Batman Returns (SNES) Review
The first game I ever beat as a child, I look at one of the earliest best Batman games.
Developer: Konami
Publisher: Konami
Release Date: 7th May 1993 (UK), April 1993 (US), 26th February 1993 (Japan)
The SNES was the first games console I ever got. My uncle gave it to my brother and sister and I when I was 6 and the first few games we got with it were Stunt Race FX, Starwing (Starfox elsewhere) and Battletoads in Battlemaniacs. But the first game my dad ever bought for us was Street Fighter II (I’ll get to that game at a later date sometime) and Batman Returns. It was my second fighting action game and I already had a familiarity with how it played thanks to Battletoads being a side scrolling beat-em-up. So my 6 year old brain got it! I understood how it played! You move right and punch and kick and throw badguys around and use your gadgets to wipe out a screenfull of enemies in a flash. It was fun going around as Keaton’s Batman knocking around clowns and chasing after Catwoman and racing around the Batmobile after more crazed clowns to beat the Penguin.
I vaguely remembering being off sick from school (or it may have just been the weekend) and playing through this game even further. I had beaten the familiar clowns in the first 3 levels and then I got to jumping across rooftops and through a construction site and encountering Catwoman. I’d never progressed this far in a game yet! Starwing was a little too complicated for me (and after the game over screen giving me nightmares I never got past the first level let alone the mission start screen where you played around with the ship on a small window to test the controls), Stunt Race FX got harder as it got along through each cup and Battletoads was Battletoads. But Batman Returns was doable and Catwoman was my first big video game boss I managed to beat. Twice in a row! I know there’s that clown boss at the beginning you fight to save Selina Kyle from but that’s like the big troll at the beginning of 2018’s God of War. It’s an opening boss fight, nothing that major.
Then the next day or so I played it again, getting through the same stages, getting to Catwoman and somehow still managing to beat her again, twice, and then beating Penguin for the first time and then doing the Batmobile stage. I was getting further and further and I had my brother and sister there to witness it this time. I did the Batmobile stage, then I fought off more clowns and beat the boss clown with the monkey and the crankturn minigun. I was getting closer to the end, I knew it! And I was getting more excited and anxious the closer I was getting to the end and I knew that if I wasn’t careful and died anytime soon I would’ve had to have started allllll over again. But I kept going. I got to the Gotham Zoo level and fought through more clowns and dodged penguin artillery and then the GIANT DUCK MOBILE! I fought it and beat it! You know, as I’m writing and recalling this I’m questioning how a little 6 year old me pulled this off. Anyway, after beating the GIANT DUCK MOBILE came the Penguin himself. And he was a bastard. I died and I died and I came dangerously close to failing. I think I did at some point actually and got a game over after getting so close and then going through it all over again another day, that seems very likely. But what I do remember was fighting against the Penguin almost horrified at how his sprite looked as he zipped and darted about the screen while I tried punching the crap out of him and throwing him into the ground hearing his disgruntled digitally masked groans.
One thing I took note of as well was his and other bosses health bars. They overlapped in different colours of different levels of health. The first guy had a regular orange health bar which I thought that was doable, he’s just a bigger and harder version of a regular clown. Then Catwoman had a green health bar and I thought “huh, that’s new” and saw it not go down no matter how many times I hit her until —Oh! Orange bar! Orange bar!!! It was just another level of a health bar I just had to beat more. Then I faced her again and it turned to a purple health bar but then it went from purple to green to orange and— ohhh she just has WAY more health now than before. Then the minigun clown had a WHITE health bar that then turned purple then green then orange. This was teaching me the levels of health and strength gradual bosses have and I knew behind each layer of these colours was just another health bar waiting to be revealed once I had hit them enough times.
But Penguin’s white health bar didn’t look like it wanted to give, nor his purple or green health bar no matter how many times I hit him. So once I had eventually wittled him down to his orange health bar I knew and could see just how much closer I was getting to beating him. All that anticipation and anxiety was building up to elation when I could see I was making progress! I was beating him! Then one more hit and I had done it! He croaked and “Stage Clear” crossed the screen! And then came the credits and a greenish screen with a sprawled Catwoman and saying to try it at a harder level.
So Batman Returns was the first game I ever completed by myself. I didn’t feel like I needed (or was really capable enough to at that point) to go through on a harder difficulty. I didn’t see the point, I had beaten it! I had made a huge accomplishment! And I had a lot of fun with it all.
I remember during all this we learned that the game was based on the film and through some order catalogue thing saw a Batman film was there and thought “why not get it?” But, thinking it was Batman Returns, we mistakingly got the ‘89 Batman instead. We found that out in the first 20 minutes. It had Keaton in it, yes, but then came Jack Nicholson’s Joker and his transformation into the Joker and we learned “oh, this isn’t Returns at all.” And then we stopped watching because it was too scary for us. But the damage had already been done because then I started getting nightmares about this too! It made some weird cross between the Returns game and the ‘89 film where I was playing the second level of the game against the sword swallowers then it warped to being in this weird and horrifying theme park where my brother and sister and I for some reason had tried getting involved in the Joker’s gang then things got very ugly. I jumped awake and then went to school that morning with that playing on my mind and I still remember that nightmare very well. It was fun. Even turned it into a painting thing in art class when the teacher asked us to paint a nightmare we had and I think it spooked her.
Eventually I did get to see Batman Returns (not before seeing an old school friend of mine had it on video and thought “hey, that’s what I need to see!”) and loved it. It’s still my favourite Batman film. Danny DeVito as Penguin is perfect casting and so is Michelle Pfeiffer as Catwoman and I’ve still yet to see a performance as Catwoman done well enough to rival hers. Anne Hathaway’s was fine and works for Nolan’s film universe but… Eh. Camren Bicondova in Gotham is a very, very close second to it, helps she looks a lot like a younger Pfeiffer.
22 years later last summer I got decidedly nostalgic about this game and went and got it again. It felt so weird playing it after so damn long and I found it a little bit difficult. I found myself frequently questioning again “How the hell did my 6 year old self pull this off?” But then I learned it all over again and implemented my 22 years of gaming experience and tricks into learning how to play and soon enough I had completed it all over again an hour and a half later. And I had just as much fun playing it today as I did way back then. I remember feeling some weird sense of connection to my younger self playing it as well to see and measure how far I’ve come in playing games.
So! Anectdotal nostalgia aside, how is the game? Actually very, very good and it still holds up well today as a great film tie-in and Batman game. Which, I would argue that while many consider Arkham Asylum to be the first good Batman game after a slew of rather abysmal attempts (Batman Forever, Batman and Robin, Batman Beyond: Return of the Joker etc.), I would say that it was not. Batman Returns for the SNES was!
Batman Returns is a side scrolling beat-em-up much like Streets of Rage and TMNT. You jump, you kick, you punch, you hurl batarangs and flash pellets, and you can throw around clowns and smack a couple heads together. It’s great fun.
I noticed you get some penalties in health when you use certain items for whatever reason like using the grapple gun to swing kick or using your jump glide attack. I never figured out why and still haven’t yet.
The music is wonderfully faithful to the Batman Returns film soundtrack and with its own original tracks for the game it works so well and they’re plenty catchy. Also in my case hearing the songs and the sound effects of the game it is extremely nostalgic. But even nostalgia aside it sounds great.
Visually it’s fantastic too. Batman looks so good as does Penguin and Catwoman and all the other enemies, each easily distinguishable. The environments are very imaginative with a lot of depth to them and accurate to the film. The images taken from the film and used in the game for custscenes look nice and work well for its technological limitations. Storywise it follows the film pretty accurately as well with its action beats.
Overall, as a Batman game, as a film tie-in, as a beat-em-up and general SNES game it is an excellent game worth looking at and trying. It’s short but that’s not an issue at all. It doesn’t overstay its welcome, it plays superbly and you can’t go wrong with it. So if you can get a hold of it and for a decent price it is definitely worth a play.
Where to buy:
12/04/21
Ebay: £20 - £120/$19 - $165
Amazon:£38 /$38
CeX: £15-£100