of falling, giving you a chance to catch up. And even then, the second one is very short. The only way to avoid this is to exploit a Good Bad Bug mentioned above. Worse still, you have to fight General Slaughter at the end of the whole mess, and he means buisness, to say the least.
Visual Effects of Awesome: The rotation effect on the Dark Queen's Tower looks amazing by NES standards.

Battletoads -- The animated series that never made it past pilot.

Les Yay: Some viewers found a strong homoerotic subtext the scene where the Dark Queen grabs Princess Angelica, who tries to tries to push her away even though the Dark Queen is grabbing her closer.
They Just Didn't Care