Licensed games tend to be pretty bad, and Batman: Arkham Asylum is thought to be the first Batman game that did any good, but this NES action platformer managed to get it right. Coming late into the NES life cycle, the developers could use their years of experience to make everything look and sound amazing. It’s beautifully made all around, and the controls are smooth and well considered. You have fixed-arc jumps if you hold forward when jumping, but you can adjust your arc freely if you jump without a direction, letting you choose to focus on midair shooting or precise landing. Walljumps work without Strider-esque mashing, and there’s a little animation that plays before bounding off the wall so you can easily adjust to your new trajectory. It’s also nice that the difficulty doesn’t waste your time, with continues not sending you back to the beginning of the stage. The only time you lose progress is if you have to use a continue on a boss, which sets you back to the start of the most recent level. The only things I dislike are how your batarang ammo is maintained among deaths, so you have to farm it between attempts, and that the final boss is too hard. Other than those two gripes, Batman would be my recommendation for anyone wanting to start playing classic NES platformers. It hits all the same highs as its contemporaries, with none of the frustrating lows.

I love switching between the different weapons and utilizing the wall jumps. But DAMN this game is hard. By just the end of the second stage things have already became a brutal gauntlet. To be fair though, the game is only five stages long (though each stage is broken up into multiple big sections) and does give you infinite continues from the beginning of that section of the stage. I guess they had to make a short game longer somehow. The music and graphics are pretty cool too. This is a good addition to the NES library, but it would've been truly great if it were a little easier and a little longer to make up for that.

This seems to be more popular than I had assumed. I think it is the third Batman game I've done thus far, but the other two have less plays on here. I do prefer them, but this one is pretty cool too for sure. It reminds me a lot of Journey to Silius in particular, which is very nice compared to a lot of the NES library.

Just one thing, it's absurdly fucking hard. Like, brutal for 80s standards even. Manageable early on, but the clock tower for example is a total nightmare as are the two last bosses directly afterwards (and if you have to use a continue on them, you're back at the start of the tower). It's not as hard as like, Battletoads or Ghosts n' Goblins or something, but it's definitely worth a mention and not super far off from those two. I'd probably like it more if it was a bit toned down in that field, but maybe I'm just a scrub or whatever.

The short and sweet version of this review? Batman: The Video Game is a Batman game by way of Ninja Gaiden. If that doesn't sell you on it then I'm sorry, it's probably just not the game for you.

Batman controls just as tightly as Ryu Hayabusa, or even Simon Belmont (though he lacks that Belmont swagger, seeing as he still suffers through the trauma of his parent's death.) Every jump, every attack, every step you make with Batman feels deliberate. Platforming is precise and satisfying, though the game does falter a few times, particularly with segments involving the wall jump, which I found to be a bit finicky. At best this results in a few annoying deaths, and at worst it can roadblock you until you throw Batman at the problem enough that you're finally able to move on. Really though, the Ninja Gaiden games suffered from similar stretches of rough level design, and nothing here is as aggravating as Ninja Gaiden 2.

Of course, Batman is armed with a plethora of gadgets, which all feel like they have good utility, and god knows you'll need to make use of all of them. The boss encounters are difficult, true to form for NES era action-platformers, and act as a true test of skill. I also appreciate the attention this game gives to the D-listers of Batman's rogues gallery. This is a movie adaptation, and it might be easy to forget that since it really doesn't follow the 1989 film closely, but the developers smartly avoided possible sequel villains by instead focusing on weirdos like Firebug.

I may not come back to this one as much as I do other action-platformers on the NES, but it's a fantastic game and definitely worth taking a look at. Just come prepared, because it is as steep a challenge as any of its contemporaries.

Amazing controls and stunning presentation.

Despite what others may say, this game has a very forgiving checkpoint system up until the last stage, and most if not all stages of the game are greatly designed (with the exception of the game's 3rd stage).

The only issue I found with it was that the game's bosses are absolutely frustrating in design, and are both too fast and aggressive for how heavy Batman controls and too spongey for how repetitive the battles get.

If you enjoy playing NES games, then you will enjoy this too but if you don't, you should stay away from this game. So I'm enjoying playing NES games? No. I don't want to get started on that "NES library is full of unfair, hard, frustrating games" thing again so I'm just going to say it's true. But some popular games or hidden gems are actually fun and this is without a doubt one of those games. First of all sprites and music is just brilliant, this is one of the best-looking retro games that I've ever played. They created nice backgrounds by combining black with various colors. Controls aren't the best of course but it's fun and also there is a thing in this game that separates this from other NES games and that is the tiny frame before jumping, nowadays that is considered a mistake because it hurts responsiveness and while I definitely agree with it I think it worked great for this game and it would've worked great for other NES games because while that tiny frame happens, you can think strategies of how you will beat those unfair obstacles. Overall, with save states, this is a very fun game except for bosses of course...