Batman: The Video Game

The Short


Pros
- Excellent action platformer with BATMAN
- Music is kickass
- Use a wide array of bat-gadgets as well as your fists to punch your way to the Joker
- Excellent graphics, especially in cutscenes
- Wall jumping is fun and makes you feel really versatile
- Unlimited continues (with Konami code)

Cons
- Excruciatingly difficult
- Some very cheap deaths and hits
- Will test your patience and stamina
- My cartridge freezed right when I beat the third boss. Curse you, game!

I'm Batman. 

The Long

Ah, Sunsoft, you are so awesome. Famous for making incredible games that are hard as all hell (the exception being Fester's Quest, which was just junk), they are probably most well known for the game Blaster Master, the tank/car/person/shooter hybrid with open work exploration and multi-part stages. However, Sunsoft also did a bunch of licensed games, and one of these was Batman, based off the Tim Burton movie. 

And oh, is it one kickass game. 

Batman: Punching dudes in jetpacks since 1989

Batman plays very similarly to Ninja Gaiden, Tecmo's tough-as-nails NES platformer, though I personally find it most similar to Castlevania in terms of playstyle. You start with just your fists (or bat-fists), punching the crap out of thugs, robots, and whatever else gets in your way. Yeah, robots. This isn't very...loyal to the movie, but that's probably for the best.

Anyway, the tricks come in with both the gadgets and the platforming. Like Ryu from Ninja Gaiden, Batman can attach and leap from the walls, a "wall jump" essentially. This is required in a lot of areas, but in some areas you can actually use it to bypass harder sections if you are a skilled wall-jumper. Also, unlike Ninja Gaiden, where I found the wall-clinging to be a bit unwieldy, I never had any problems with it in Batman. You can determine how high you jump off a wall by how long you hold the jump button, which adds considerably more control when compared to his ninja counterpart. 

You can either fight your way up the right, or if you have the skills take that small shaft up on the left via wall-jumping. BRANCHING PATHS!

Another good feature is the gadgets. Essentially you start with a whole arsenal, you just have to collect power-ups to fuel them. Punching is free, but everything from batarangs to a splitting bat...thing and the bat...uh...gun (?!) costs powerup points. The game is, thankfully, very lenient on dropping powerups, meaning you'll usually be well equipped for every situation.

Which is good, because even the most basic enemies in this game are hard.

Guns are no problem for THE BATMAN 

From the first level you know this game's gonna chew you up, especially when you meet your first jetpack enemy. While you have a health bar (thankfully), you have a very limited number of hits, and while enemies do drop life it is extremely rare. So expect to die. A lot.

Coupled with that is some very tricky platforming. Remember that wall jumping that was so awesome? You'd better master that crap quick, because in stage 2 you have to pull of some insanely tricky jumps and kills. And it only gets harder, with conveyor belts and tons of tricky enemies that require specific gadgets to be equipped to defeat. It gets really crazy, really fast.

That being said, this (along with Castlevania) is one of the fairest NES-hard games I've played. One of the main reasons I actually prefer Batman over it's counterpart Ninja Gaiden is a simple one: you don't fly back when you take damage. This is probably my biggest frustration in most NES games, when you get hit and your character leaps back like two miles and falls down an insta-death hole. In this game, Batman's a badass and just takes is standing up, which helps make little mistakes more bearable.

Gah, just looking at this makes me want to snap a controller. 

It's more of a Castlevania type game when it comes right down to it. You have to take things slow and carefully, at times memorizing enemy placements and platforms on each stage so you can best get through while taking the minimum amount of damage. It's a classic challenge, common in old games, but Batman does it masterfully. The tight controls and wide variety of attack options (and mobility options) help make it more bearable, and actually beating a level without losing a life is extremely satisfying.

The music is also rad, like all Sunsoft games

The graphics, as you can see, look great (which is another Sunsoft staple). Batman's a bit...purple, but they used his color contrast with a lot of orange and red stages to make him pop out (kind of like a reverse Castlevania). The cutscenes also look incredible, showing some fantastic 8-bit Batman art.

The music, as well, is moody, exciting, and super catchy. It just all ties together into a very complete package. 

Remember in the movie when Batman fought the dude with the hair? No? Oh...right. 

As it stands, Batman: The Video Game on NES is a fantastic example of how games were done right on the system, as well as how the "Nintendo Hard" phrase is totally justified. The game is absolutely incredible and ball-bustingly difficult, so much so that when I picked it up from my local video game store he advised against it, because the last couple people who had bought it had brought it back in frustration. I have yet to bring it back (in fact I've even made it to the Joker, though I confess I haven't beaten the game) because this game is really good. Aside from the extreme difficulty, there's a ton to love here. As the first Batman game on the new wave of video game systems, Batman delivers. And considering you can pick the cart up for less than $5, it's absolutely worth buying. 

Not everybody will enjoy it (again, difficulty) but for me it's one of my favorites on the system. Four out of five. 

Batmans: ROLL OUT.