The Adventures of Batman & Robin

"Fantastic, but also fantastically difficult"

Extremely hard, but extremely good, Adv of Batman and Robin is an underlooked but great Genesis game. It's fun in multiplayer as a co-op beat-em-up, and fairly fun in single player too.

To summarize the setup, it's a left-to-right beat-emp up sidescrolling fighter. You choose either Batman or Robin (or both if you're playing with a friend in the two-player co-op mode), and you fight off hordes of various minions and then sub-bosses and bosses in your quest to vanquish evil from the streets of Gotham City. You've got regular punching and kicking attacks, as well as missile weapons, throws and jump kicks at your disposal.

It also morphs into a Thunderforce type shooter part way through the game, which is entertaining if a bit jarring. You pilot a kind of Bat-Airplane that is viewed top down, and for some time you play a kind of G-Darius R-Type game.

It has some great levels, and some of the best graphics and sound you'll ever see on Genesis. The music is quite simply brilliant, especially for the Genesis, which I know to be notorious for tinny, weak sound effects. The visuals never slow down, have tons of colors and moving items, are excellently drawn and are easily some of the best ever seen on Sega's 16-bit machine.

Control is very tight (which it needs to be with the insane number of enemies coming at you nearly every second), and makes you feel integrated into the game very nicely. There are a few levels in which you will lose a life or two due to mis-timed jumping nonsense, but this is more due to poor level design than a control issue.

It's one hard game though, so keep a Game Genie and cheat codes at the ready if you want to get all the way through. I'm not big on cheats but let me reiterate, it's just freakishly difficult. It's up there with Contra: Hard Corps, which is to say basically impossible to make your way through without "help".

A rating of 9 out of 10 might sound high for this game, but it's really extremely addictive and fun. Difficult though it is, I find myself playing it often even with newer fancier games readily available to me. It's one of those games you can just pick up and play for 10 minutes and be satisfied, or play for 2 hours and not get bored of it. A little repetitive yes, but all beat-em-ups are that way by nature. Adventures of Batman and Robin keeps your interest with its great sound, graphics, art and intriguing level design. Well worth checking out whether or not you're a Batman geek like me.

Reviewer's Score: 9/10, Originally Posted: 04/21/02, Updated 06/20/04