Batman The Movie

STORY / GAMEPLAY
Batman must save Gotham City from a lunatic villain called “The Joker” who plans to take over and bring crime and chaos. The storyline is loosely based on the 1989 blockbuster movie “Batman”. The game features 5 levels of action. Your mission starts at the Axis chemical plant (were Mr. Jack Napier fell into acid and transformed into the deformed “monster” we all know... the Joker!) As Batman, you have to hunt down Napier and fight all his deadly gang members in order to proceed to the next level. Your main weapons are your fists, your kicks and your trusty batarangs. You can also use a bat-rope to climb into higher platforms. On each level, the action perspective changes and you also drive (or pilot) your Bat-vehicles (like in the second level where Joker is chasing you and you have to run to your Batcave driving your Bat-mobile.) While driving or flying, you have to avoid various obstacles and traps (e.g. police blockades) –and, believe me this is NOT easy as the gameplay gets frustrating, at least in most of the game’s versions (actually it’s hard to control the Bat-mobile, while the Bat-plane seems more controllable.

GRAPHICS / SOUND
The MSX version offers nice visuals include most of the original details in each stage. The sprites are nicely animated but the action feels a bit slow (much like the ZX and CPC versions). Overall, the MSX graphics look identical to the Sinclair ZX version and both machines use 4-5 maximum colors on screen, mainly based in blue and black! As far as the sound is concerned, the game does not feature any main menu or in-game tune (which can be found in all other 8bit versions) rather than a few sound effects (gunshots, explosions etc). It would be nice to have some music tunes on the most advanced 128k (MSX2) system (Note that the 128k ZX Spectrum plays the original tunes).