0 to Z of Playstation 1 Games - Batman Gotham City Racer

    

Batman Gotham City Racer is a racing and vehicular combat game developed Sinister Games and published by Ubi Soft Entertainment (Ubisoft). The game is based on the animated series The New Batman Adventures, and incorporated many clips from the animated series into the game.

The exact release date for the game can not be confirmed with multiple sources checked and most giving a completely different date to the previous one. From what I can tell the North American release of the game came sometime in April 2001, while the European release was either again in April or early May of 2001.

Notable people who worked on this game, Clint Richards who was the Lead Designer on the game was also the Lead Designer on Tom Clancy's Rainbow Six Lockdown in 2006. More recently he was a Game Designer for Far Cry 4 and The Crew in 2014 and was a Designer for 2017s Star Trek Bridge Crew.

Kevin Sizer who worked as a Designer, Level Designer, and Artist for this game, he also worked on the Tom Clancy games Tom Clancy's Ghost Recon 2, Tom Clancy's Rainbow Six: Lockdown and Tom Clancy's Ghost Recon: Advanced Warfighter. He also worked as a Game Designer on 2012s Tom Clancy's Ghost Recon: Future Soldier since then he has worked as a Lead Designer on Far Cry 4 from 2014.

John Dinley who worked as an Artist on the game has also worked on various Tom Clancy games working as an artist, including 2016s The Division where he work as an Environmental Artist, he worked in the same position for Star Trek Bridge Crew as well.

The game opens with new of a massive escape from Arkham Asylum the worst or the worst criminals are fre and roaming the streets of Gotham. The puts the player in the role of Batman, as he pursues Gotham’s criminal elite around the city, with the help of Batgirl, Nightwing and Robin.

The game has three modes to choose from, the first is Patrol Mode, this mode allows the player to freely drive around Gotham looking for your own action. As well as this there is a 2 player pursuit mode with one player playing as a villain while the other plays as the hero.

 

The main mode to the game is the Adventure mode which has missions set out like episodes from the animated tv show, complete with small segments from the animated tv show between missions with a total of 51 missions to play through in this mode.

In the main adventure mode the Player as Batman will be facing off against some of his most famous foes, with the likes of Joker, Penguin, Two Face, Harley Quinn, Mr Freeze, Killer Croc and Scarecrow all making appearances with a total of 23 villains reeking havoc across Gotham.

 

.The game with its two player mode allows you to take control of some of the most iconic hero and villain vehicles, as well as the weapons that accompany them, with a total of 15 vehicles in the game including the Batmobile, Batcycle and Jokermobile.

Controls for hero and villain vehicles do have some minor differences which I will get onto in a moment, the main controls for both are identical, with the D-Pad or left analogue stick used for the vehicles steering, pressing down on the D-Pad or moving the left analogue stick down looks behind your vehicles.

The X button is used to accelerate while the square button is used to break, pressing triangle will put your vehicles into reverse. Each vehicles has primary and secondary weapons for the front and rear of your vehicles these are activated using the shoulder buttons.

  

The left shoulder buttons control your primary weapons with the L2 button firing your forward primary weapons, while L1 fires your primary rear weapons. The same layout for the secondary weapons with the R2 and R1 shoulder buttons.

The hero controls have just one difference to the villain controls, the circle button can be used as a turbo. While the villain controls have two differences, the circle button is used to drop a money bag, while pressing down on the D-Pad and circle will drop a bomb from the car.

Critically the game did not do well with the exception of one average review score from those available on the site I use, the remainder all fall into the poor or worse category, with one review outlet even scoring the game in single figures.

As usual though we will start with the best of them which comes from Spanish publication Meristation, who scored the game at an average 55. The review finding only the interlocking phases of the game that feature the clips from the animated tv show the only saving grace for the game, nothing else can be saved from the mediocrity that surrounds Gotham City Racer.

PSX Nation were the next highest scoring review with a dismal 38, the review commenting on Spiderman already proving videogames can do justice to the comic book universe of popular characters. They concluded however with Batman Gotham City Racer is yet another nail in the coffin of a super hero that is still waiting for its universe to be done interactive justice, finishing off the review says it is not even worth renting.

The Video Game Critic is next up with another drop in review score down to a lowly 25, the review praising the animated cut scenes calling the entertaining enough, with fans of the series likely to enjoy watching them, even if they do look a little degraded. The review continued though by saying Gotham City Racers is definitely mediocre and only die-hard Batman fan will find any redeeming qualities.

Lastly we have NowGamer, who scored the game at a pitiful 9, with the reviewer having an extensive list of faults with the game from empty streets littered with roadblocks, unimpressive weaponry, mentally neutralising missions being just a few.

They concluded their review by saying. To let this one off on the pretence of it being a kiddie game is patronising. This is a character with a huge scope for the videogame arena, so if he must be shoehorned into a racing game why not just do The World’s Scariest Police Chases with a Batmobile? Oh right – development costs!

This is the part of 0 to Z where is visit four online retailers and see what the availability of the title is, and what price you would be looking at if you wanted to pick this title up, the sites that I will be using for this are Amazon.com, eStarland.com, retrogames.co.uk and Gamedude.com I know the last one is very location specific, but from a podcast I listen to, I’ve heard they have a huge stock of older games, Ebay has now been dropped unless the game is unavailable at other retailers.

So lets get down to business with Gamedude, where if you are looking to trade in your copy of Batman Gotham City Racer, you will be looking at a trade in value of $10 for your copy from Gamedude. if on the other hand you are looking to pick up a copy from Gamedude you will be looking at an outlay of $22.

Retrogames.co.uk are up next who sadly don’t stock or even list this title, so we will quickly move on to eStarland.com. They currently have one copy of the game available, this copy is a complete used copy of the game and is priced up at $27.95. Also on offer is a trade in for the game with eStarland.com offering up to $14 for a complete copy of the game, this price will vary depending on the completeness of your copy, with a disc only copy worth just $4.90 at trade in.

 

Lastly we have Amazon.com where we find only a small number of copies available, and as with previous Batman titles the cheaper copies are disc only ones. We do find a good quality and complete copy of the game available pretty quickly, this copy will however set you back $19.99, but it does come with free shipping.

A very good quality and complete used copy is available next in the list this will cost you a little extra with a price of $31.20 once you have added in the shipping costs. Another very good quality used copy is also available for $34.18, this is the current high price for used copies of the game on Amazon.

There are also a few new copies of the game, these are priced significantly higher than the used copies of the game, with prices starting at $74.99 with two copies priced at this price point, with both being shipped by Amazon so come with free shipping. The final new copy currently on the market is priced slightly higher at $84.52 once you have added the shipping costs in.

 

Written by

P J Gibbon