0 to Z of Playstation 1 Games - Batman Forever The Arcade Game

         

Batman Forever The Arcade Game is a side scrolling beat’em up similar to Final Fight and Double Dragon featuring the due of Batman and Robin and is based on the 1995 movie of the same name. The game was  developed by Iguana Entertainment and published by Acclaim Entertainment, for the Arcade, MS-DOS, Sega Saturn and Playstation.

The released in Arcades first before being ported to the PC and Sega Saturn in Novermber 1996 in North America, the following month the Playstation release would happen in both North America and Europe. The following year the European Saturn release would occur as well as the Playstation and Saturn release in Japan.

Notable people who worked on this game, Nick Bagley who worked in the Production department as a Project Manager went on to work as a Designer for The Sims 4 in 2014 as well as working on three of the Harry Potter games. and worked as a Gameplay Scripter for SimCity in 2013.

Dave Semmens who was the Lead Programmer went on to be a Producer on Colony Wars III Red Sun in 2000. Darren Tunnicliff who was a Programmer on Batman Forever went to work on the Test Drive series working as a programmer on Test Drive 4, Test Drive 6 as well as the 2002 reboot of the series, he also worked on Demolition Racer.

Mike Chilton who also worked as a Programmer on the game, would be Lead Programmer on Colony Wars III Red Sun, a few years later he would move on to MotorStorm where he would be part of the Programming team, he would also work on Pacific Rift and Apocalypse in the series, the later he would be one of the Principle Programmers.

 

Mark Wilkinson who worked on the Programming for Batman Forever would also work on the 2002 Test Drive reboot. In more recent years he was a Gameplay Programmer for Driver San Francisco in 2011, a few years later he would work on The Crew, and in 2017 he would be a Gameplay Programmer on Tom Clancy’s Ghost Recon Wildlands.

Lastly we have Technical Director Richard Frankish who would continue in this position in various games until the early 2000s when he went into Programming, a career change that has seen him work on games like Grand Theft Auto Liberty City Stories and Chinatown Wars, Manhunt 2, Red Dead Redemption, L.A. Noire and most recently Grand Theft Auto V as a Senior Programmer.

Playable as either a 1 player or 2 player game with the player taking on the role of either Batman or Robin in this side scrolling Final Flight style beat’em up. Players punch and kick their way through waves of Two Face and Ridder henchman.

 

In addition to the fists and feet of the dynamic duo, the player will have access to gadgets such as batarangs and the bat grapple and many more gadgets at your disposal. The bat grapple allows Batman to swing across the screen taking out henchman.

The game also features special combination attacks which can be chained together to form massive combo attacks, power ups are also available as you progress through levels. Power ups which are dropped by enemies are used to fill a purple bar under the players health bar, once filled the player is able to unleash this power and go on a punch and kicking frenzy.

 

The game also has a good and evil mechanic when the player is evil it causes the player character to shrink to at least a third of the height of the enemies, while in combat any attacks that land on enemies a percentage value is shown on the screen to show how much damage you have inflicted on an enemy.

The game is loosely based on the 1995 movie Batman Forever, with Two Face slowly cementing his control over Gotham the Dynamic Duo must combat two face and the new villain that has been making his mark on Gotham, the strange new menace named The Riddler

The deranged Two Face and Riddler team up along with the help of henchwomen Sugar and Spice, they have all the ingredients for mayhem with only Batman and Robin to stand in their way. As the pair battle it out across Gotham from the circus, to the Gotham subway even to Wayne Manor

This being a fairly early release in the Playstation life cycle critic reviews for the game are a little limited, the few that are on offer range from average to below average. As usual though we will be starting with the best of them, which comes from GameSpot who scored the game at an average 54.

With the reviewer commenting on the game carrying on the tradition of likes of Double Dragon, Final Fight and Streets of Rage, however the reviewer found that Batman Forever fails to enough new action to make it worthwhile. They concluded by saying fans of the Arcade version won’t be disappointed, but all things considered, it’s just another uninspired game from the folks at Acclaim

GamePro (US) were next up with their average as you can get 50 rated review, the review commenting on the game being a faithful translation of the Arcade game. However concluded with, unfortunately, what may be enticing in the Arcade becomes repetitive and dull on a small screen.

German Publication Video Games were next up with their below average review score of 45, the review calling the game just another carelessly crafted assembly line production, which is only due to sell well because of the well known name. They concluded by saying, even diehard Final Fight fans looking quickly into the distance.

The final review comes from NowGamer who rated the game at a lowly 41, the reviewer commenting on the lack of competition in the side scrolling beat’em up genre, and how the game only had to turn up in reasonable shape to earn comfortable sales and reviews.

They concluded with. In the event, over ambitious programming has delivered a self inflicted knock-out blow, file this under skeletons in the closet, and wonder once more about the cryptic phrase of Sony Quality Control (Something that we are still wondering about in 2017).

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 Forever The Arcade Game, listed as just Batman Forever, you will be looking at a very healthy $60 for your copy from Gamedude. As you would expect if you are looking to pick up a copy from Gamedude the price will be steep especially with a trade in price of $60, the price for a copy from Gamedude comes in at $119..

 

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. Who have the game listed but currently do not have the game in stock, this is looking like a very rare game, with usual prices for when it is in stock between $71.47 and $129.95. They also offer a trade in with up to $70 paid for a complete copy of the game.

Now heading to Amazon.com where we find this game is very hard to find, with just 3 copies on the market at the time of writing this. The first two copies on offer are both disc only copies in acceptable condition, these are priced up at $103.99 and $123.99 respectively.

The final copy that is currently on the market as of the 13^th of January 2017, is a very good condition and complete copy of the game, if you are in the market for this copy you will be looking at an outlay of $199.93 plus a $3.99 shipping fee bringing the total to $203.92.

Written by

P J Gibbon