The tagline of this game is "The Real Game Begins", but for 1995's "Batman Forever", trying to find actual quality gameplay worth beginning is a feat in itself. Acclaim and Probe once again enter my radar, and with it comes yet another awful outing. But in the case of Batman Forever, it may just be their worst offender. A game so bad, it deserves to be locked up in Arkham Asylum and never released.
1995's film Batman Forever is okay at best. Far from the outright disaster movie that is the 1997 bust Batman and Robin, but suffers from bad writing, a more focus on campier storytelling over the darker elements in the previous films, and of course, the biggest offender of the film was the Bat-Nipples. Still, it made over 300 million in the box office, sold a bunch of toys and McDonald's happy meals (and those Batman pogs they had at the time).
And of course, with it came a video game adaptation. Unfortunately for said video game adaptation, it was Acclaim who had acquired the rights to DC comics at the time. And still under their employ was developer Probe Entertainment, who as I have said before, weren't very good when it came to porting games on the Genesis. Case in point their handling of Mortal Kombat II which just came off as a total mess. And around the same time Midway parted ways with Acclaim as they went to develop the home console ports of Mortal Kombat 3 elsewhere.
But you see Probe had worked on those prior two Mortal Kombat games, and since they thought all they needed to do was coast on the trend of digitized actors in fighting games, they came up with an idea. A terrible, terrible idea. Why not just make Batman Forever a game with digitized actors, but instead of just being another fighting game, let's make it a sidescrolling beat-em-up, complete with fighting moves and tricks? Sounds like a million dollar idea in theory, but as we'd see, Probe simply wasn't the developers to handle such an idea.
Batman Forever is a one to two player beat-em-up in vein of the Mortal Kombat fighting series. You control Batman or Robin through eight levels as you defeat the same standard enemies from stage to stage as you make your way to the movie's main enemies The Riddler and Two-Face. Controls on this game are broken for the most part, but with a six button controller which I'm using, they're a bit more bearable. A and X are your punches, while C and Z are your kicks.
B is block, and Y is your grappling hook, which to get to certain roofs above need to be timed just right, which means you have to press the button then up like pitch perfect, it's a pain. Getting down from areas is no better as you have to press B+C then down. Trust me, it's trickier to get the hang of then it sounds. See, if the game was structured better as a game, these would be the most simple things to do, but feel like the Riddler's most challenging riddle of all.
Each character has a series of moves and gadgets, all done in fighting game style moves. The only ones I've managed to get right control wise were a rolling attack, the batarang, and the grenade. You find more bat gadgets through the game if you actually take the time required to search every area of a level, which for the most part isn't very fun.
The game box boasts over 80 incredible stages, which is really a lie. The game is eight levels long, and the "stages" are just different areas throughout the levels. As for the levels, you have Arkham Asylum, the Gotham bank, a circus, a warehouse, the subway, and more. And most of these levels are basic left-to-right affairs, only somewhat randomly changing concepts like for example in the circus level you have to beat the stage within the allotted time or the places goes boom.
Enemies are annoying in this game, even with your best moves and skills, they can easily dodge attacks, and instantly kill you if you aren't prepared. And with this game's awful hit detection and easy methods of getting you cornered and beat down without any preparation, expect death. They remain the same two or three stock villains as you progress, and very rarely change up their looks or strategies. As for items, there's health and extra lives via Two-Face coins, which you have to collect when it's on its heads side to earn an extra life. And since the sprite is so blurry, it can be hard to make the mistake of which side to touch. So even in earning lives this game is a pain.
The game is littered with secrets, which is the selling point of the game. And to get more extra lives, you need to usually 100% the level by finding all items, beating all enemies and finding all the hidden areas. In the end, it just feels like an attempt to lengthen an already long and difficult video game. Oh, and you get no continues either, so have fun with that.
So let's get to the selling point. The graphics. Overall for the Genesis port, they don't look too bad, albeit not as up to the quality of the Super Nintendo. Sprites are clean, and look a lot better than Probe's attempts in Mortal Kombat II. However, the sprites for Batman and Robin just look lame, especially Robin, who looks less like Chris O'Donnell, and more that one kid who bought a cheap Robin costume at the local Halloween shop. Backgrounds are kinda muddy, and lack a lot of quality to them. On the sound side, the soundtrack is rather forgetful, and nothing really stands out. They added sound effects from Two-Face and Riddler, but they sound really garbled thanks to a poor sound chip.
Batman Forever is a bad video game. Not one of the absolute worst of all time, but a game that tried a concept of being a fighting game based beat-em-up, and not being able to handle the concept right. In fact, if you want a game that did do this well enough on the Sega Genesis, then I recommend Comix Zone, which I feel is a much better play, even if it is unforgiving. As for Batman Forever on the Genesis, it's still better than the SNES port with its horrible load times, but that's about the best praise I can give. Batman Forever can be avoided forever. To quote Tommy Lee Jones on one Jim Carrey "I cannot sanction your buffoonery."
RATING: D-