Gun-toting wannabes and your best friend, Joker: Looking back at the weirdest Batman games ever
In honor of the recent release of Gotham Knights, we revisit 6 of the strangest Gotham-based games of all time
Games Features Batman
As one of the most successful comic book characters of all time—and one whose power set is a tad easier to confine to a video game than his old pal Superman’s—Batman long ago became one of the most prolific video game heroes ever. The crown jewels in his gaming accomplishments are, of course, Rocksteady Studios’ Arkham games, starting with 2009's Batman: Arkham Asylum. More than any other entry in Bruce Wayne’s long history as a gaming protagonist, the Arkham games capture the feeling of being Batman: The gadgets, the bad guys, and the thrill of being a nigh-invincible badass (provided you don’t stand right in front of any assault rifle-packing thugs and dare them to perforate you, at least).
The Arkham games got a pseudo-sequel of sorts just recently, in the form of Warner Bros. Interactive Entertainment’s strange multiplayer title Gotham Knights. (You can read our full review here.) But it’s not like this is the first time that a Batman game (or Dead Batman game, as the case may be) has gotten a little strange. In … honor? … of Gotham Knights’ release, we’ve scanned back through the archives and compiled this list: Six of the strangest games to ever feature the Caped Crusader, and, occasionally, his best friend and partner in crimefighting: The Joker!
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I actually love the Telltale series, I liked the idea of Bruce and Batman as being two separate people and not one being a facade. Also it allowed an actual relationship with Catwoman and you could retire as Batman. Good series, especially season 2.
i had a lot of fun with that game and i really liked getting a new chapter every few months. i wish more games came out that way. might start it again actually!
Imma echo y’all, as I too loved both seasons of Telltales Batman. I really enjoyed the twists on the lore, making everything a bit unexpected and enjoyable.For fun, try playing again where you choose the ‘stay silent’ or ‘……’ option every chance you get.
*puts on pedant hat*the copycat bat-vigilanties originally appeared in the dark knight trilogy books from Frank Miller.
I was never able to beat the Joker in the NES Batman (but my brother did once). I might have to give it a try again. I recently pulled out my old system to play some Double Dribble and try to score 1000 in a game like the old days. Defeating the Joker is next on my list.
That game is both a huge blast and a huge grind. I’ve got really, really good memories of playing it for hours on end while I was at uni as stress relief between studying for exams.
I’m proud to say I beat that game without the aid of save states.
Gotham City Imposters was a damn blast and my biggest warning to never trust online digital game purchases as they would only be playable for a few years before being taken down permanently.Online digital game purchases are game rentals.
I actually had a lot of fun with Gotham City Imposters. It was goofy and dumb but it had some pretty fun mechanics.
This one had catchy music:
I had the Amiga Batman (1989) game, and it was pretty good. I enjoyed the platform levels, as well as the puzzle level where you figured out what combination of cosmetics activated Joker venom.
The weird thing about the NES Batman game is Batman murders joker at the end of it.
Batman does not kill the Joker though, gravity does !
The Game Boy Batman, also developed by Sunsoft around the license for the 1989 movie, was a great early Batman game. It’s a completely separate game, not nearly as difficult to master as the NES one with its weirdly nuanced jumps, but the soundtrack is also full of golden-era Sunsoft bangers.
Nothing will ever match the Batman Forever arcade game for weirdness. It’s not very good, but I love it for how, well, batshit insane it is. Pure 90s Midway excess.
The Batman Forever game on SNES used similar sprites but was, in a word, unplayable. By contrast, Batman Returns on the SNES was one of my favorites – it was a simple beat em up, but the backgrounds were interactive so you could throw goons though benches and windows. They used similar mechanics for the SNES Death and Return of Superman game, which was… less my favorite.
Batman Returns on the SNES was definitely one of the better movie tie-ins for the day. Played great and followed the movie very closely, to the point where you can actually play out that scene where Batman yanks a piece of concrete into the clown holding Selena Kyle hostage. And they did an amazing job of translating Danny Elfman’s score as background music.
The SNES game is indeed pretty good. However I grew up with the Genesis game which was…let’s just say not as good.
I was just watching a long play video of Batman Returns on YouTube, and whatever goober was playing the game didn’t use the grappling gun to pull a chunk of wall onto that goon with the taser – just spammed him with baterangs. Why bother?
Returns was so good. Tossing those clowns around never gets old.
I remember spending hours trying to beat the NES Batman with a friend in the early 90s. Definitely a game I want to go back an beat, if I can find it.
Missing from the list: the super strange PC-Engine / TG-16 Batman which is a Pac-Man variant.
Gun-toting wannabesLearn to swim.
*spoiler alert for 5/6-year-old games and a 6-month-old movie*
I recently played through both seasons of Batman: The Telltale Series again, and I actually think The Batman (2022) makes a much stronger argument for Batman being responsible for inspiring the criminal element he fights against than either of the Telltale Series’ seasons did. The Season 1 main villain was inspired by the corruption of Thomas Wayne and his cabal, not Batman (and they even acknowledge that Batman does good for the people of the city, even as he opposes their plan), and secondary villains like Penguin and Two-Face are either aligned with or a reaction to the main villain.
Similarly, The Pact in Season 2 is inspired by and working directly against The Agency – Batman is really only an ancillary supporting character in that conflict. The only agency and responsibility on Batman’s end is John’s fate in Episode 5, and then it comes down to player action. However, an Episode 5 with a villainous John becomes a bit dissonant if you’ve been supportive of him up until (but not through) the point of no return, and in that specific situation it becomes a bit of a stretch to place all of the responsibility for John’s villainy at Batman/the player’s feet (and the game even gives you the opportunity to say as much in a conversation with Avesta).Contrast this with The Batman, where the villain doesn’t just manipulate Batman into playing his game – he thinks Batman is ideologically aligned with him, to the point that he thinks they’re actively running the game together.
I seem to be stuck in the gray’s on AV Club, but I was part of the 12 person QA testing team for Gotham City Impostors. I don’t know if it stayed in, because I never played it after I left WB, but at one point a developer had included a goatse reference just outside the play area on the ACE Chemical level. Always wondered if anyone else caught it.
Wrong! Weirdest is the ZX Spectrum Batman from 1986, published by Ocean.Fatman has to search the batcave for parts of the Batmobile. After the first room where he slides down the bat pole, the Batcave bears no resemblance to any other version of it, being a labyrinth of surreally decorated chambers, populated by shuffling pony tailed one horned heads, vampire monsters and snapping shark heads.For the machine it was highly rated and the duo who made it used the same engine for the classic ‘head over heels’ (several 8 bit machines) and ‘Monster Max’ (game boy).