While Dave was making his notable list of best games ever, he and I were talking about the relative difficulty of NetHack and Battletoads. I maintained that Battletoads was way harder while he favored NetHack.

In my corner is the fact that he has beaten (or ascended) NetHack I think nine times now. Neither of us has beaten Battletoads despite a memorable shared attempt to do so, using an emulator with save states. Battletoads’ Wikipedia entry has a section dedicated to its infamous difficulty, for goodness sake.

In fairness, NetHack is also damn unforgiving and arguably more demoralizing. But we decided to settle this like men with a Google Fight. We figured “I beat NetHack” vs “I beat Battletoads” would be reasonable, though there are a couple ways to talk about beating NetHack, including the word ascending.

“I beat NetHack” vs “I beat Battletoads”: 19 vs 189

Ouch. At Nick’s suggestion, I scaled the numbers, using “NetHack” vs “Battletoads” as a base. Didn’t help my cause a bit.

“NetHack” vs “Battletoads”: 1,930,000 vs 242,000

So, NetHack has a Mikix Softcore Rating (or MSR) of a mere 0.000985% while Battletoads ranks at 0.0781%. You win again, Dave.