Hello my fellow Joystuckers and welcome to your new weekly feature that will take a look at some of the gaming greats of days gone by. In these recollective writings I hope to embolden you with a sense of pride and honour for your gaming heritage, a sense of respect for your pixelated ancestry… that and to take a look at some really kick ass retro games.

While browsing through my rather sizeable Retro games collection to find this week’s long-forgotten gem I had a moment of genius: “Oooh,” I said to myself “What with Batman: Arkham City in the shops only last week, why don’t you review a Batman game?”

“That’s a brilliant idea!” I replied.

“I know,” I replied to myself again. “And you do realise that you’ve turned a simple internal monologue into a full conversation, thereby making yourself sound crazy, right?”

It was at this point that I decided it was best to close my mouth and hunt down the game. Guess where it was? Yep right at the bottom of a BIG box, right at the back of the loft. The things I do for you guys…

As you may have guessed from the title, this game is a movie-tie in. Now I know that last week I said that most games based on films are a big steaming pile of poopy and I stand by that. However, this is one that seems to have escaped the curse. Maybe the caped crusader had some Anti ‘Movie-To-Game-Turns-Out-To-Be-Poo’ spray in his utility belt. Or it may have just been Air Freshener. Either way this game is great!

It’s a side scrolling beat-em-up for two-fifths of the game, a driving game for a fifth, a flight sim (of sorts) for another fifth and a chemistry exam for the final fifth. If my calculations are correct that should all add up to five-fifths – or ‘one’ as it’s known.

Based on the 1989 movie it follows Bats as he tracks down the Joker to stop him releasing his poisonous Smilex gas which caused the victim to literally laugh themselves to death (we have a guy at work that makes everyone smile when he releases gas…). Let me take you through those fifths that I listed above.

Level one sees you making your way through the Axis chemical plant to get to Jack Napier (Joker’s maiden name). This takes the form of a side scrolling platformer. You are faced with Napier’s goons who either fire fairly slow moving bullets at you or lob grenades. An annoying feature (at least for the 11-year-old me) were the acid drips that leaked from pipes and the green steam bursts that hissed out at you. Pretty standard but the inclusion of his Bat-rope which allows you to swing across gaps or ascend to higher balconies was a nice touch and lifted the level above the norm for that era. Also your life meter was a picture of the B-man that gradually disappeared, line by line as you got hit, to reveal a pic of the Joker underneath. Not quite as good as the one in the Ghostbusters 2 game which saw a pic of Dan Aykroyd slowing becoming more scared and bug-eyed with each hit, but still a change from the usual energy bar. The end of this level saw you launching a well-aimed Batarang and Jack’s Bonce causing him to plummet into a vat of green gloop. Jack fell down but this time Jill didn’t come tumbling after.

Level two was a side-on driving game where you were racing through the streets of Gotham to get to the Batcave (I wonder if he calls everything ‘Bat-something’… Bat-toothbrush and the Bat-TV remote?) The basic controls were up and down to avoid the cars with a little bit of forwards and backwards to aid in this. Most of the traffic minded its own business, except the Taxi drivers who made themselves a nuisance. Just like real ones. Occasionally you’d get a van driven by one of the Joker’s goons which would really try to impede your progress. You had to keep an eye on a small arrow which stayed just in front of the Batmobile which for the most part pointed forward but at certain points it would point up indicating that you needed to turn. This was done by moving up to the topmost curb and firing a grapple around a lamppost to slingshot you around the corner. Easier said than done, for if you got shunted by a car the cable would snap and you’d have to fight to get through the traffic which had built up behind you.

Level three was the chemistry lesson. Just like the film you had collected a selection of beauty products that were said to be tainted – Joker had put the chemicals for Smilex in different products so that only certain combinations would mix to produce the poison. To quote the movie: “Hairspray won’t do it alone but hairspray mixed with lipstick and perfume could be toxic”. To decode which recipe was the right one you had to play a little guessing game. This was basically a reworking of the old board game Mastermind. You would select three of the products and the Bat-computer would tell you how many were correct. You had to keep adjusting your chosen combinations to get the final three. This may sound simple but you only had a certain number of guesses.

Level four was the flying section. With Joker having tied poisonous gas canisters to massive helium balloons it was your job to fly the Batwing through the streets using the nose of the vehicle to cut the cables tethering them to the ground. It was basically the driving section but floating a little way off of the ground with lots of helicopters as the air traffic.

The final fifth level was a monster. It was the same side-scroller that was level 1 but the building (this time the huge cathedral) was a LOT taller, plus there were many dead end routes that saw you back-tracking. It was a lot of climbing and goon-bashing until you reached the top where Mr J was making his escape up the rope ladder to escape in his helicopter. You basically had one shot at nailing him with a diagonal hit from your Bat-rope, mess this up and you had to start again. This was ok if you had a decent joystick but if there was any deviation from the diagonal shot then you had no time for a second attempt. Succeed however and you were treated to watching the Joker fall down the side of the building which took a very long time. Uncomfortable viewing for a small boy of 11.

Phew, there you have it. A brief rundown of the fairly varied levels. We are all used to playing games like Metal Gear Solid and Call Of Duty which are constantly throwing in the odd change in pace with a driving section or a stealth section but back then it was a fairly new concept. Most games had their basic idea and you ran with it for however many levels they programmers had written so Batman was a real eye opener. The graphics were bright and colourful, something that the Amstrad CPC 464 did well compared to the C64 and Spectrum. The sound was also pretty good with the music managing to build tension – not easy for a load of blips and squeaks – so my hat is doffed to the programmers and musicians involved.

Speaking of music, when I played this game back in 1989 my sister was well into Grease. I don’t mean that she ate lard or had a thing for dating mechanics, I mean the musical. In particular Grease 2. She had the soundtrack on endlessly while I was playing this game, one track more than most: ‘Cool Rider’ (go Youtube it). To this day cannot play this game without that song popping into my head. So much was my mental focus on this game and oh so many times did my sister rewind the tape that these two have been inexplicably bonded in my head, never to be separated.

Another masterpiece from Ocean Software and one that will stay in this reviewer’s heart forever.

Let me finish with this:

“No ordinary boy, No ordinary boy is ganna do. I want a rider that’s coooool.”