Cult ’90s cartoon Toxic Crusaders is getting a retro-style beat ’em up

Cult 1991 cartoon Toxic Crusaders is returning as a retro-themed beat ’em up game.

Retroware is working on the arcade-style game and is aiming to release it in late 2023 on Steam, Switch, PS5, PS4, Xbox Series X/S and Xbox One.

Toxic Crusaders was a cartoon spin-off of The Toxic Avenger, a notorious comedy horror movie from zero-budget studio Troma Entertainment.

While the movie and its sequels were very much unsuitable for children, the 13-episode Toxic Crusaders animated series was much more family-friendly.

Despite the cartoon’s relatively short run, this will actually be the fourth Toxic Crusaders game.

Bandai released an NES games developed by TOSE and a Game Boy title developed by Realtime Associates in 1992, while in the same year Sega released a separate Genesis game developed by Infogrames.

The new game, simply titled Toxic Crusaders, will feature seven playable characters – the series’ hero Toxie, his friends No-Zone, Junkyard, Major Disaster and Headbanger, his girlfriend Yvonna and his mother Mrs Junko.

According to Retroware, the game will consist of seven stages and will feature cameo appearanced by characters from other no-budget Troma movies like Class of Nuke ‘Em High, Sgt Kabukiman NYPD and Poultrygeist: Night of the Chicken Dead.

The game will also feature comic book style cutscenes voiced by TeamFourStar, who are best known for the Dragon Ball Z Abridged parody series.

Retroware specialises in developing and publishing retro-themed original games. Most notably, it published Angry Video Game Nerd 1 & 2 Deluxe, a pair of platformers inspired by the popular YouTube character.