Retronauts - Retronauts Micro 66: Batman's portable adventures

Episode Date: July 28, 2017

Chris Sims and Benj Edwards help Jeremy field a patron request to explore the Game Gear version of Batman... along with a bunch of other handheld titles we gave short shrift in our recent classic Batman games survey.

This weekend, Retronauts, I am the night. The friend. The friendliest that phrase was ever been smoking. That's the idea, yeah. I love it. I'm happy Batman. I'm the Hello Kitty version of Batman. Hi everyone. Welcome to another episode of Retronauts Micro. I'm Jeremy Parrish. Again, the friendliest Batman you've ever did meet. And this is going to be a Batman themed episode as a sort of corollary to the Batman episode we did a few months back. This is sort of by patron request. Someone requested we tackle

the Game Gear Shinobi and Batman games. that was a difficult request. So we're breaking it into two parts, and the first part of this request is to talk about the Game Gear Batman game in the context of all portable Batman games, because we really gave that aspect of the Batman game franchise pretty short shrift, I think, when we did the full Batman episode. We mostly talked about the early computer games and console games. And then when it came to portable stuff, we were like, yeah, and those existed. So I thought we should maybe circle back and do justice, dark justice, for the portable Batman games. And with me this week,

it's a Retronaut East episode, which means the purveyor of PCs, the Duke of Distractions. That's right. It's been, Jedwards. Say hello, binge. Hi, everybody. And so thanks to him is the Britannica of Batman, the Scrivener of Sword Quest. It's Chris Sims. Thanks, I spent all morning thinking about them.

Scrivener of Sword Quest. Did you write those down? Co-scrivener. What's that? I didn't know. It's all memorized. You're very creative. That's going to be the highlight of the, like, it's all downhill from here. I'm going to be stammering for sentences, not completing my words. It's terrible. I like how you said that tackling the Shinobi games and the Batman games was going to be difficult,

as though playing these Batman games was not itself. I feel like this was torment enough. Yeah. Batman did not have a good time on portable systems in the early days. And replaying these games or playing many of them for the first. first time, really drove that home. Yeah. I have talked a lot about how I had this weird childhood aversion to the Genesis and how I thought

it was for the rich kids, the one percenters, which before anyone says anything, I know it's completely unfounded. I was just a child. But weirdly enough, I did have a game gear. But I never played these Batman games until recently. and I'm pretty okay with that, having gone through them. There are some things to be said for some of these games, especially the Game Gear game.

You mentioned the soundtrack on the game. And that soundtrack was by the one and only Yuzo Koshiro, who is really one of the most legendary video game composers of all time. So, yeah, when I was watching videos and kind of catching up and doing research on this, I was like, man, that music is good. And then I watched the credit role. And I was like, oh, sound programming, Yuzokoshiro. Well, there you go.

Yeah, that's the Batman Returns game for Game Gear, and the, like, the whole soundscape of that game is really good. The sound effects are very pleasing. The music is really fun. Gameplay-wise, it's really just a worse version of the, of the NES Batman game, but it feels good. So one of the things that I find interesting about all these games, you know, kind of taking them holistically and looking at them all together this way, is that they all kind of, do the same things in slightly different ways. They all tend to be kind of, almost all tend to be kind of brawlerish. And most of them have a really, really janky grappling element, like grappling hook.

Even the ones that you would think, like, that doesn't belong there. It still shows up. And I guess that's because they were working from the Tim Burton movie and one of the, you know, one of the trademark moments in that, the iconic moments is when Batman uses his, like, his grappling anchor to pull Vicky veil up. and then he's like, you don't weigh just 90 pounds or whatever. Yeah, sure is a moment. Sure is a moment in that film. Yep. You don't weigh just 90 pounds.

I don't remember exactly what he says. I do. What does he say? It's probably more like more 20. I believe she says she weighs 108. And then he says you don't weigh 108 after. What an ass. Yeah, it's a real jerk move on the part of Batman.

In fairness, I'm sure he was like, had some sort of calculation that he was working like, I've got 108 pounds of woman to carry. I can accelerate this speed. In this hand, I hold 100 pounds of stones. In this hand, I hold Vicky Vale. Which one is heavier? Exactly. 100 pounds of feathers or 108 pounds of Vigie Vale.

Anyway. You talk about them being brawlers, and it's still really weird to me that the thing that a lot of these games seem to default to, up to and including the Batman Returns game, is batter-ranks. Like, that's his default attack is a projectile, whereas you would think that it would be more akin to something like maximum carnage, where it's just fist-fighting, like, you know, final fight style brawling with the projectiles as a secondary attack. But it never really is. Well, in a lot of games, you have a limited number of batterings. And some of the games, you have guns.

It's kind of like, no, why not? Batman can kill a dude. my favorite moment in all of these games is the stage in the links game where Batman just takes down the entirety of Gotham PD It's like the entire stage All you're doing is fighting in Gotham PD I never got that far on it It's the second stage man

It's too hard Fair enough I have never made it that far either I just I mean it's more because I don't have the patience But it's been a long time I got this the links I guess we'll talk about that in a minute

I mean I guess you know They are sort of abstract enough at that At that size and resolution that you could be like No he's actually fighting the Nazis. That's what it is. Well, speaking of brawlers, I mean, the Lynx game definitely is a brawler. It's a side-scrolling brawler like Double Dragon. I think very, very similar.

There's not a lot of platforming involved. Yeah, it doesn't have the, like, the third dimension element that Double Dragon does. It's more of a... It's got more of like the Kung Fu bad dudes style. Which I can turn on. I brought my links from when I was a... Atari. That doesn't do that when I turned on.

So is this a lynx you had in the actual original heyday of links? Yeah, it wasn't exactly the heyday. See, I ran a BBS in the early 90s, and somebody would call my BBS. I told them I was collecting old systems and said, hey, I have a lynx. This is in 93. Unfortunately, people at home can't see what you're playing. Yeah, well, can't you hear it? It's awesome.

This is dietic music. Yeah, I usually spice it in afterwards. The red triangle getting it's changing all that. Actually, he's right. There is no open down depth. But, man, you just. walk around and you beat up clowns. It's like a Saturday afternoon for me.

A lot of these games are very clown heavy, but not like the one clown that you would expect. Well, it's building off of Batman 1989 and Batman returns. Yeah, returns having the... It wasn't a clown heavy, an album by Rush? I think you're thinking of ICP. I seep. Insane clown posse?

No. Never heard of them. Oh, well, see, I come from Michigan. Ben is not down with the Dark Carnival. That's a shame. No, no, I'm not as a square as it gives of the night. Yeah. So, yeah, like you end up because Batman Returns has the weird, you know, penguin was raised in the circus element to it.

These games are, all of the Batman Return games use, like, circus guys as their enemies. Right. And then you get to Batman and Robin, and Robin was raised in a circus. Yeah. So maybe Robin's actually the penguin. Does anyone look into that? I have extensively looked into that. Maybe Batman punched Robin all the time.

What? I think it's part of the circus. Oh. He's a clown. Let's see. I thought you were talking to a child abuse. That's terrible. That was just a terrible joke.

This came off wrong. I couldn't tell it the right way. Okay, well, now that we're all on the same page here. Now that we're really talking about it, there's a lot of circus in Batman. There's more than I thought. Oh, it's the tight. The tights come in from... I think you mean the trunks, not the underwear, as Chris has reminded us.

Well, there's tights and then there's trunks. That's true. Two different things. I mean, you are talking about a man who dresses up as a bat and walks around in the night punching guys. There is something inherently circus-like about that. Well, you always think about Superman and his costume kind of descending from circus strongmen, you know, but you don't really... You don't really see it as much in Batman until you realize that he fights a clown all. alongside a circus boy.

Right. So there's a lot of subtext in Batman, which Frederick Wertham really dove into, maybe not correctly. But certainly it's been a popular topic of discussion and intellectual dissemination. Maybe not correctly, but also maybe not incorrectly. In retrospect. I haven't actually read that book, so I couldn't say. I only know it by reputation. What are you guys talking about?

Seduction of the Innocent by Frederick Wortham. I don't know what that is. You're supposed to read all the supplemental material. I put that in the notes, didn't I? Seduction of the Innocent. Seduction of the... Oh, wait, maybe that was the Metroidvania. Yeah, Selection of the Innocent is a Metroidvania.

Okay, sorry. There's persistent inventory. I don't understand that joke. I don't either, but it's funny. I guess what I'm getting at is that the Batman Returns game on Game Gear, the first level ends with you basically fighting Karnov? Yeah, pretty much.

I didn't get that far. There's some really, it's a, it's a, it's not that fun a game. I played it for like 10 seconds. It really is a... I thought you said you played it a lot as a kid. Which one? The Lynx one. Oh, I thought you were talking about the Game Gear one.

Oh, did he? I don't know, those portable systems all blending. The thing is, I played the Links one a lot, but it was so hard, I really never got fast to the first level. I mean, it was really hard. The interesting thing about that game gear game is that it does give you a choice of routes, so you do have like two distinct levels. each stage, um, which there's not a ton of variation, but it's, it's cool to have.

So one thing I wasn't able to deduce because I don't have a game gear, um, so I wasn't able to play this myself, but, um, the choice of routes you take, does that determine which boss you fight at the end? It seems like every boss in the game is either Catwoman or the penguin. Uh, I, I played through the first level with both routes and they both led to the fire breathing Carnov guy. The second level, I, played through and did get to Catwoman, but I was unable to defeat Catwoman before that those fights are they look super cheap. Yeah. Yeah. She's like, she's got like has like half a dozen different moves, some of which involve like leaping over you and dropping daggers that you have

to stand between with pixel precision. Yeah. She behaves like a, a Mega Man X boss. Pretty much. But like she is fighting a Batman that does not have the mobility or tax. The man has the mobility of a double dragon character. Exactly. Yeah. Not so good. No dashing attack for him. Cinder blocks tied to his feet.

Pretty much. It is a rubber suit. Sorry. So why don't we go through these games in sequence? You know, if you're curious to hear more about Batman games, definitely go back and check out episode. I thought we just went through them. No. We went through a lot of the Batman console games in sequence several months ago, so be sure to check that episode out.

I think it was like episode 92, 93, somewhere around there. I don't know for certain. But you can get more Batman info, especially about the franchise in general, back that away. But these are about the portable games, which began with the Game Boy game. And I think actually the Batman Game Boy game, based on the movie loosely, might actually be the best of these, even though it's probably the visually, visually the least impressive of the set. Yeah, we talked about it a little bit in the last episode, and the most impressive thing about its visuals is that the sprite actually looks really good. Even though it's like eight pixels tall. Yeah, I just can't imagine looking at it on a Game Boy and comprehending any action.

That is a game that definitely plays better on like a virtual or Super Game Boy or like a later model Game Boy, where the screen quality is better. It is kind of, it gets a little hard to read everything. on the original Game Boy. But I will say that they did a really good job of sort of keeping the graphics very clean. The backgrounds are not cluttered with a lot of detail. So you never have to worry really

about losing Batman or losing projectiles, which is always a big problem with Game Boy. So even though everything's really tiny, it reads pretty well on the original Game Boy screen. I think the shooter stages are probably the most difficult part on the original Game Boy, because it's three stages in a row

and you're flying the batwing, and it's just like bullets everywhere, ships flying everywhere. It's, yeah, it's a little more than the poor little system can handle, I think, in its original incarnation. Is there slowdown during that scene, like in the game? Not that I can remember. It holds up pretty well. I mean, it's not throwing a ton of sprites at you,

so it's not like one of those things where it's, you know, taxing the processor. It's more just... The screen is soupy. Yeah, it's like things are tiny and moving quickly, and the refresh rate is really poor. Yeah, it was horrible. Yeah, it's kind of rough. It is a primitive game in a lot of ways,

but I feel like it was designed with a strong understanding of the Game Boy's capabilities and limitations, which you didn't really see in a lot of games of that era. You saw a lot of action games that tried to have big sprites or very detailed graphics, and you're just like, what is happening? Actually, something that does sort of stick out to me when I'm looking at this Batman game versus the other ones

is that it leaves out a lot of the elements that you see in a lot of the other Batman games. There's no wall jumping. Like, you know, the NES game introduced that, and a lot of these games actually carry that forward. There's no grappling hook. The power-up system is extremely simplistic. Like, enemies drop items,

and basically you pick up a power-up and your weapon changes. And sometimes you get power downs, which is really dushy. Yeah. That's always super fun to encounter it again. But really, it's a much more straightforward. forward, you know, just kind of like a run and shoot style game, I don't know what I'd compare it to. It's not as fast or intense as Contra.

It's not as varied as Mega Man. It's kind of, you know, like a B tier below those games. So not as memorable, but still decent. I think removing Batman's mobility has a lot to do with that because, you know, the wall jumping is cool, like the grappling hooks, even if the grappling hooks never quite work, they do add an element so you're not just a guy walking across the screen. you know, much slower than, say, a Mario, or even a Mega Man, honestly. So the mobility, I think, is a key element that that game doesn't have.

You just end up feeling like you're in a Batman costume walking around and it's hot out. Man, that's how I felt today. It's hot, hot there. People can't see Benj, but he is in full. Full Batman gear. Hey, guys, watch this. He's called it. you've got like a plaid thing going and you're like picnic batman i'm sure there has been an

action figure that was like a plaid picnic blanket batman there there were some crazy batman guys i mean arctic is is just the tip of the iceberg there was one there's like a scuba batman toy and it's actually kind of weird that none of these games try to capture those ridiculous toys that kenner was it kinner that came up with these retell whoever galube i don't know. But yeah, like you'd go to the store throughout the 90s and there'd always be like neon yellow Batman's or like bright blue Batman's. I don't know if that's really kind of keeping with the Tim Burton vision there. But okay, sure, why not? There was always one figure that looked right and then like five other Batmans that were like talking street luge Batman. But I remember

for the animated series. Batman painted in the colors of the Jamaican flag. Why not? Yeah, for the animated series, it was combat belt Batman, who just had a super giant utility belt that you could remove and then have a baseline Batman. Anyway, they did that with Spider-Man, too, with a crazy, crazy Spider-Man, like, anyway, that's a Spider-Man podcast. I don't know, you'd think that they'd get some synergy with the brand going on and at least put some of those ridiculous Batmans to use in these games, but it's always just like Batman and tights. It's never, it's never like fancy armored Batman or, like, outer space Batman. or anything like that. Yeah. A missed opportunity, in my opinion.

Yeah. So the second Batman portable game was also on Game Boy, and that was Return of the Joker. And it has nothing whatsoever to do with the NES Genesis Return of the Joker game. It's nothing, nothing at all to do with them. In fact, I was... It doesn't even have Joker in it. I think it does have Joker in it,

but this game, like, the Links game you said is hard. This game is ridiculously hard. I could not believe how difficult this game was. I was... You can pick any of three, levels to begin with. And I could not beat a single one of those levels. Not playing on original hardware either. Like playing on, you know,

the backlit Game Boy Advance where everything is like very fast and crisp and bright. It's just, it's brutal. I could not believe how difficult the game was. I was reading an article doing some research and came across an article at Hardcore Gaming 101 that speculates this was not originally a Batman game. That it was originally meant to be some sort of game about it,

like a ninja or samurai or something, because all the enemies are kind of like ninja. And then the bosses are all sort of samurai-style enemies, except Joker at the very end. But everything else is, it's not very Batman. It's very like you're fighting through, you know, Japan medieval times or something. So it's just a ROM hack, essentially. Pretty much. Yeah. Like the, the speculation is that they were making a game based on their own original idea or whatever. And then the Batman license came up and they were like, why don't we change the sprite and put Joker at the end? Close enough.

I think that the reverse of that happened to a lot of games where they first developed it to be a license of some movie and then they didn't get the license and then they take them on. Yeah, actually Sunsoft had one of those. Donkey Kong was originally supposed to be a Popeye tie-in or something like that. Yeah, I think they wanted it to be a Popeye tie-in, but they couldn't get the license. So they were just like, okay, we'll just do our own thing. But actually Sunsoft, the makers of Return of the Joker,

had a game sort of like that. It was supposed to be a Superman game for NES, and the license fell through, so they changed to Sunman, like Sunsoft. It's their superhero, Sunman, of course. I loved him as a kid. But then that game never actually came out, so it's one of those lost games

that Frank Sefaldi found, or his people, found, and dug up and posted at the lost levels. So you can check that out. It's pretty competent. It's not Sunsoft's best work, but definitely better than any super... Man video game I can think of.

I think the time is right for Sunman to make a return alongside Konami Man and possibly Aki Man. Are you going to be writing that comic, Chris, the Sunman? Absolutely. Hit me up. Sunsoft, if you're listening. Sunsoft is interested in being a force in games again. I mean, they commissioned that remake of Blastermaster for 3DS and Switch, and that was really good.

More interested than Konami is. So, Konami Man probably not going to make the final script. Oh, yeah, yeah. When that Castlevania series came out on Netflix a couple of weeks ago, Konami, I don't think they acknowledged it at all. But Nintendo was like, oh, yeah, we should put our Castlevania games on virtual console on sale. So that was it. Nintendo cares more about Castlevania now.

By the way, I'm ready to do the, I'm ready to do the micro episode on that, too. On that Castlevania? Yeah. Oh, boy. Boy, that is. I have some opinions about that show. Yeah, I do, too. Okay, well, I know what our next up the micro episode will be. All right. But you guys will have to wait. But you guys will have to wait.

like a month or two for that. Sorry. Maybe we can do like a full episode and cover the weird Mega Man Children's Day video that was on Netflix like 10 years ago. I miss that. It was bananas. Mega Man Children's Day? Yeah. It was it was very clearly like a Japanese produced like weirdly educational short film. Based around Christmas or something? It was I think I think it was Children's Day. Okay. Which is a Japanese thing. And then it was it was about Mega Man coming to the real world and learning about holidays. And I was all in. I never saw that, but I have heard of it. And it sounds ridiculous. Is that still like available somewhere to watch? I think it, it was on Netflix back in the Wild West days of Netflix, where, you know, just stuff was on there.

Yeah, just a bunch of crap. But I don't think it still is, but I'm sure, I'm sure it is able to be tracked down. Wow. Because I believe it was like translated and voiced in English and everything. Because if you're going to translate a Mega Man anime, Why not the one about a Japanese holiday? Yeah. That's sure. Why not? All right. So anyway, Return of the Joker.

Did you guys try playing this at all? Did you have a chance? No. Okay. Well, let me tell you, you're missing out on one of the best-looking and most ruthlessly brutal Game Boy games I've ever seen in my life. Like I said, it's really difficult. And part of that is because it tries to give you a lot of control over Batman, but it doesn't

really give you control in the way you think. Like, Batman has a lot of inertia, and he has a very slippery way of getting around. So he can do these, like, you know, wall jumps and stuff, but then he lands. And kind of realistically, he'll take, like, an extra step or two as he comes to a stop, which, you know, like, oh, yes, that's just like in the real world. But guess what? I don't play video games to have realistic physics. I play video games because these guys are way better at getting around than I am, and they do exactly what I want, as opposed to my body, which flails around like sloppy meat. and I can't control the way that I can

in a video game. I don't want my Batman to be sloppy meat. So that's the big problem with this game. It's very well animated. Like Batman kind of like he kind of has like a Frank Miller look to him honestly. Very hulking, very large, very well built

and then his cape flows out behind him and when he turns around his cape swirls around him. It's very, very impressive like that they did this on Game Boy. But boy howdy, is it not fun at all? I believe you. And to grapple, you like press up and, try to remember, up and jump while you're in the air, I think. Oh, wow.

Actually, I think you just press up and jump, and you can grapple either while you're standing or while you're in the air. But it's very imprecise, and you can't do like buying a commando where you swing and release and swing and release. You basically swing and then flop back and forth, and it's very imprecise and very hard. hard to control, and mostly I ended up dying. And then, like, midway through the first stage, this pipe bursts and water starts rising, and Batman dies if he's in the water for like five seconds. It's really great, just like in the cartoons. Yeah, he dies all the time. He's like a GTA three hero. Every episode.

I think imprecise and awkward button combinations are really the trademark of the Batman console series. Kind of, yeah. I feel... Sunsoft did it so well with the NES game. I mean, it's a tough game, but I feel like Batman does exactly what you want him to do. Like, you can do very precise wall jumps by, you know, pressing against the wall and jumping at a certain time. Like, you can jump and then sort of slide down the wall. And if you want to, you know, make like this kind of halfway half height wall jump, you wait until he slides down to just the right height. And with that split second, you press the jump and wall press button.

And he does it. And it's great. Like, it takes a little practice, but it's very, it's very consistent. consistent and very precise. It's a game that's difficult, but it's not difficult because of a failure of design. Right. It's difficult by design. Yeah.

And no other game that I've played in the Batman series, you know, the vintage Batman games, managed to do it quite that well. Konami did a pretty good job with some of their games, but it's like, I feel like Sunsoft should have, you know, laid down the foundation here for everyone to build off of as opposed to being like, look, we have given you the golden example that you will never be able to reach. What happened there? Mr. Driller is a charming and fun game, but when you stop and think about it, Susumu Hori's job really stinks. He's constantly drilling down into the earth, dealing with toxic cookies and suffocation. That's no way to make a living. I think Susumu Hori needs to use Dice. Dice can provide insight and guidance for his perfect job and yours, a perfect job to match your skills, experience, and location.

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So when you're ready to buy, visit True Car to enjoy a more confident car buying experience. Some features are not available in all states. Hey, Jeremy, I'm just curious. Do you know the best possible way to listen to Retronauts? I just want to know. Is it through the Podcast One app? That is right. We are a Podcast One podcast, and we are both recommending to you, the listener, the Podcast One app. So if you use the Podcast One app, you can find out everything about your favorite shows, including Retronauts.

And from what I hear, Jeremy, we have some bonus content on that app, right? Yeah, actually, if you really, really want to get inside the studio here, which, I don't know, it's kind of a gloomy-looking studio. We couldn't fit one more person. You can. You can with the 360-degree VR-cam option on some episodes. You can be in the studio with the VR headset of your choice, I think. It won't be like really being in the studio, though, because you won't get that nice smell that a warm, unventilated room gets after six hours of marathon recording. But it's as close as you can come without feeling nauseated.

There's really no other podcast app like the Podcast One app. Download the all-new podcast app now in the app store or on Google Play. So, Chris, it seems like you spend some time with this one. Yeah, I... So go ahead and fill us in. I was actually playing it today. It looks good.

It probably looks, I would say, about as good as the NES game with its very cool purple Batman. But the sounds are really good. The idea of having the two different approaches for each level is interesting. It's just not a really fun game. It does something really interesting with the attacks where you're, you know, you hit the attack button once and you throw a batarang and then while the batarang is in the air if you continue attacking you'll just punch so i kind of like the idea that batman's just holding one thing

and then when it's gone he's back to his fists uh you can also control the distance and power of the batarang which is really interesting but it's not there's not an appreciable difference that allows for strategy and anyway it's just like do i want to hit a guy who's further away or hit a guy harder who's closer. So it's one of those things where they added it, but you're not sure why? Yeah, like the, there's really no reason to ever shift from the default battering unless you just want to try the others out. But great music.

Playing it with no sound is almost a completely different experience from playing it with sound because it adds so much. Like, you know, in terms of the way the game feels and plays and how it feels more responsive, the sounds add so much to it. that it's a really interesting experience to play it while you're watching TV like I was today and then plug in a headphone. And be like, oh, suddenly the game is fun.

Yeah. A little more fun. Okay, somewhat more fun. But yeah, good sound design in a game can make a difference. And again, this was, the sound was done by Koshiro, who is, you know, was, still is, just like pretty much legendary. And he's the one who made Streets of Rage so good because it's a pretty good brawler.

It's a good brawler if you just play it. But if you play it with the music, then you're like, oh, yes, okay. Now I understand I'm raving as I punch these guys. Yeah. And yeah, this definitely has that sense. The game was actually developed by Aspect, who is one of those third-party developers that only worked with Sega, and I don't know anything about them. But Kishiro's company was ancient. So I guess it was like an Aspect ancient collaboration.

I don't know. But pretty solid. It seems kind of like it's based on the Genesis game. Do you think that's the case? It doesn't have some of the weird trademark elements Like the diagonal Fallen Building level or anything like that But it still feels

I don't know Like it kind of reminds me of that one Yeah I think I think that's a fair comparison Because you know that's the whole deal with the Game Gear Was that it was giving you that Genesis experience That you could play for about 10 minutes at a time Before going to the store for more batteries Right

Still a little bitter about my Game Gear experience as a child Yeah game gear was a system where you just bought the AC adapter. Bought the batteries. Bought the adapter. Yeah. Also, if you want a really bad one, the Turbo Express, eats batteries.

You can play that for like 30 minutes or something on six double-a batteries. How was the nomad? I never really used that one. It's not that bad. I have a nomad. It's not, nothing like Game Boy, like 8 to 10 hours or whatever, but it's not as bad as the Turbo Express. That's all I can say.

Okay. I'm glad Sega got it right after. after the game gear debacle. I mean, it's not, it's not like, I don't know if it's better than the game gear, because there's a lot of hardware going on there, and it's got a power-hungry color backlit screen and stuff. Chris, did you ever get the Game Gear TV adapter?

Because I imagine that thing. The TV tuner? Yeah. Did that have its own batteries? Or did it run off the system's batteries? I think it ran off the system. I don't remember, though. What did that do to the battery? Like, could you even get through like an episode of duct tape?

No, of course not. Of course not. I never owned the TV tuner, but a friend of mine's cousin had it. So I got to goof off with it for a weekend. Three amazing channels to choose from. Yeah. You could take TV with you. And, you know, now that you mention it, since the nomad is a portable system,

we should be talking about all the Genesis games, too, during this episode. Yeah. Let's just make it a super macro episode again. One other thing about the Batman Returns game, the villain design, I think, is actually really good. good. All of the villains are that they have very distinct sprites. They're really easy to pick out. They behave consistently. And you get like a nice, in that first level, you get like a nice little warning of what each person is going to do, which I think really, really helps the game. But unfortunately, like, Catwoman is a really good sprite and like a really cool boss that is, that I could not beat. Yeah, just wrong for the game. Yeah. is what it seems like to me.

And then I think you, do you only fight Penguin at the end of the game? Did not get there. I literally could not get that final boss. And he's obligatory duck ride thing that he drives around on. Are there clowns in that one too? Oh, yeah. Everybody's a clown.

Everybody's clowns. They sent in the clowns. One thing that the only, I guess, enemy in quotes that was really frustrating is every now and then just a cobopopop for mayor campaign bug. will roll onto the screen, and it doesn't do anything. It's easy to dodge. If you stand there, it'll hit you and bump you back and take off a little bit of life.

But you just have to kind of, like, throw batarangs at the truck until it explodes. It's part of the storytelling. The lore. They put some, you know, the sign on the bus that comes in with the truck. So what is the story there? I have no idea. Okay. Yeah.

Good looking, good sounding, but not particularly fun. So there was one other Batman Returns, portable game, and that was on Links. So, Binge, why don't you tell us about this one, since it is your childhood we're speaking about here. Yeah, well, I was about 12, and I first played it, and it was really hard, and we've already talked about it.

I mean, it's a side-scrolling, beat him up. It's got good music. The graphics are all right. It's satisfying. It has great punching sound effects. Like, you're talking about sound design, and it does make it satisfying

to punch a bunch of clowns. Jimmy, you heard it. You heard it earlier. Yeah, the thing that strikes me about this game is that it's, Chris was talking about how the enemies and Batman Returns on Game Gear are really good about telegraphing their actions. The enemies in this game are not good about telegraphing their action.

Like, these clowns pop out of nowhere and throw dynamite at you. And they throw it in such an arc that you have to be standing in just the right spot when they throw it. Otherwise, you'll take a dynamite stick to their face. They knock you down nonstop. I think there are some giant ducks that come in, kind of like in the movie. Isn't there a sewer sequence, too? I thought that was the second stage. I can't remember.

Like with the penguin. It could be. I don't know. There's a super sequence in the movie. Yeah. Well, I never got very far on that game. Yeah, I've played a bit of the game, and it's like super unfair and kind of rough. But it has that sort of like, you know, kung fu slash dragon ninja versus bad dudes or whatever kind of style, where it's a side scrolling brawler.

And those tend to be kind of limited, especially when you have graphics that take up so much of the screen real estate, like Batman. man does this one. It has really big sprites, which is something links could do and do really well. It's just like push tons of sprites at huge sizes. But there's no time for like enemies to telegraph. The funny thing about the links is the resolution is only like 160 by 100 or something ridiculous. It's super low resolution. I played this same game on the emulator recently. I was like, man, you cannot tell what's going on because it's so sharp on your screen. There's these gigantic pixels. You really have to see it two inches by three inches on a screen, blurry on the actual machine to make sense of the graphics.

Then they look great, you know. Right. So, whatever it is. What is it? Three, three by two kind of. Something like that. Yeah, but yeah, you're right. The resolution's really low and it is really tough to play a links game blown up to HD sizes.

You never do that. I have links with VGA out that can run on my television, but it's a 42-inch TV, so it is an indecipherable mess. It's like, what's happening? What's the point? Right. you could take off your glasses and play it and it might be good blur it a little bit it's you know one of those magic eye things if you if you cross your eyes you're like oh yes I start to see Batman I think if you the last my last point on that game is if you took out the clowns that threw dynamite at you it might be a fun game you could actually get through it that's all I'm going to say about that maybe but I feel like the the Gotham PD stage where there's like dudes shooting at you at multiple angles and they've got like shotgun blast that follow you across the screen it doesn't seem very fair.

So it's kind of that that philosophy of game design of just like destroy the player, make them miserable. Yeah, make them feel like it's their own fault when it's actually the game sucks. That's the problem. Okay, so I will say

the next game on the list was much better. I did somewhat enjoy it. It gets a little boring because the levels are so sprawling, but it's very competently made, and that is Batman the animated series for Game Boy. which is much better looking than the original Batman for Game Boy and much more fair and reasonable than Return of the Joker.

Did you guys have you? I played it a little bit. I thought it was good. Well done. Well animated. I didn't play it on the original Game Boy, so I don't know how it looks on that screen. It looks nice at the tiny size.

You know, you can play as Batman in some stages and then occasionally Robin comes in and is like, I'll take over now, Batman. So you get to play as both characters. And they're pretty similar, but Batman, you distinguish it based on the grappling wire. Like Batman

has the grappling hook, whereas Robin will leap up, and because, you know, in the animated series, he was a circus kid. So he just like clings to overhead surfaces. Kind of like you know, Shadow of the Ninja or something. Yeah. Now, what's that? Stryder. Doesn't Strider? He does, yes. Strider does.

Strader does. Climb to the ceiling. Strader's got his cool. Yeah, he has a sithe or something like that. He's just harvesting. Robin. That's right. Well, he kills the Soviet Polat Borough and takes their sickle. It doesn't take their hammer, though. That's weird. Now, like, does this have, I mean, presumably a similar approach to, like, the graphics as the Suprenuous game at the same time?

That had kind of like the isometric graphics. They looked isometric even though it was actually 2D, right? It had like the kind of like force perspective where you could see the tops of surfaces. Yes. No, this doesn't have that so much. It's more of a traditional side scroller. The levels are completely different. But it does do the thing where it breaks each stage into its own episode, quote unquote.

So you get like an episode title at the beginning of each stage. And you find a different boss at the end. It's, yeah, it's a very nice looking game. I probably would have enjoyed it as a kid. But I feel like, like I said, it gets a little, kind of drags out a little bit because the levels are really big. And there aren't really any, at least in the like the three or four stages I played, there weren't any just major challenges that made me say, oh, wow, I need to really get good.

Yes. You have to... No, there are bad guys. They're clowns. They're clowns. They're clowns. And the teddy bears will explode so you can punch them away

so that the petty bears don't explode on you. How could teddy bears ever betray us? Well, that's... Mr. Stay puffed. That's a good-looking Batman spright. Like, yeah. We're going to talk about this again in a minute. Oh, and it's got the wall jumps, too.

I really like that this is a Batman who, like, they've structured the levels to have like shadows in the background and when Batman jumps into the shadows he kind of blends in but you can still tell where he is right and they they're very smart about where they put the shadows because it's not critical areas it's more like kind of in corners and backgrounds so it's there and it gives it atmosphere and it gives it you know like I am the night but it doesn't it doesn't interfere with how the game plays and you're never like oh I just lost sight of Batman where did he go and they do the same trick that the animated series did of giving like the interior of the cape a lighter shade. So it always frames his actual

body, which is good. Yeah, that's a good idea. And this one was by, um, by Konami. And so, you know, they, Konami worked to a higher standard of quality than most developers at that point. So, so that, that, that I think that explains why it looks so good, sounds so good, plays well. Um, it actually reminds me when you play, especially as Robin, a dark wing duck by Capcom, which I'm sure is just going to fuel that whole Capcom Konami confusion thing that the internet likes to do, but it definitely has that sort of sense where

it's, you're very versatile, but sometimes you stick to things and you don't want to, which is a little annoying. Yeah, you can, there's, there's some real, there's a real Castlevania feel, just watching this this video here. Yeah, I do think the levels, like I said, drag on a bit. I think if they were maybe

half the length, or maybe even if it just broke the levels up in half and gave them to you as like sub-episodes or something, you know, give you a commercial break in between, I don't know. What are all those clowns doing at that warehouse with spikes in platforms? What are clowns ever doing in Batman? It's Gotham City. That's right.

Every warehouse has its own allotment of clowns. It's like San Francisco. I don't think, I think you're thinking of tech bros. They're out there trying to get you to invest their startup. Yeah. Throwing food truck tacos at you. It's the Uber of crimes.

So, yeah, maybe in 20 years, Batman will be going around punching those guys. All right. that was a high point. Now we come to the low point, which is Batman Forever for Game Boy and Game Gear. This is the one I've been waiting to talk about. Oh, my God.

This one, I played the Game Boy version, and it's actually the same game as the Game Gear version, which is the same game as the console versions. And, boy, the further you get away from the console versions, the more you wish that life could just be over. Yeah, the Game Gear version is trash. No, Game Boy version is trashier. That's shocking.

The Game Gear's got to be worse. No, the Game Boy version is so bad. But go on, go on, Chris, and binge. Let's hear, let's hear about it. You can't make assertions like that. I played it. It's just, what are you saying? Devil's advocate?

Yeah. At least the Game Boy version has, like, an excuse in terms of graphical limitations. The entire deal with the Game Gear, like, the whole selling point of the game gear was that it was a portable color system, like, at a time when Game Boy was at best, like, soupy green. but they have made Batman a dark gray and black sprite and put him against dark gray and black backgrounds. And on top of that, it's one of those like, hey, what if everything was like Mortal Kombat games where the combat is garbage? And I was playing it. Hey, Mortal Kombat's good.

This is, I would say this game was really based on more like Pit Fighter. There you go. Even Batman's animations, he's like wobbling back and forth doing the push your dukes up thing. He's got his kitty cat claws? It's so bad. I'll fight you with one hand behind my back.

I'll fight you with my eyes closed. I played this game today and I got through the first two enemies and then I think like everyone who has played this game got stuck. Yeah. You're like, what the hell do I do now? Yeah. And I went to YouTube

and watched a dude for 10 minutes, get increasingly angry at this game, getting stuck at the same part that I am, and then finally figuring out the button combination to change levels, which is down and then up. Which I'm sure it tells you in the instruction manual. Probably, but it's not intuitive. It's not intuitive.

Nothing about this game is intuitive. I did pretty much the same thing with the Game Boy version, because the first level, at least, is exactly the same on both versions of the game. And, like, you beat up the first couple of guys, and you're like, okay, this is not good, but I can do this. And then you come to a wall

and you're like, what? It's a dead end. It's just shovelware. I think it's just like, you know, just to make a book. I don't think it was shovelware. I think it was an attempt to do the digitized graphics thing

and the pre-rendered graphics and like create this photo realistic game that was just made by people who didn't do a good job with it. Yeah, I mean, I think the... I think they actually tried because it does have the grappling hook element. That's what you have to figure out.

to get to the next level is to use the grappling hook. Except that he doesn't actually use a grappling hook, he just jumps really high. Oh, and some of the... On the game gear one. Okay, some of the versions he uses a grappling hook. That would make sense. It could be that the grappling hook on the game gear was also done in like a shade of black

so you just can't see it. It's entirely possible. I think the console version is trying something. It sucks, but it's trying something. I think again, like you said, Jeremy, the further way you get from the console version, the more stripped down it becomes. And they're trying to make this game on a system that not only is it a bad idea

that they were trying, but it's a bad idea that then becomes limited and limited by technical limitations. And then they just make bad choices, like making Batman the same color as the background. Yeah. I mean, at least the Game of Your version does have some colors. So, like, if you look at the enemies, you can tell, oh, this is a different enemy than the one I was just hitting before. Whereas on Game Boy, all of that is lost. Like, it takes the, you know, the digitized graphics and strips those down to four shades of gray, which results in just, just these, like, huge abstract areas of nothing. You're like, there's something there. I can't really tell what's happening. Batman, like, you can kind of tell Batman as Batman, if you can account

for his weird stance and bad punching stance. But the enemies are incoherent. The backgrounds are abstract and nonsensical. It's really bad. It's just like blobs of solid color in the background. I can't imagine playing this game on a Game Boy. I can barely get through it on Game Gear where there were colors. The enemies all look better than Batman.

They look more visually interesting than Batman, which is never where you want to end up. it's it's really I do appreciate that all of the enemies have distinct names that were clearly written at like

10 minutes before we got to get out of the office like I fought a guy named mumbo and I was like next dude's named Jumbo and there he comes

the one thing that I also the level seemed to end at random like you just kind of get to a point where I'm like I got to the end of the level and it was like

hey you've cleared bank one and I was like awesome because that whole level sucked what's the next one Oh, it's more bank. More of this incomprehensible 13-story bank. And I'm like, I solved the riddle. Can I just go to the 13th floor?

Clowns? There are some clowns. And I don't know. I played the Game Boy version. So it's really hard for me to say definitively what the enemies are supposed to be. There were some pixels, little blobs of pixels that came at me and I punched them. And one thing to note is that the collision detection on this is very, it's very inventive. Like the way you can punch a guy

And you maybe whiff your attack by like five pixels But it still counts as a hit Why not? Why not? Yeah, there's also like super The controls are super laggy Like if you If you are hitting punch And you want to stop punching

It's a little bit of a weight If you're once you get into that Yeah, every other Every other portable game Or Batman game we've talked about so far Has been designed specifically for a handheld console. This is a game that was

designed for consoles and then stripped down for handhelds. And it shows exactly why no one should ever do that. If you are making a portable game, design it for the limitations and nature of your system.

Don't just strip out the details of the console game because it's terrible. No one has a good time with it. You hate children. What's wrong with you? There's also an equipment select screen that I know wasn't glitched, but was

so incomprehensible that it might as well have been, like, stage 256 in Pac-Man? Like, it's nonsense. I got fed up and peaked ahead at a long play of this for the Game Gear version, and eventually you can get, like, night vision and stuff. I have no idea what that's for, but there's like, there's kind of an adventure element

where you get night vision, and you have to, like, find these holograph visions, yeah. You have to find these holographic projectors, and I don't... Are we still talking about Batman forever? Yeah. Okay. Because this game is just so, so... odd awful. It's a trucious. It just played it so much. Like I can't stop thinking and talking about

this game because it's so bad. I spent more time playing this than anything else today before I came over. So it's actually good. It's so good. No, I was like, because I had to, first of all, I had to like stand around for five minutes trying to figure out how to advance, which is never a fun thing. Just about You're just a little bit of it. Yeah, it's one other that I think deserves it all up now. and that is Batman and Robin.

There was one portable adaptation of Batman and Robin, and, you know, major Hollywood blockbuster motion picture gets one portable game. What system would that be on? Would it be on Game Boy, Game Boy Color, even the dying ancient game gear, maybe Neogeo Pocket Color? No, no.

Thegame.com? It is the game.com. Yeah, I think I have this one. What? Tell us about it. It's terrible. Everything on the game.com is just atrocious. There was a Zodiac thing, though, wasn't there?

Like an astrology app? I didn't have that one. There's one on lights off. There's nothing good on. Lights off is okay because it's like their portable game where you push lights and they turn on adjacent to the button you push and stuff. And there's a solitaire built in. That's about the only thing. I'm sorry.

I'm more of a Batman expert than a retrogaming expert. What is a game.com? I'm glad you have. What the hell is a game. Yeah. Tiger. You know, the company that made those handheld. LCD games.

They made their own Game Boy competitor around 97 or so and it had a built-in it had a touchscreen with a little tiny stylus but it was monochrome. Yeah, it was ahead of its time in some senses but it was also really bad. Yeah, it was neat but the games were just terrible for it.

Yeah. I mean, there were ports of Metal Gear Solid and Castlevania Symphony of the Night for the system that never came out but they straight up made those games into black and white for this system. And I know people who have played those versions of the games, and they're like, yeah, those are bad. There's a Sonic game

for this, too, but it's just like, you can't see anything. It's black and white and mushy. When did the Game Boy Color come out? 1998. So this came out in 1997 as a brand new black and white portable system. Bad move. Oh, there was a brand new black and white portable system that came out in Japan in 1999,

The Wonder Swan. Yeah, but it only took one battery. Yeah, it was like $40. So it was meant to be the budget system. So speaking of Tiger Electronics, I do think it is time for a very quick reader mail. We get letters and read them to you now. So this is from Dylan Todd Wilder.

I just wanted to point out that Tiger Electronics produced a series of licensed Batman games in the early to mid-1990s that brace yourselves. Here we go. that weren't very good, but are probably worth noting if just to avoid snotty tweets. If memory serves, the games were a repetitive loop of semi-static images and terrible chip tunes. That sounds about like a Tiger Electronics game and a Batman game. So there we go.

Actually, you know, the Game.com gameplay of those games was really similar to the LCD games. It had like two frames of animation. But they just... They could have done so much more. Also, one more thing that I was mad at speaking of bad chip tunes. The music in Batman Forever also sucks super hard, which coming straight to it from Batman Returns was really disappointing. It's weird because it was developed in Europe, and usually European game developers, if they did anything right, it was they would come up with amazing music, but they whifted on that one. From Pierre Luc Gagne, I don't know if I pronounce his name right, it's French, sorry about that.

Just a quick word about Batman, the video game for Game Boy, I'm hard pressed to find another game beside it that followed in the footsteps of Super Mario Land. What do I mean? It features sprites that are proportionately the same size as they would be if the game were on a TV, and those two games are it. The sprites, spright size set, forwarded by Super Mario Land and followed by Batman was a dead end. Isn't that fascinating? I agree. That's actually, I was kind of talking about that, about how the game was designed with really tiny sprites that worked really well on the Game Boy screen. Most devs did not do that. From Juan Guterres, in my opinion, the best hand held game is Batman Return of the Joker.

Ooh, I don't know if I can agree. Which has the best music and graphics. It's too short. It has nothing to do with Dynamite Batman, the word NES version that has Batman shooting weapons. To this day, I regret getting rid of my original copy. For my personal taste, I only place the adventures of Batman and Robin for Super Nias above it

among all 2D Batman games. So I clearly have a difference of opinion with this man. I always like the gameplay mechanics on the grappling hook, despite being a little cumbersome to use. But I think this is one of the first Batman, I think this one is the first Batman game with one. You can use batterings in a limited fashion, but Batman's fists are the main weapon. This Batman always felt like the one in the comic books in a similar sense, like the Batman

of the Super NES game followed, mentioned above, felt like the cartoon one. The train is my favorite stage, followed by the sewers, both levels showcasing excellent graphic effects in the humble Game Boy brick. That is true. I will say that Game Boy's Return of the Joker has some really crazy raster effects, like when the level floods. You're like, how did they do this on the Game Boy screen? It's crazy. But that's all I can really say that's good for it. He also says, Batman Forever is not a good game, and the music is horrible, and that's all I can say about it. Then finally, from Jess Reagan, Batman held held games. I was introduced to the game many years after it was released, but I was nevertheless

impressed with the Game Boy version of Batman the animated series. Konami managed to squeeze a lot into that 128-bit kilobit cartridge, including a reproduction of all the show's opening scene. It's not full-motion video, hell, there's barely any motion at all, but it's recognizable, and that's you could reasonably expect on Game Boy. What I remember most about this game are the criminal's lame schemes, coupled with a limited number of times you're allowed to continue. So if you screw up while trying to foil Joker's plots to fill the streets of Gotham with exploding teddy bears, there you go.

Batman just gives up and goes home. Apparently he's decided, apparently he decides he's got no business defending the cities if he can't save it from an army of stuffed animals. I mean, that is pretty low hurdle to clear. I would have done the same thing. Yeah, I mean, I'm with Batman there too. In fact, I did, and I never played that game just because of that. So I think what we can take away from this is that these games were mostly not that good,

but people still have a certain affection for some of them except Batman Return or, yeah, Batman Forever because there's nothing good about that, nothing redeemed. It all comes down to, did you first play these games before you were 12 years old? Sadly, I love them. I don't know. I think I could have, and did make a qualitative judgment even at like 10 years old about Batman games. That is also probably true. Sometimes you just know crap when you see it. Yeah, but then we have nostalgia about crap, just like my, the links game.

Oh, yeah, and your obsession with deadly towers. Well, yeah. I just looked out the window again. Stop that. I got to say, I went and looked up after that email. I went and looked up a video of Return of the Joker on the Game Boy, and it does look really good. Like, it looks pretty fun. Damn, that's actually the best game of all.

It's so hard, though, and so clumsy. Yeah, well, it's frustrating. I don't, I didn't play that one. But yeah, check out that water effect. It's crazy. That's almost scary. That would have terrified me if I saw that the game. They do like this raster thing that causes like the, it's like a reflection or something.

Yeah, it's like a, a line by line distortion effect. If you pause the game, like that keeps going, you can't freeze that because it's basically like baked into the code or something. I don't know. But it's, it's impressive to see. Yeah. Wow. I just wish the game were less, I don't know, like being. punched in the testicles.

Castlevania stuff. Oh, I don't know, man. Some of us liked that a whole lot. All right. All right, Trevor. Okay, so anyway, that wraps it up for this much too long micro episode. I guess we just had a lot to say about bad Batman games. That's us.

That's Retronauts. Thanks, everyone, for listening. Guys, why don't you tell us about yourselves and where to find you on the internet? I am Benj Edwards. I am a freelance journalist. I'm writing about stuff. and vintagecomputing.com is my website, and you can find me on Twitter at Ben Jedwards. You can find me on Twitter as the ISB, and you can head to the dashisb.com to get links to everything I do,

podcasts and stuff that I write, and the comic books that I write, including for the retro game fan, Dynamite's Sword Quest, currently out at your local comic bookstore and on Comixology. Zero Issues free on Comixology. Go read it if you haven't. I hope it's okay if I just get the trade on that one. That's what I do. I've got a ordered. Thanks, Jeremy. Sorry. Thanks. Thanks a ton. Sorry. Who has time for floppies these days? I tell you what. Comic books. So anyway, then I, myself, am Jeremy Parrish. You can find me on Twitter as game spite. I'm not really that spiteful, though. Only to Batman games. Bad Batman games.

Retronauts, of course, is at Retronauts.com on iTunes, on the podcast one network, the podcast one app. And also at Patreon, patreon.com slash Retronauts, which is how I turn on the electricity to record this podcast. It's a great subtle circle of life. So thanks for listening. Thanks for supporting us. We'll be back in a few days with a full episode and back in two weeks with another micro, possibly about Castlevania. I don't know. The Mueller Report. I'm Ed Donahue with an AP News Minute. President Trump was asked at the White House if Special Counsel Robert Mueller's Russia investigation report should be released next week when he will be out of town.

I guess from what I understand, that will be totally up to the Attorney General. Maine Susan Collins says she would vote for a congressional resolution disapproving of President Trump's emergency declaration to build a border wall, becoming the first Republican senator to publicly back it. In New York, the wounded supervisor of a police detective killed by friendly fire was among the mourners attending his funeral. Detective Brian Simonson was killed as officers started shooting at a robbery suspect last week. Commissioner James O'Neill was among the speakers today at Simonson's funeral.

tremendous way to bear, knowing that your choices will directly affect the lives of others. The cops like Brian don't shy away from it. It's the very foundation of who they are and what they do. The robbery suspect in a man, police say acted as his lookout, have been charged with murder. I'm Ed Donahue.