2019/12/14: Sega CD: Batman Returns

[VideoGameCritic]

Since I've been playing this a lot, I thought it might be a good time for a re-review. Thoughts?

[DrLitch]

Good Lord this game is literally two concepts mashed together it is shocking it mostly worked. While the Driving Stages sported incredible visuals for the time they were too long for my taste. The actual platforming / beat em up action was good although I wonder how it stacks up to the SNES game. While Batman Return's is considered, at least fairly widely, to be the definitive game of the film, my faint and fuzzy recollection of the SNES game makes me wonder whether folks prefer the Sega CD game given Style > Substance.

Is that a cuss word I see in your review Dave?
p.s. kidding, I behave myself around here, on most other forums I throw around the C word and F Bomb with impunity - In New Jersey they are just colorful metaphors.

[Retro STrife]

Any change to the score? (I'm always curious of that when you do a re-review..)

Thanks for posting this one. I've had Batman Returns for like 10 years (I think it came with my Sega CD set off ebay), but I've never played it -- it's not the type of game I would normally pull off the shelf to try. That's what's great about this website - drawing attention to gems that would otherwise go unplayed.

Is that a cuss word I see in your review Dave?
p.s. kidding.

Judging by it being in brackets, I think it might have been in there as a placeholder, and then slipped by the "censors" on the final draft..

[VideoGameCritic]

Score is the same, A-. I was going to give it a B+ until the last minute. Could have gone either way.

And no I did NOT intend to use profanity! Fixed.

[Stalvern]

Typo: "momentus". There's also an undesirable echo in having "nearly-indestructible" and "nearly ruins the fun" together in one sentence.

(I'm pretty sure that the "beauty queen" who falls off the building is supposed to be the Ice Princess from the movie, even though the celebration she's part of isn't shown.)

[Cafeman]

I haven't played this for a long time, but BITD those driving levels were awesome. The smooth scaling is one thing, but there is also a lot if animation for the explosions, debris, flames. I love seeing the axles etc drop from the sky after a jeep explodes. If only the resolution were a bit higher. Music and sound FX all great. That was a super impressive engine created by Mr. John O'Brien, who went on to form the Clockwork Tortoise team before evidently retiring in the mid 90s.

I tried playing Batman Returns CD on my Raspberry PI but prefer using my Model 1 CD setup. So I agree with the A- score and enjoyed the review. I have no idea why so many 16 bit games had such a high difficulty though. You really have to earn your way through this game. Did you level skip to battle the Penguin Duck boat in the sewers? It's awesome. And impossible.

[VideoGameCritic]

Typo: "momentus". There's also an undesirable echo in having "nearly-indestructible" and "nearly ruins the fun" together in one sentence.

(I'm pretty sure that the "beauty queen" who falls off the building is supposed to be the Ice Princess from the movie, even though the celebration she's part of isn't shown.)

Stalvern - great feedback, thanks!

I fixed the wording in several spots to make the review sound less confusing and more favorable. I retained beauty queen however since people who didn't see the film wouldn't know what an Ice Princess is.

[Verm3]

It would be interesting to see an updated 'Batman and Robin' review, that compares it to this game?

As you seem fairly positive on the 'Batman returns' driving sections today, but back then pretty negative on the 'Batman and Robin' driving sections despite similar flaws being mentioned in the reviews for both?