Batman Returns (Genesis) Playthrough - NintendoComplete

A playthrough of Sega's 1992 licensed-based platform game for the Sega Genesis, Batman Returns.

Batman Returns was an amazing follow-up to, and just as classic as, the 1989 Batman film. And even more than the first film, the games that were based on it were of a pretty consistently high quality. It still wasn't common at that point to have a good game tie-in with a movie, let alone several (and Christmas-time ones are even rarer!). The NES, SNES, Genesis, Master System, Sega CD, and PC games were all different from one another, and were all pretty stellar. The Lynx one... umm... let's just exclude that one.

The Genesis game is the base for the Sega CD version, and both share the same platforming stages. The CD version nearly doubles the length of the game with sprite-scaled Batmobile combat stages, some fancy cutscene work, and a completely different CD soundtrack.

Sega's Batman Returns feels much different than the Konami games, and is much more a platformer than it is a beat 'em up. It relies pretty heavily on the grappling hook to get around some of the tricky gaps it throws at you, and you get a whole set of gadgets to launch at stuff.

It plays pretty well, though the controls have some awkward delays in them - for instance, when you land from a jump, you can't immediately turn around (there's an odd delay before it'll allow you to), which makes for some annoying moments of getting punched in the back of the head. The grappling hook controls can be tricky in their timing - the whole mechanic requires some definite practice before you find yourself not regularly falling into pits, and the entire game requires some serious focus and memorization. It's far from easy - it's not quite as hard as Batman on the NES, but it's not too far from it either. It makes you earn that ending.

Endings, I should say. There are two. When the credit roll begins, Catwoman appears, and you fight her behind the scrolling names. If you beat her, you get the good end. If she beats you (easy to have happen if you over-enthusiastically dropped your controller because you finally beat it), you get a much darker (yet far funnier) ending. I win the game with the good ending, and show the bad one at 33:10.

The game looks alright - the art style is fantastic, and all of the enemies fit the scenery pretty well. For me, what makes this game sit closer to ugly than not is the color scheme. It looks gross. I mean, I get that Batman stuff should be all dark and moody, but when working with a low number of colors, how does green and purple get chosen? There are about a gazillion different palette choices that wouldn't have drawn such attention to the massive amount of dithering going on. It looks messy and a bit snarly. I have no doubt that it would've looked great on a machine with better color, but here, it's pretty eww. The sound, on the other hand, is really well done. I loved the moody music - it suits the game much better than the Sega CD version's music does (even though it still had a phenomenal soundtrack), and the FM synth drives pretty hard throughout.

Overall, it's a really fun, super difficult game. If you are looking for a challenge, this is a great option, and it has the nice holiday theme to it. It's not as good as the SNES classic, but this is still pretty damned good.

Happy holidays, everyone!
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No cheats were used during the recording of this video.

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