Batman

2026-05-13

Yesterday, I saw NES's "Batman" on YouTube (compared with Game Boy's), and the pixel art was so exquisite that I just had to try it for myself. Musically, it's a bit worse, but the character design, and background design, and all that with a limited palette of colours -- it's just amazing. You can feel it's a late-in-the-lifecycle entry. Gameplay-wise, it holds pretty well, too. And they have cut-scenes, in a form of slightly animated frames.

Gameplay

It's a side-scroller, so you walk as Batman. There is not grappling hook, therefore there is not much verticality involved, though Batman can briefly attach to a wall and use it as a base for a further jump; so far, it was not utilised. Batman can punch his enemies with fists, but also has a rocket launcher [sic!], a batarang, and three fans that travel with a vertical spread. Each of these weapons has ammo, so there is a resource management aspect to it; but enemies drop that aplenty.

I have my first boss behind me, and it turned out to be quite easy: I just had to place myself in a spot where his projectiles were missing me; from that position, I needed to time the fans when he was diving to hurt me, which would stop him. Rinse and repeat, erelong he was history.

The second world/scenery is the factory with toxic slime, where, I imagine, we'll meet Joker. So far, I kept falling into the slime and die. Skill issue.

Dying

"Kids these days have no idea how easy they have it."

Dying is funny: Batman explodes. This is, most likely, to please the family-friendly atmosphere of home consoles, but looks funny in hindsight.

Now that I think of it, everyone dying in this game explodes. This was also happening in "The Chaos Engine," so I guess it was the closest to a gory ending that could have been offered to players then. id Software was just charting this territory with "Wolfenstein 3D" in 1992 and "Doom" in late 1993.

2026-05-14

Yesterday, I managed to finish only one level. The game toughens as it progresses. I am, however, surprised at how responsive the controls are. I always thought these old games were clunky as hell, but no, there is this section where you finally have to use clinging to walls, to perform a series of jumps to travel up, and it worked extremely smoothly.

Not gonna lie, I might have found my favourite Batman game.

Continues

It seems there is an infinite number of continues, so I don't fool around with state saves, and save only when I have to turn the console off.

I suspect that with each continue, the score resets to zero, so at the end, I won't be able to put my name in the hall of fame. However,

"Adventure, excitement -- a Jedi craves not these things." (Silent Bob)