Batman: The Video Game – The Definitive Review (NES, Game Boy, and Genesis Reviews)

I’ve reviewed four Batman games so far. I’ve done the coin-op by Atari Games and the never-released in America TurboGrafx-16/PC Engine version that’s a strange top-down action-maze game. Then there’s the incredibly bland Batman Returns Atari Lynx game that, let’s face it, is never coming out again. None of those games got a YES! and frankly, none of them were the Batman games anyone wants to see a modern release or review of. In fact, I’ve only awarded one YES! to the Dark Knight so far. That was for the also never released in America version of Batman Returns for the Sega Master System. But, nobody really wants THAT game either. The one everyone wants is Batman: The Video Game for the NES. But, there’s actually two other games that share the name. Even weirder is that they’re entirely original games. Sunsoft created unique versions of Batman for each platform. Then, those games got a sort of sequel, called Return of the Joker if they’re 8-bit or Revenge of the Joker if they’re 16-bit. Eventually, I’ll do a Definitive Review of them too. So, let’s take a look at the three games that wear the name Batman: The Video Game. Also, for the first time, I’m going to assign value to a set that doesn’t yet exist.

GAME REVIEWS

For those not familiar with my way of thinking of how retro games should be reviewed, I take NO historical context into account. I don’t care how important a game was to the industry, because that doesn’t make a game worth playing today. The test of time is the cruelest test of all, but every video game must face it. I might not be here if not for Pong’s success, but I wouldn’t want to play it today. Not when there’s better options. Therefore, when I review retro games, every game gets either a YES! or a NO!

YES! means the game is still fun and has actual gameplay value when played today and is worth seeking out.

NO! means the game didn’t age gracefully and is not worth seeking out, and certainly not worth spending money on.

Batman: The Video Game
Platform: NES
Released December 28, 1989 (JP) February 13, 1990 (US)
Developed by Sunsoft
NEVER BEEN RE-RELEASED

Batman: The Video Game is one of the most celebrated licensed titles on the NES, and one of the most influential games for the current crop of indie developers. Seriously, I totally understand now why The Storied Sword cites it, even if its gameplay has more in common with Ninja Gaiden. When anyone talks about bad licensed NES games, you can bet your bottom dollar that “Batman was good” will be a counter to that. And it’s especially weird for two reasons. The first is that this feels like a generic sci-fi platformer that was repurposed as a Batman game. For all anyone knows, that might be the legitimate story. Journey to Silius, a Sunsoft-developed NES game currently available to Switch Online subscribers, was intended to be a Terminator game, but the license expired before the game was finished. If nothing else, it shows flipping one property to another is something Sunsoft was experienced with. Batman: The Video Game has so little in common with Batman: The Batman that it’d be almost comforting if they just plugged the Dark Knight into an existing sci-fi build and called it a day. Even the cut scenes, which are the only aspects where you’re like “hey, look, Batman!” are bad. A+ for the Batmobile. That looks just like the movie. The Joker, on the other hand, looks more like the late, great David Warner. Or Guy Fawkes. Or Steve Buscemi.

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The second reason that I’m kind of surprised by the reverence of NES Batman is that it eventually becomes maddening. One of those releases that the generation who made strategy guides and Game Genies a viable business call “Nintendo Hard.” In fact, this and Battletoads are among the most commonly cited “I love that game! Never could get past the X level” titles on the NES. I don’t get it. So, let me get this straight: you love the game, but not enough to actually finish it? Are you sure “love” is the word you want? Wouldn’t it be more accurate to say you had a crush on Batman: The Video Game, but then it turned out to be a bitch and you lost interest? Not that my generation is any better. It’s always strange to me when I beat a five year old Xbox game and discover that the achievement for finishing the game is one of those ultra rare ones with the angelic chime, because only like 1% of all owners ever bothered to get that far. The hell? Doesn’t anyone finish games anymore? Well, *I* finished Batman: The Video Game, and I can see why someone who rented the game for a weekend when they were a kid might say they “loved it.” I can also see why people didn’t finish it.

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Oh, I cheated like crazy with save states and eventually rewind, but I did finish it. Batman is a moderately decent sci-fi platformer that just completely loses its mind in the last two (of only five) levels in the game. This is mostly owed to a series of jumping “puzzles” with two elements that would be considered challenging enough on their own being stapled together. The first is having sections of the walls be lethal to the touch. That’s fine. Nothing wrong with forcing players to aim their jumps. That’s sort of the point of a platformer. The second is placing enemies at the top of columns you’re jumping up. Hey, that’s fine too when your player always has three projectiles they can throw mid-air. Combining the two elements would be stretching it, but Batman: The Video Game isn’t done yet. How about cranking up the hit points on the enemy at the top of that column? What about then giving that enemy at the top a lethal projectile spray that it fires in rapid bursts, and then having the column you climb be absurdly high up, so if you fall, you have to start the whole process over. At this point, it feels like the idea of making a fun game had long since been abandoned in favor of straight-up trolling players.

On its own terms, I’d call Batman: The Video Game unplayable after the third world. Enemies are too spongy and too cheaply placed. The bosses of those later stages are even worse, and with the exception of the Joker, there’s absolutely no effort to theme them in a way that makes sense for a Batman game. Seriously, for all the teasing I did about the NES Ninja Turtles having little to do with the franchise, Batman is easily the gold standard for shoehorning a license into a game that has nothing to do with it. Because of that, this is a game that should have aged a lot worse than it did. But, thanks to all the bells & whistles of emulation, Batman is a better game now than ever before. Since all the pieces were already in place for a good game, and maybe even a great game, I really enjoyed the “modern” NES Batman experience. That’s because I was able to set my own terms.

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In order to not to completely trivialize the challenge, I only used save states when I reached new floors. Sometimes my placement of where I saved wasn’t ideal for challenge making, but I wouldn’t have had fun with Batman if I didn’t take steps towards nerfing it. Not to the point of killing the difficulty, but just enough to ease the burden. In fact, I only used rewind during one section of the game, which was actually the final vertical shaft right below the final boss chamber. That’s the one I whined about above. Otherwise, I played in a way where death did result in me having to redo large sections of stages. As an unlimited lives experience, Batman worked. I think eliminating lives, adding a death counter, and bumping up the checkpoints would turn this into a borderline masterpiece.

It’s worth noting that the way I played  Batman: The Video Game wasn’t even my original plan, as I had a ROM hack called Batman (Easy) that I intended to also include in this feature. My plan was to play the original 1989 build of Batman as it was originally designed, then pivot to the ROM hack. I wanted to really show off the power of having emulation work in tandem with modern designers to unlock a game’s fullest potential. But, I found Batman (Easy) was too easy. Item drops were worth too many item points and a lot of the platforming challenges were too nerfed. If you have kids under 12, I’d recommend it for them, easily. For everyone else, it probably took the concept of a kinder, gentler Batman too far. Somewhere between my self-created save state checkpoints and that ROM hack is probably the best version of the game, but that doesn’t exist yet.

When Batman: The Video Game is fun, it’s really fun. Oddly enough, Batman’s strength isn’t really in the wall jump. The best part was the combat! Batman’s punch is often as effective as the three projectiles, and it was satisfying enough. Of the three projectiles, the batarang was the most useful. Even with limited range, it used the fewest item points and felt like the closest the game came to a Batman-like experience. The second weapon is a gun with relatively slow bullets that I almost never used, except I wouldn’t have come close to finishing the third boss without it. Finally, there’s a weapon that look like a gun, but its bullets quickly split into three projectiles that continue on in a wider horizontal trajectory. This is easily the coolest looking weapon, but it was only really useful when I couldn’t expect to aim a shot. All the items are fun to use, but there is one thing that annoyed the hell out of me: item select is mapped to START while pause is SELECT. Over the course of two hours, my brain refused to remember that and I was constantly pausing the game when I meant to change weapons. It was annoying at first, but by the end of the game, it really just felt like another example of Batman: The Video Game trolling players.

This is one of the stranger verdicts I’ve had to render since I started doing retro reviews, because my answer of whether or not Batman is worth money today, in 2024, is entirely dependent on the emulator. And actually, just the ability to save and load states isn’t enough. Batman needed quick save/quick load. I even tried this, making myself pause the game before activating save/load, and it did more harm than good. I’m mostly thinking of that final vertical wall-jumping maze, and having to pause to undo a costly mistake was too much. I prefer mapping quick save to left stick click and quick load to right stick click. You can’t possibly hit those buttons by accident, especially since I’m using a D-Pad. I assume that’s what most people will use when playing an NES game. If you’re using a retro platform without that barest minimum of options, fuhgeddaboudit. Batman’s fun will likely stop about 60% of the way in. If a Batman Sunsoft collection is put out by a company who stubbornly refuses to include that, or only allows, say, two seconds of rewinding (not calling anyone specific out), I would give Batman: The Video Game a NO! But, I didn’t play it that way. I played Batman on MY terms. With a thirty-second rewind and/or quick save/quick load, I found that Batman works both as a fun, peppy sci-fi platformer AND as a historical curio. It’s actually really weird this game wears the Batman label, and there’s enough amusement in how bonkers it gets that it kept a smile on my face for most of the two hours I needed to finish it.
Verdict: YES! – $5 in value added to a hypothetical Batman collection.
BONUS: Throw in another $5 if they also included a ROM hack similar to Batman (Easy).

Batman: The Video Game
Platform: Game Boy
Released April 13, 1990 (JP) June, 1990 (US)
Directed by Cho Musou
Developed by Sunsoft
NEVER BEEN RE-RELEASED

It’s probably best to think of the Game Boy version of Batman: The Video Game as Super Mario Land 1 with a gun. It doesn’t have much to do with the movies either, but at least you knock Jack Nicholson into a vat of chemicals. Hey, the NES game didn’t do that! The NES game also didn’t feel like a “break the blocks” platformer with Batman heroically saving the Mushroom Kingdom. Okay, so this is not the Batman game anyone would want. That’s why I feel especially silly making the following statement: of all the early era Game Boy games I’ve played, which admittedly is a small sample size, Batman is probably the best of the bunch. I enjoyed it a lot more than I liked Super Mario Land. Like, it’s not even close actually. I swear, these Sunsoft Batman games are so weird.

Batman: The Video Game on Game Boy is really short, at only about thirty minutes to finish, and it’s probably more suitable for younger children. Replace the “jump on the enemies” gameplay of Super Mario Land with Mega Man-style guns, then lobotomize the challenge and you get the idea. You get unlimited ammo, but you can only carry one gun at a time, which you find by shooting dark-shaded blocks. One pick-up, “the short gun” is functionally a whammy, as it leaves you stuck with a weapon that has no range and can’t pierce platforms and walls. Try to avoid them. The other guns are mostly fun to use. The power gun is basically a Mega Man pea shooter that can shoot enemies through walls. The wave gun is like the power gun but the bullets travel in a shallow sine wave. The “T” gun, which is presumably tear gas, is a large projectile that pierces walls AND can break three blocks at once. You’ll rarely need to break that many blocks. My favorite gun easily was the batarang gun, which is weirdly designated with an “R.” It shoots powerful batarangs out. Really, all the guns but shorty are fun to use. The one thing Batman HAD to do was have the action be fun, and it is!

Even if I think of Batman GB strictly as a children’s game, it’s a damn good game. Little kids need games too, and Batman has satisfying pew-pew action and enjoyable level design. The most impressive thing is how well balanced the platforming and the gun play is. It really feels like equal parts both. What completely nerfs the game is the shields you can pick up. If you see a Batman icon (his symbol), it creates a shield that spins around you. You can pick-up as many as four bats to circle you, and then you can even pick-up pills that make them spin faster. Although they do minimal damage upon making contact with an enemy, having four that spin like a figure skater on her tippy-toes can make you almost unstoppable. Almost. In what feels like the wisest choice the game made, the shield isn’t so effective that you can just walk through enemies with impunity. As easy as Batman is, you actually do have to make an effort. When I made it to the final boss, I tried to cheese him by just spamming the attack button to let my six batarangs fly at him. I almost lost a life doing this, as I was damaged down to my last hit. BUT, I did win!

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Batman shares even more DNA with Mario Land, as like Mario Land, it has two shmup levels that feel like they belong to a completely different game. Unlike Mario Land, the two stages where you pilot the Batwing are played back-to-back. They’re the game’s entire world 3. Also unlike Super Mario Land is the fact that I actually liked Batman’s auto-scrolling shmup levels. Like most of Game Boy Batman’s stages, they’re both too easy. The closest this build comes to putting up a challenge is the final level. Batman ends on an auto-scrolling platforming stage that often forces you to sacrifice your shields since its platforms are usually small, usually have an enemy on them, and usually leave you with little time to stop and aim your jump. And that’s fine, because the last level should put players to those kinds of risk/reward decisions. Batman’s two standard bosses are kind of boring, but otherwise, I’m surprised. I’d already played this before and remembered it being just okay. It’s a little better than that. In many ways, I liked this more than the NES game. It’s still pretty generic, but it also packs a lot of fun into very little game. I didn’t expect the Game Boy Batman to be one of the highlights of this feature. Sunsoft’s best decision was creating a new game that played to the Game Boy’s strengths instead of trying to copy a technologically superior game to a less capable platform.
Verdict: YES! – $5 in value added to a hypothetical Batman collection.

Batman: The Video Game
Platform: Sega Genesis
Released July 27, 1990 (JP) June, 1991 (US)
Developed by Sunsoft
NEVER BEEN RE-RELEASED

The final installment of the Batman: The Video Game trilogy is also the only one that’s unambiguously based on the Tim Burton film. Actually, at times it feels sort of like Sunsoft was trying to create a more complicated home console approximation of the Atari Games coin-op. Which is actually impossible since this came out first. Maybe it’s the other way around and Atari Games was trying to make a better version of the Genesis game. Either way, the end result is a strange brawler-platformer hybrid that never quite feels like it gets out of first gear. And that’s kind of weird because it does feel like a Batman game. You use a grappling hook, punch generic crooks in the face, the batarangs don’t actually return like boomerangs, and you pilot both the Batmobile and Batwing in convincing fashion. All the pieces are in place for the Genesis version to stand tall as the only authentically Dark Knighty version of the franchise. And yet, this is easily the worst of the three titles called Batman: The Video Game.

Genny Batman is an incredibly boring game. The combat is so flavorless, as you only punch and do a leg sweep type of kick. You can punch when you jump, but I never really found this useful and usually took damage when I attempted it. You only get one item in the platforming segments, the aforementioned non-returning batarang. While it completely trivialized a few of the boss fights (including the last one), it lacks the visual satisfaction that the NES game accomplished with a lot less horsepower. I also found the “block” move where Batman puts up his dukes to be generally ineffective. Without decent fisticuffs, Batman absolutely needed quality platforming gameplay to carry the day. Unfortunately, the platforming is even worse than the brawling. I’ll start with one of the worst double jumps I’ve ever seen. Early in the second level, I found myself unable to get past a stack of crates (“CRATES! MY ONLY WEAKNESS!”) until I dug up the instruction book via Sega Retro. That’s when I learned that if you quickly press the jump button a second time, Batman does this flippy move that’s more about helping to cover horizontal distance instead of jumping higher. Allegedly some enemies can be damaged by pouncing on them, but it feels like it was a coin flip on whether I’d damage them or they’d damage me.

The biggest hook in the figurative sense is a literal hook in the corporeal sense: the grappling hook. It can only be used in designated spots and is little more than a manually-operated elevator. It put the slightest smile on my face that the hook actually does work like real life grappling hooks do, where you have to overthrow and hope the hook snags on a surface. Like.. yea, that’s how it would work. I can’t believe they put that in the game. Neato. But, the problem with using real life logic is that, while you wait for the hook to bind to a surface, you’re likely being shot at by a bad guy. In fact, late in the game, the areas where you’re supposed to use the hook are populated by enemies specifically placed to cause damage during the process. It takes a little bit to go through the motion of throwing the hook up. Also, when you finally start to make the climb with it, it’s like a bungee cord that fires you upward. So of course they put spiked ceilings around the hook areas in the final climb before you fight the Joker, and sometimes you haven’t scrolled the screen enough to be able to know they’re there. So, the hook doesn’t really work to differentiate the Batman games. It’s really dull and badly implemented.

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Therefore, the highlight of Genny Batman is the Batmobile. A basic but competent auto scrolling car combat section where you shoot enemies. Here, your batarangs are replaced with missiles that are fired two at a time. If there’s two enemies on screen, the missiles will each target a different one, and they’re so satisfying to use. The missiles also show up in the Batwing section, but I found that to be a frustrating slog. The problem is the Batwing’s sprite is too big, especially when you bank up and down, which you will since it’s a shmup and you’re trying to avoid getting shot. It leads to major issues with screen cramping. Come to think of it, Sunsoft really got it backwards. It’s the Batmobile that should feel cramped and claustrophobic with larger sprites to mimic navigating the narrow streets of a major metropolitan U.S. city, while the action in the skies over Gotham should feel more free and open on account of, well, it’s the literal f’n sky! Anyway, the Batwing stuff is pretty awful but it’s over with quickly. The Batmobile is a little more complicated. The action starts fun enough. Really fun, actually! But then the stage refuses to end. By the time the Batmobile has overstayed its welcome, you’re just over halfway done with it. So the best part of the game still manages to become boring. They should have broken it up into chunks of sixty seconds or less, then inserted those between every level. Dumping this all into one overly long segment was the price to pay for following the Tim Burton movie’s set pieces in film order.

It’s not that the Batman Genesis game isn’t ever fun. Actually, the best thing I can say about it is, besides the Batwing section, I never found it to be an actively bad game, at least mechanically speaking. It’s just so lazy and uninspired. The level design is basic, and the combat is basic, and the driving section is basic, and are you catching a theme here? During the NES review, I often wondered if the extreme difficulty was blowback from the development team getting one note too many from management. With the Genesis game, I wonder if they were all just burned out on the Dark Knight by the time they needed to develop the Sega game. This is a total paint by numbers licensed game that does just a good enough job that any child in 1990 could say “yep, that’s a Batman game.” But, Batman: The Video Game on the Sega Genesis never stood a chance at passing the test of time. Maybe Sunsoft was onto something by replacing the movie set pieces with robo-ninjas, guys dressed like mechanical bugs, and Contra-style bosses. They should have ended Genny Batman with Bruce Wayne throwing batarangs at a giant heart while alien spiders nibble at him. I’m picturing a stoned Jack Nicholson playing the game in his apartment and being like “wait, was this in the movie I made?”
Verdict: NO!

Bahmah?