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.