Ghost of N64 Week: Batman Beyond: The Return of the Joker

Welcome N64 fans and all the others that were expecting an movie or TV review.  Today's topic is based on Warner Brothers futuristic Batman story arc.  25 years into the future, Bruce Wayne has become a senior citizen, crime still haunts the mega-city version of Gotham and a new breed of cyberpunks, meta-humans and oddballs still attack the people of Gotham, but along with the wave of criminals comes a new Batman ready to solve crimes, wail on the baddies and bring them to justice.  Based of the animated movie comes a game giving its all to homage the film.  This is Batman Beyond: The Return of the Joker N64.

Captivating title screen!!!

Being a typical beat 'em up side-scroller, the play of course is the futuristic Batman who wanders through levels with a fair degree of the depth in background allowing for 3-D movement.  The game allows the player to select and switch out between four bat suits in-game.  Each suit has its own strengths and weaknesses.  Standard Suit is mostly offensive strength and shields allowing for weapons like the Dark Knight Discus (Because Shuriken would have been hard to spell), Magnetic Nunchuku (Yeah, kinda wish I made that one up) and the Dark Knight Staff.  Offensive Suit: Stronger attacks but is easily damaged making it the most fragile of the suits.  Defense Suit: Weaker attacks but does protect from damage greater than the suits in the game, plus allows more items. It also gives the player two defensive shields to deflect almost all enemy attack and lets you bash a head in with the Shield Punch.  Nimble Suit:  Gives the player the double-jump, gliding and jumping kicks.  Allows for some extra items but so far as I know the glide only seems to have that one function.

Also my Big Gulp spilled and may have fried the panels.

And now of course, a few complaints and compliments for the game.

With the cut scenes throughout this game, you get the feeling they were really trying to capture the essence of the movie but without any real attempt to get the voice acting, sound or screen capture it, it feels a bit on the level of 16 bit.  When I got this, I was hoping for a few digitized cut scenes from the actual flick interspersed with the game.  Instead, I get scroll text to read, a looped intro of the Batman Beyond theme music and a Final Fight, Double Dragon feel.  This is a typical and lazy formula not allowing for story to unfold, clues to be found and gives it a very stilted version of Batman we have seen before.

The Batlad is being taught how to fight,survive and be a detective and none of that is coming through the game.  Even fans of the cartoon this is based on could not stay interested in it.  Heck, my best friend's son was playing it for about 25 minutes and he got bored, turned the volume down so the music would stop annoying him and asked for a new game.  With a count of 16 levels I am guessing they mean for each screen to be a level because I thought it was only 4 but most games show or indicate when you defeat one level after another.  Action packed was the original box's claim.  Action packed must mean walk to series of bad guys, punch and kick them, rinse and repeat. No use of the voice work from the movie though.  I mean it was already in the can, so what was the problem there?

The controls are a bit off as R button can be tapped once to switch from swagger walk (because he looks like he is swaying his hips) and running and lastly, the fricking weapons.  No gas pellets, phosphorous flares or even batarangs.  So all the good toys of distraction and non-lethal ordinance we associate with Batman have been scrapped.  That being said, I'd give it to the neighborhood dog to chew on but I don't want the ASPCA at my door for animal cruelty.

WHEW!!!  Avoid that bathroom, people!