test: Batman

~ BATMAN ~

Sunsoft

HuCard

1990

This poor HuCard seems to be ridiculed quite often these days, with people pointing and laughing at the "rat in a maze" gameplay and bemoaning the fact that it isn't a sidescroller, which would seem to be a more appropriate form for a Batman game to take. But back in the day, a game mag (I think it was actually EGM) lauded the chip, making it one of the PC Engine titles that I most wanted to play at the time. Recent reports tempered my enthusiasm, as it seemed the only good things about PCE Batman were the music and the cinemas (and I can now say I agree that it excels in those respects). But I've always been curious about it, and I've always kind of felt like I would dig it, and it turns out that I really do enjoy playing through it.

Sure, the scavenger-hunt-like action is repetitive, but I find it hard to stop playing once I get going. It's fun to slaughter or evade the villains, scour the maze-like maps, and figure out where the key points are in each stage. I also enjoy the odd tasks Sunsoft came up with for players to perform, like polishing paintings that look like a baby spat up on them. And I don't know why people make this out to be an overlong epic, as it's definitely conquerable in one sitting if you don't die repeatedly. There are forty-eight maze stages, and that might seem like a lot, but they can all be beaten very quickly, and then there's a cool three-boss gauntlet at the end.

I think the key to having fun with this and avoiding the feeling that it's taking forever is, well, not to die very often. I probably sound daft with that remark, but I just mean that when you're forced to continue, you lose the abilities you gained through powering up, which means Batman will revert back to his initial state as a vulnerable plodder who can toss only one slow, short-range "batarang" at a time. But you'll be deprived of the powers you've acquired only if you have to continue, not each time you lose a life. And if you can keep your improved speed and your effective long-range weaponry, you'll get into a groove and probably find it hard to walk away from the game.