#30. Battletoads (NES)
This game is a great example of near perfect level design and creativity. For me, it started a love affair with Rare that lasted until the N64 days.
There's only 12 stages, not one of them like the others, there is always something new coming your way: rats you kick the crap out of, birds trying to cut your rope, high speed racing while dodging fast incoming walls, slippery slopes, whirlpools, riding giants snakes, flying a plane through fire and lightning, fighting a trigger happy robot, getting savagely beaten by very nasty ducks, racing a rat to be the first to kick a bomb, being pursued by a giant ball with on a unicycle and finally climbing up a huge tower to get to the final fight with the Dark Queen.
This could be achieved relatively quickly if it wasn't for the fact that the game is completely unforgiving and very very hard. You die quite easily in Battletoads, spikes, flames, high speed collisions, deadly pits, a boss jumping on your head all of those things kill you instantly. It is because of that high difficulty that it took several years before I was able to successfully get through the game (without using any warp zones) and I've only managed to do it once.
Thanks to the great diversity in the level design, I never got tired of playing that game no matter how often I was sent back to the title screen.
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