I tried... until I realized they shoot at you when you're trying to float upwards later

...also, trying to skip the 4th one cost me 15,000 points on my 738,150 run ><

I'm such a moron

Terra Tubes ruins everything......
 

Terra Tubes is where the game starts to reach Ghosts n Goblins level frustration for me. I hate those sharks and spikes.

All of the enemies in that level that are in the water make sure to try and be above them when attacking.
 

I couldn't believe how many times I was being knocked into spikes by the fish or accidentally swimming into spikes during the horrible run where I maxed out my score by Rat Race. I even blew it and died on the part with the copter at the end. Now that is a rage inducing death because it's so close to beating the stage.

 

After that last check point "never" go on until you kill that orange fish, it is just a frustration you don't want while that shark is hanging around as well.

 

Did you ever try killing that shark? Or is it simply best to smack it and run?

The sharks take a lot of hits

Anyways, here was my method for that part:

Single hop over the first spike
Stop in front of the second spike to observe the hammerhead
If he moves to the bottom, quickly swim over and past him. Or wait for him to swim somewhere above you and take your chances.
The shark should come at you from the upper-left, and then chase after you. If you're not going for low score I would swim up between the spikes and then wait for him to catch up and pound him. This may or may not lose him for the remainder
Swim around the gauntlet, if you're lucky the hammerhead is nowhere in sight, otherwise, roll the dice
Swim up the duck and either try to blow past him before he reaches the right side, or drop back down (right past the shark if he's chasing you, and then double-back up). The shark has a harder time hitting a vertical moving target

I wait until I get to the section right below the duck...if you are running from him every time he will always end up below you by then.

Just smack him down once and then go for it....even if you wait out the duck he will never have enough time to get back up to you.
 

I figured out that last part and it didn't take me too many tries this time. Back at Rat Race. Terra Tubes doesn't seem that bad now.

I think I have a new least favorite level. That third rat race really sucks. I can't get the hang of ramming him to slow him down. Time to study the Bootsy Beats for this stage.

I hope Clinger Winger is easier.
 

Okay, on my current run I got my first game over at the third rat race and I was at under 700k. I wish that had been my score for the low score contest.

I keep trying to beat that third rat and it seems hopeless. I'm going to learn how to do the glitch.

I'm going to beat this fucking game once and for all this summer, and then I'm going to retire it.

Fuck.

You.

Terra.

Tubes.

For the underwater gears, you can punch to stay in place as the gears pass over you.

After you can beat Terra Tubes, you're really going to hate the third rat race.

I'm trying to keep a positive attitude, but as you said the fact that Rat Race is next is really hard to look forward to lol. I'm doing really well racking up lives on my way to Terra Tubes, but I always get stuck somewhere. I need to start walking away while I still have lives and get fresh air, then continue. Not always easy depending on how much time I have to dedicate to the game, though  

Terra Tubes gets much easier with practice. Don't give up. There really isn't much to the stage. After the two underwater gears (which aren't that bad if you use the punching to stay in place trick), there's only one more short section, and you can keep grabbing the 1up until you've developed a strategy for that part as well.

Unfortunately there's no 1up you can keep grabbing in Rat Race so you'll want to get to the point where you have a lot of lives going into that stage to practice it. Battletoads is one headache after another.

I swear it's dumb luck for me when I get to the third gear on Terra Tubes; the water always throws me off and I panic   Sometimes I get really, really far into this level and have no idea of how I did so. The more I think about it, the worse my playing devolves during any given session. Bootsy's vids are invaluable.

Haha, that third gear killed me a bunch of times before I got the hang of it. You have to be very quick when jumping through the water and it sucks. Okay, on the third gear, right before the water, there's the part where the ground sort of looks like stairs. It's important that you quickly jump over the "stairs" with one big leap, and then keep jumping through the water as fast as you can. You'll always outrun the gear if you do that. If you're too slow on the "stairs", the gear will likely squash you. Try to master that section so that you can get to the underwater area in one life. Don't get hung up and waste lives on the early stuff.

 

I've sinced realized this since going back and studying Bootsy's vids   I used to just get dumb lucky and make it over the stairs in time, mashing A like a madman. The most aggravating part is getting a Game Over and having to grind back - which, even with warping, is a chore sometimes.

Booty's videos are great. I don't always use the same strategies as him, e.g. I think that it's better to stay close to the gates in the final section of Volkmire's because it makes it easier to line up your ship, but his videos have probably shaved off hours of trial and error in an incredibly tough game.

Oh, another thing about Volkmire's that Bootsy doesn't cover... You might already know this, but if you stay on the very bottom of the screen during the missiles, the ones that fly up can't hurt you. You only have to dodge the ones that fall down. But you have to stay at the very bottom.


 

If you hate the rat race now, wait until you do beat it and it glitches on you...

There are no words for that feeling

"On the level where you race the rat to diffuse the bomb, sometimes the game doesn't move you onto the stage boss when you boot the last bomb. This is unfortunate because there is no way out of this other than to reset. I had a theory that this glitch was caused by the game being confused as to who actually got to the bomb first when it's a "tie". One day, I saw what really happens to cause it. I was watching the rat drop down the floors as he normally does when he suddenly went right through the wall on the right side of the screen and disappeared! I could still hear the sound of him bumping around, but he was nowhere to be seen. When you boot the bomb, the rat is supposed to fall down and hit his head on the floor, which shakes the screen and causes you to fall down to where the boss is. But since the rat had disappeard, he couldn't fall, and he couldn't shake the screen, thus leaving the toad stranded at the end of the level. "

It makes me sick just reading that.

Does this usually only happen when it's a very close race?

Probably the best way to beat the stage is mastering killing the first rat so you never have to worry about getting glitched.

I would honestly not even bother with the glitch....rat race isn't that hard and as a rule of thumb if you don't knock him back on the last I-beam just let him beat you and you won't glitch.

Also if you beat the game with using the glitch I would say that was not beating the game.

 

This stage seems quite hard to me now. Soon enough this stage will seem easy and the next one will be the hard stage. That's how Battletoads goes.