Following the success of the 1989 Batman game and it’s many ports and variations, it was really a no-brainer that Sunsoft would return to the character for the sequel. The only problem was that the sequel was taking it’s sweet time, so they made their own instead.
Batman: Return of the Joker was released at the end of 1991 by Sunsoft for the Nintendo Entertainment System. This game was a sequel pretty much in name only, and despite a use of some movie elements on “stage clear” screens and maybe a little in the Batman game sprite itself, RotJ was a standalone game with no canonical ties to the movies or previous game. In fact, it claimed inspiration from the contemporary comics. I can see some relation, but not much. Honestly, and I say this with complete love, RotJ is Bat-Contra.
In just game terms, this one is often overlooked and very underrated in terms of NES releases. Coming toward the end of that console’s run, it boasted some of the nicest graphics and sound that the NES was capable of, and made use of Sunsoft’s proprietary “boost chip” used for some of their other cartridges, giving it better color and parallax scrolling than usually seen in 8-bit.
Gameplay was good, if maybe a little toned down from the very taxing 1989 game. A simple password system lets you resume game by level, or boss, and the platforming was toned down a bit by eliminating the wall-jump mechanics. Batman uses…ahem….a “Batarang Launching Gauntlet” to take down enemies, and this gun-I mean-Gauntlet can pick up about 5 different shot powerups. As far as comic book influences, it only gets thinner from there. In essence, this is really Batman’s adventure through late 1980s action-game tropes, not a comic-based adventure. Again, I say that with love, because in a nostalgic sense, there’s no better way to relive my childhood favorite game genre than with my favorite character. At the time, though, that was a bit of a disappointment, considering that of the massive Rogue’s Gallery, only Joker appears, and even that’s a bit of a stretch.
Sadly, my NES copy of the game crapped out pretty early on in this review, so I didn’t get to really push it to the finish. This game is a popular enough release I couldn’t find a local copy, so that leaves me waiting on the mail to get back to this one. Luckily though, there is a port for this game for the Sega Genesis titled Batman: Revenge of the Joker.
The Sega version was released in 1992, and was a very faithful port of the NES version, with some upgraded graphics and sound and a little change in play. The most interesting change is the deletion of any remaining Burton elements- Batman’s sprite is in the glorious blue and gray, and the title and stage clear screens are much more comic-themed.
For some reason, this Genesis port gets a bad rap. I never had it as a kid, which infuriates the hell out of me, because I spent most of my early gaming years longing for a comic Batman game. The controls are a little less tight than the NES, but I’d almost wager that’s true of most Genesis games, and you do gain a third button attack that lets you kick and slide in addition to the regular shooting ones.
The Boss fights in RotJ are an interesting variation as well. You go into a closed stage with a fresh numbered health system instead of your regular bar. The bosses are ridiculous, but most offer a decent challenge until you master their routines. Additional gameplay changes come in some fun shooting scroll stages, where Batman takes to the skies on the Bat-Jet-Pack.
There was an intended SNES port made for the game as well, and it appears to have been mostly completed, but never released. This is a real shame, considering how excellent the graphics looked, but you can play it as a ROM online. I prefer the cartridges personally, but hey, if it works, it works.
Sadly, this was also the last Sunsoft game to feature the Dark Knight, concluding just before Batman Returns released in 1992. This meant of course the sequel was going to get it’s inevitable video game tie-ins from some different developers, and the saga of the Batman in video games was about to take some very interesting turns, and not all of them for the better…
