Battletoads Preorder

About Battletoads

Battletoads by Rare Ltd. was released for the Nintendo Entertainment System in 1991. A number of sequels were produced including Battlemaniacs, Battletoads & Double Dragon, and Super Battle Toads Arcade

Battletoads as a means of trolling

On 4Chan when someone posts a screen shot from a videogame, a common troll is to reply which the phrase, “Is this Battletoads?” According to Dramatica, this troll predates the Gamestop pranks.

Gamestop Preorder Pranks of 2007

On September 12-14th 2007, Anonymous targeted over 40 Gamestop stores making prank calls requesting preorders of Battletoads II, Battletoads for the Wii, and other odd requests.

There was even a “website:” http://battletoadspreorder.com/ with gave a number to call for information on the game. The number given was a randomly chosen Church of Scientology phone number.

According to this LiveJournal post the behavior spread to eBaum’s world and continued in some degree for at least a month.

April 16th, 2008, a hoax Battletoads Wii Preorder video was uploaded to Youtube.

A number of meme-heavy Battletoads hoax videos would be created over the course of the summer of 2008.

Node 3: a half-hearted attempt

On February 21st, 2009 a link entitled "Help NASA Name Node 3 “Battletoad” appeared on Digg.com’s front page. This would soon be overshadowed first by a wave of fans of the cult hit Firefly voting for Serenity and then March 3rd, Stephen Colbert requested that his fans write him in for the naming contest.

At least one random Anon made a video proclaiming that Anonymous would remove his name from NASA’s list.

However, Colbert won the contest, and NASA chose to throw out the results and name Node 3 Tranquility instead.