Batman: The Video Game (1989) Memories/Review/Overview/Retrospective

 Hey everyone! How's it going? I'm doing pretty well. Happy Easter Weekend! It's Good Friday and I decided to do a fun blog post today. I'm going to do something similar to how I started this version of the blog by talking about a video game that I used to play all the time. In this case I'll be talking about Batman: The Video Game for the Nintendo Entertainment System which came out in 1989 as a tie-in to Tim Burton's first movie. This is going to be a prelude to a four-part retrospective on Batman: The Motion Picture Anthology which includes Batman (1989), Batman Returns (1992), Batman Forever (1995), and Batman & Robin (1997). These will be my own personal feelings on the film franchise, my personal history with it, as well as some history of where comic books, comic book movies, and comic book TV shows were during the time these movies were coming out. Which is something that I'm going to be doing for the MCU, the DCEU, the Arrowverse, the Dark Knight Trilogy, and other comic book movies, TV shows, and comics themselves. So, let's dive into Batman: The Video Game.

Batman: The Video Game was produced by Sunsoft for the Nintendo Entertainment System, the Nintendo Game Boy, and the Sega Genesis as a tie-in to the highly anticipated feature film, Batman, directed by Tim Burton and starring Michael Keaton as Batman/Bruce Wayne, Kim Bassinger as Vicky Vale, and Jack Nicholson as Jack Napier/the Joker. I don't remember exactly when we got this game, but I do remember my dad bringing it home, taking it out of the box and then keeping the box somewhere safe. I think our copy was second hand because I'm pretty sure we got it AFTER my mom had gotten the Super Nintendo for my dad. Anyways we still had the box in October of 1994 because my dad took the Darth Vader costume my parents had bought for me (it came with a domino mask), cut the Bat symbol out of the empty game box, and taped it onto the front of the Vader suit so I could be Batman for Halloween at school that year.

This was the first game I ever saw that had actual cut scenes between every level in it. Super Mario Bros. 3 and Super Mario World had cut scenes at the end of every boss level, but they were pretty static. This game had fully animated cut scenes. Well, as fully animated as an 8-bit game made in 1989 could have. I love that title card as well.

I remember playing this game the most in the mid to late '90s, circa 1996-1997, when we lived in one particular house. In this house my siblings and I had a large playroom in the basement that was divided into sections. We had a library corner, a wide open area for playing board games on the floor, as well as playing with action figures, a corner for listening to the Playskool Talk 'n Play, which I'll talk about more at another time, and then we had a corner where we could watch TV, watch movies on the VCR or play video games. This is where we'd play this game. 

There are a few things I associate this basement with the most. This game, my Teddy Ruxpin books, my Hardy Boys books, the VHS release of Mighty Morphin Power Rangers: The Movie, watching reruns of The Dukes of Hazzard on TNN, watching Power Rangers Zeo on Fox Kids, and watching reruns of Sailor Moon and The Woody Woodpecker Show on YTV. In fact, I associate playing Batman: The Video Game with watching Sailor Moon and Woody Woodpecker because basically every afternoon in the summertime my brother, sister, and I would sit in the basement and play Batman: The Video Game and then watch The Woody Woodpecker Show, with Sailor Moon airing after that. At that point Sailor Moon was on in reruns as well because the show had already been cancelled. I'll go into this a bit more when I get around to talking about Sailor Moon, but the show wasn't popular in it's initial 1995 airing and so only 65 episodes had been produced for the original English dub. It wouldn't be until 1997 that the second season of the dub would be complete and be aired for a total of 82 episodes. But, I digress.

 So, like I said, we'd sit in the basement in the afternoons in the summer and watch Sailor Moon and The Woody Woodpecker Show, and play Batman: The Video Game. Occasionally we'd get a bit further in the game, but usually we only got as far as Stage 2-2 (Stage 2, Level 2). I think we did get a little bit further than that once or twice, but that's usually as far as we could get. Don't forget this was in the mid '90s when we were playing this and we didn't have access to the internet at the time, YouTube didn't exist, and there was no strategy guide for this game. At least, not without tracking down an old issue of Nintendo Power that had been long out of print by that point. 

I love the music in this game. Of course I only remember the title music, the stage one theme, the stage two theme, and the game over theme, but those are the most iconic pieces of music in the game for me. Every time I hear one of those themes it brings me back into that basement, where we played this game the most.

Batman: The Video Game was also released on the Nintendo Game Boy. I've never owned this version so I don't know how well it plays in comparison to the NES version. I have seen screenshots of it on YouTube and elsewhere online, so I know it looks completely different than the NES version.

The game also came out on the Sega Genesis. Again, I didn't own this version of the game. I also didn't have any friends who had any Sega consoles. But, again, I've seen screenshots online and the gameplay looks like the 16-bit version of the game. Which it is. 

I think that's going to be it for me for today. I'll be back soon with my Batman (1989) review, though I'm not sure when though because I'm planning on working on the review throughout the week. I'm going to watch the movie on VHS tonight, watch it on Blu-ray on Saturday night, watch it again on Blu-ray on Sunday night, with the commentary turned on, and then I'm going to watch the bonus features on the Blu-ray on Monday night, with the write-up being done throughout the rest of the week so the review should be up by Friday next week. I'll also be doing it that way with the other three movies in the franchise. So, until then have a wonderful weekend and I will talk to you all later. Take care.