About

Battletoads Pre-order refers to a prank in which participants call various GameStop retail stores and ask if they can preorder Battletoads, a platformer video game released on the Nintendo Entertainment System (NES) in 1991.

Origin

In June 1991, the beat 'em up platformer game Battletoads was released for the NES, in which players battle enemies while controlling anthropomorphic frog characters (shown below). A number of sequels were subsequently produced over the next several years, including Battlemaniacs, Battletoads & Double Dragon and Super Battle Toads Arcade.

According to Encyclopedia Dramatica,^[6] 4chan users began prank calling various GameStop locations and asking to preoder Battletoads games in mid-November 2007.

Spread

On November 13th, 2007, an entry for "battletoads" was submitted to Urban Dictionary,^[5] defining it as a "popular subject of prank calls to electronic stores" (shown below).

On November 15th, Livejournal user slaneyder published a blog post claiming that a 4chan post about the prank had been circulating on Ebaum's World.^[2]

In April 2008, the site BattleToadsPreorder.com^[4] was launched to encourage viewers to call a Church of Scientology and ask to pre-order Battletoads.^[3] On April 4th, YouTuber Tsunamiexe uploaded a recording of a GameStop prank call (shown below, left). On April 16th, a parody Battletoads Wii commercial was uploaded to YouTube (shown below, right). Over the next 10 years, the video accumulated more than 669,000 views and 980 comments.

On January 9th, 2017, YouTuber Internet Historian uploaded a video discussing the pranks titled "Gamestop's Battle with Toads" (shown below). Within two years, the video gained over 1.3 million views and 1,200 comments.

2018 E3 Announcement

On June 10th, 2018, a trailer for an upcoming Battletoads game was released at the 2018 Electronic Entertainment Expo (shown below).

Search Interest

External References