Bandai Toxic Crusaders -Nintendo NES
Retro Gaming Review

Rating:

If you're familiar with Troma and the Toxic Avenger series of movies then you probably know what to expect from a video game based on Toxie. For the uninitiated, Troma is a film company headed by Lloyd Kaufman who creates absurdly horrific movies that still bring a smile and frequent chuckle. He's a unique filmmaker to say the least. We adore his work!

The popularity of his ultra-violent (and hysterical) films led to a children's cartoon called Toxic Crusaders in 1991 and the NES video game in 1992 of the same name. Toxic Crusaders is a side scrolling beat-em-up game where you play as Toxie (the Toxic Avenger) and avoid dangers as you pummel on coming enemies.

Toxic Crusaders Story Arc

The Island City Chemical Plant isn't a very safety conscience organization. Often they leave 50-gallon drums of toxic waste lying around. Unfortunately for Melvin Junko, their carelessness combined with his his awkwardness, led him to fall into a toxic vat of Grossolium 90. This sounds like a fairly horrible accident, but at least Melvin was no longer a nerdy kid. In fact he mutated into Toxie, a hideously deformed creature of super-human strength and size.

Melvin is not alone and all is not lost. He teams up with Major Disaster, Nozone, Headbanger and Junkyard to form the Toxic Crusaders. They are committed to saving Tromaville and the entire country from the pollution of Dr. Killemoff and his Radiation Rangers. This won't be an easy mop-up assignment, but the Toxic Crusaders will clean-sweep all the grime. It's time to clean up!

Toxie's girlfriend Yvonne and the other Toxic Crusaders have been have been taken prisoner by the evil Dr. Killemoff. Your mission is to free them and defeat the Doctor of slime and grime.

Toxic Crusaders Game Play

You must battle through 6 levels, defeating a Henchman(boss) to complete each level. Armed with a fairly useless mop (true to the movie character) you head out to mop up slime and dole out beatings.

You begin with 3 lives and a health meter with 8 stages - losing all 8 stages results in loss of life. Oddly, lives are called "Chances" in the game. So, you begin with 2 Chances (lives) to save the world. Similar to many 2D side-scrollers of the era, Toxie moves up and down the screen to vaguely simulate depth. He can also move left or right as enemies will sometimes sneak up from behind. The buttons allow you to jump over obstacles and punch.

In addition to health and lives, you have a mop meter and begin the game with 3 mops. You'll encounter various power-ups that will boost your health and/or mop count. The mop is his strongest weapon and has 3 levels ranging from a wet mop to the face to the mop shooting projectiles and finally it can be thrown with a boomerang return effect. When Toxie has no mop power, he must resort to his fists.

As you progress, each level has a boss who must be defeated to release another member of the Toxic Crusaders team. The levels are:
1-Tromaville, 2-Tromaville High School, 3-Tromaville Factory, 4-Tromaville Highway, 5-Tromaville Sewer and 6-Island City.

Lloyd Kaufman's Troma team has made many films yet they are not invited to film festivals. In true Troma style, Kaufman and company invade film festivals putting on impromptu performances anywhere they happen to be. I can't say this video game properly captures their irreverence, but if yo like Troma films, you'll get a kick out of this game. If you haven't experienced a Troma film... you really should! :)

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