Batman

""You can't make an omelet without breaking some eggs""

BATMAN!, The movie broke box office records back in 89\' nevertheless it was expected to make even more money on its merchandise. Sunsoft earns the movie franchise rights to a video game and produce a phenomenal action title on the NES system. with cool weapons, difficulty and controls that rival even the best on the Ninja Gaiden series. With much success on the 8bit game, Sunsoft decides to create 16bit conversions for both the PCE and the Sega MD. The PCE/TG16 game was horrible, it feature a maze like design that makes the caped crusader look more like a trapped rat. The Sega MD/Genesis game however was an impressive looking platformer much like its 8bit cousin, after an impressive showing at the summer tokyo toy show in 1990, it was planned to be brought to the US for the FALL CES show, but the bad boys of NOA had exclusive right to the game and any title that would show on any nintendo system, regardless of its publishers and producers, this was a controversial move that provoked many import titles to go up high in price, BATMAN for the Jp Mega Drive sold here for as much as $100.00 because it would unlikely show its face in the states. but sega, atari and other 3rd party publishers fought against nintendo\'s monopoly eventually with atari owned tengen winning a fight that caused NOA to give up its exclusive rights. So after Strider graced our genesis screens in december 1990, sunsoft joins the 3rd party lineup of sega with its long-awaited Batman in the summer 1991. was it worth the wait?? you\'ll see....

Story 9/10 : If you know the movie, you know the game, gotham city is overwhelmed by crime and \'\'the joker\'\' is runing the show of evil, but batman emerges from the night and strikes against all evil-doers in the battle to restrain order in the city of gotham.

Graphics 8/10: Interestingly neat graphics engrace your genesis when playing batman, many of the stage design is faithful to the movie, especially the axis chemical and guggenheilm museum stages, character design is good, although enemies can be repetitive but a few baddies and a couple of bosses are well animated. special stages include a drive in the batmobile and a flight in the batwing, features that were missing in the NES version.

Gameplay 7/10: gameplay was ok, but i felt like something was missing, the NES game had so much more in the weaponry system but this game doesnt give you any weapon options at all, just your fist and your bat-rang or whatever you call that thing. the special stages brings more variety with the batmobile and the batwing, but even those two had little to offer with weapons. Tha game is relatively easy, and a special tactic in obtaining lives and certain stages make this bat-trip a short one.

Sound/Music 8/10: Music is pretty good, upbeat and cool to listen and play this game with, the sounds are fair too, no complaints here.

difficulty 6/10: hard...hehe yeah ok, believe me even vet players will browse through this one, but its not so bad, some stages still offer a challenge or two, but eventually you figure it out and go on, had this game been as hard as the NES game, then its score woudnt be so average.

Overall 8/10: Batman may not be THE BEST!, well not to warrant to spend a hundred bucks on the import jp version but it still a good game with decent graphics, sound and gameplay, the trip is worth the 5 or maybe 10 bucks that you would spend if you so desire to have this on your collection. it does make good in any genesis collection, the import game can be found for about 20 bucks if you like the neat art and its funky small box, but anyhow im fond of batman because it was one of those titles we almost never got, i mean there are many more games out there that we havent seen here in the US but batman shoudnt been deprived from us just because nintendo said so. the lesson they learned was mean, and even meaner was the little blue hedgehog that graced videogamers everywhere shortly after batman\'s genesis release.

Reviewer's Score: 8/10, Originally Posted: 08/06/03