Batman The Movie

STORY / GAMEPLAY
Batman must save Gotham City from a deformed lunatic called “The Joker”. There are five levels in total and the game starts at the Axis Chemicals, where Mr. Jack Napier transforms into the monster we know after being thrown into acid. The first level includes all sorts of toxic substances leaking from pipes and dangerous gasses extruding into the air. This level follows the classic platform style of gameplay. The Joker's men are everywhere and Batman must kill or them. He can use his bat-rope to climb into higher platforms or swing over gaps and his batarags to take down the enemies (who will shoot and drop bombs at him in frenzy). After defeating Napier, you must jump into your Bat-mobile; and then, the real thrill begins! The goal at this point is to chase the Joker's van speeding through the streets of Gotham City. You need to avoid all the other cars but you also have to turn your vehicle in time, at breakneck speeds, by shooting a grappling hook to grab any nearby lamp post. You only have three successful shoots and, if you miss, you’ll end up in front of a police blockade). It seems that the developers have actually given their most attention to this part of the game, at least on the Amiga and ST versions. This stage plays like an ordinary -high quality- racing game. The next stage is the Bat-cave, where you have to select three different increments of the lethal Smilex toxic gas, guessing the correct combination (this is done by the simple elimination method) so you can hand over its formula to the authorities. On the next level, you pilot your Batwing (your aircraft) and you fly rather low, over the city’s carnival festivals, taking out the balloons filled with Smilex that Joker is planning to use and take over Gotham City. The final stage of the game is the Cathedral, a platform stage that plays the same way as the Chemical Axis. In the Cathedral you must eliminate the enemies and finally confront your greatest opponent…The Joker!

GRAPHICS / SOUND
The PC (MS-DOS) version runs on CGA, Tandy, EGA and VGA graphics modes. When running on VGA mode, the game’s graphics use only 16 colors on screen (!) and they look quite inferior in colors compared to the Amiga and ST versions (that use around 27-28 colors). If you own a 386 or 486 old-school PC, the game runs pretty ok though the framerate is low. Unfortunately, this makes the game even harder to play. The actual screenshots below are in VGA, EGA and CGA modes. The greatest difference among the three 16 bit versions is the sound. The Amiga OCS/ECS version sports digitized sound effects along with great in-game music, the ST version offers either a nice 3-channel music theme or some basic effects, while the PC (MS-DOS) version is poor and limited to its speaker “beeping”.