Retro Gaming Australia

A number of games based on the popular Batman animated series from the early 90s were published in 1994 and 1995. The Game Gear version was developed by Novotrade, best remembered for Ecco the Dolphin, and is a fairly straight forward jump and run game.

We’ve been so spoiled by good Batman games in recent times that we tend to forget that pre-Arkham Asylum Batman games were largely terrible. Among the worst would be Batman & Robin for the PlayStation, based on the rather awful film of the same name. Another quality Acclaim product.

Sunsoft got their hands on the license to develop Batman games based on the smash hit 1989 movie. While the NES game is the one most remember, the Mega Drive one was no slouch either. I’ll go on the record as saying the soundtrack is vastly underrated, too.

Batman Begins is the only one of the three Christopher Nolan directed Batman movies to receive a video game tie-in for all major console formats. It’s probably not a bad thing in the end, as Batman Begins can only be described as middling at best. The only standout part of the game is the Batmobile levels, which share technology with Burnout 3.

In 1994, Sega Ozisoft released its stranglehold on the Australian market just a little, allowing other Australian companies the opportunity to produce cartridges and distribute games. Village Roadshow quickly jumped on the opportunity and struck deals with companies like Acclaim, Time Warner Interactive and Viacom New Media.

As a bit of a sweetener for those intending to purchase what Roadshow considered to be the big games of 1995 – Batman Forever, Primal Rage and Phantom 2040 – the company produced special edition box sets for the three games which sold for a little bit more than the standard retail price. These sets are exclusive to Australia, and therefore command a premium.

We snagged images of the last good condition box sets to sell online for the Australian Gaming Database, but we thought we’d take the opportunity to discuss them on the main site.

The amusing thing is that these sets were totally unpopular when they were first released, and wound up on clearance for as little as $15 by the end of the Mega Drive era, but the last completed sale for these sets saw them go for some $AU500+.

The big question is are these sets actually worth $500? (continue reading…)

To try and differentiate Batman Forever from the other licensed dreck they were churning out, Acclaim Entertainment tried to class the game up by using digitised graphics of actors dressed up as Batman and Robin. Unfortunately, the underlying game is nearly impossible to control – I think it took me a week to figure out how to execute some of the most basic moves back in the day.

Batman Beyond: Return of the Joker (or Batman of the Future for us Commonwealth types) is a tie-in to the direct-to-video movie of the same name based on the cartoon series which was spun off from the popular Batman: The Animated Series. The game is horrible, but the series is worth a look – it’s basically about a guy who takes up the mantle of Batman following Bruce Wayne’s retirement, and is mentored by Wayne.

Before the Arkham series blew us all away, Konami’s Batman Returns brawler for the SNES was generally considered to be the best game to feature the Dark Knight. It borrows a generous number of concepts from other brawlers, but it executes them well.