Game: Batman
Console: Sega Mega Drive
Developer: SunSoft
Release Date: 1st October 1990
Listen to the game music as you read!
Batman for the Sega Mega Drive follows the plot from the 1989 Tim Burton film fairly closely, and features a mix of platforming, beat 'em up and side-scrolling space shooter gameplay styles in its 6 levels, with cutscenes to tell the story inbetween. In Europe at least, the Mega Drive version of Batman was in direct competition with the NES version which had been released 16 days before. This version did not follow the film so closely and featured different gameplay, but critical reaction was mostly positive.
The game begins with Batman beating up villains on the streets of Gotham, with gameplay similar to a beat 'em up. After he has gone a short distance, he faces the first boss and then moves onto a chemical warehouse at the end of which he encounters Jack Napier, who is second in command to a mob boss. In the movie, Napier is accidentally knocked into a vat of chemical waste, however in the game you actually get to kick or punch him into it, which is much more satisfying. Following being knocked into the chemical waste, Napier becomes The Joker and plots revenge upon Batman.
Following a level in the art museum where the player faces a particularly tough time with falling chandeliers and hitmen, (the timing is a little out, and it's hard to avoid both) you get to drive the Batmobile in a space shooter style level, on the road. After you avoid numerous bombs and vehicles there's a small platforming stage before taking to the skies in the Batplane. The goal here is to try and stop the joker from polluting the skies with Smilex, a drug which can cause people to die from laughter. The final level is set inside Gotham Cathedral and after fighting every boss again, you finally meet the Joker in the last battle of the game.
The controls of the game in both the platforming and shooter levels are smooth and easy to get used to. The level design sometimes halts Batman's progress a little but with a good amount of lives and continues, it's not too hard to beat the game. The combat controls could be improved a little with early enemies taking just one hit to knock down, and bosses becoming repetitive once the player has found the trick to beating them.
Graphically the game looks decent for Mega Drive, if a little lacking in detail. There's some parallax scrolling in the platforming levels, but the smaller sprites suggest that Sunsoft wanted to keep it closer to the NES version. The music for the game is pretty impressive with enjoyable tracks for each level of the game as well as the cutscenes. Personally I'd say that the soundtrack was one of the most enjoyable features of the game. The sound effects are fairly good, with nothing that gets annoying after a while and most things sounding as they should.
Overall while it shows its age and is of a fairly short length, Batman for the Mega Drive has enjoyable gameplay, great music and follows the 1989 movie plot far more closely than the NES version. With a mix of level types and a good difficulty curve, the game is still highly playable and something nice to complete in a single sitting. Later Batman games on the Mega Drive seemed to be much less critically acclaimed so this is about as good as it gets.
Rating: 71/100
Grade: C
Game: Spider-man
Console: Sega Mega Drive
Developer: Technopop
Release Date: 17th October 1991
Listen to music from the game as you read!
Released a year after Batman, and without any sort of movie tie in came Spider-man (vs. the Kingpin) for the Mega Drive. The premise of the game is clearly explained via cutscenes; The Kingpin has set Spider-man up so that the city thinks he's a fugitive, roping in help from Spider-man's most notorious enemies such as Dr. Octopus, Sandman, The Lizard, Hobgoblin, Mysterio, Vulture, Electro and Venom. 5 of these enemies have been given keys to a bomb which will explode and be blamed on Spider-man unless he can beat them and disarm it.
Consisting of 6 main stages, the game sees the player taking on the 5 keyholders with a limit of 24 hours of game time (about 3 hours or so in real time) to get to the bomb and defuse it. The sixth stage features Spider-man taking on all of the keyholders once again, before defusing the bomb and beating The Kingpin in time to save Mary Jane from a vat of acid. Not a bad plot for a game that wasn't related to any movie in particular.
The platforming in the game can be a little painful at times, even with Spiderman able to climb walls, swing from point to point, and perform gravity defying jumps. With enemies places fairly haphazardly there's often difficulties with the level design creating points which are a pain to get past. It's hard to know which direction you're supposed to be going in as well, as the level make for fairly confusing mazes. Enemies also seem to do a lot of damage and it becomes almost impossible not to die toward the middle and end of the game.
This is so much of a problem that I had to enter a cheat for infinite health and web, due to frustration and the fact that two hours are subtracted from the time for every time Spider-man dies. Because of this it doesn't take long for the bomb to go off if you're careless with bosses. Once the player has the hang of the bosses attack pattern, none of them really pose much of a threat and are almost boring, but until then they can be extremely difficult.
Graphically the game isn't much to look at; I even thought it was fairly close to Master System standards. The character sprites are small, although fairly well detailed for their size. Backgrounds tend to be basic and suspiciously 8 bit for a 16 bit console. Soundwise also the game tends to be fairly poor, the only real impressive feature is a realistic bass guitar sound on some tracks. There's no voice acting or clips features; all cutscenes are just scrolling text, although this may be for the best with the quality of the other audio.
Overall Spider-man is playable (with the infinite health/web cheat on) as a superhero game but extremely difficult in places. The gameplay, controls and level design can be almost infuriating and times and compared to Batman the levels feel a lot less rewarding. There's some decent ideas featured in the game but the execution is lacking and in the end that lets it down. The hunt for a decent Spider-man game continues...
Rating: 47/100
Grade: D
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