A summer event movie like this comes very rarely in the life of a pre-teen and back in about 1989 Tim Burtons take on Batman was really the one to see...
Unfortunately like everyone else who really wanted to see it, I was just slightly too young to be allowed in - and my parents weren't about to lie for me either.
So instead I got this game (several months later) in my Christmas sock. It multiloaded it's way on to my Beer-mat speccy over 5 levels of glorious monochrome.
There is no doubt that the first and last levels are the best - a brilliant scrolling platformer that plays very well even today. Some people play robocop and feel that this is worse - I don't agree. Robocop is too easy whereas Batman provides a good challenge. You are constantly getting that bit further with each go, drawing you back to try again.
The second and forth levels provide variety - whilst they do not stand on their own very well, the change to a simple arcade game is good even though the batmobile and batwing seem a bit underpowered...
For some reason the batwing suffers damage on contact with balloons(!) and the batmobile is bashed around by VW beetles and needs to turn left at every corner (I'm sure there must be a more direct route to the batcave than this!).
There's also a puzzle level that is a little weak for this sort of game.
All in all that was a good Christmas thanks to this game. Its a bit tough as it took me a couple of months to master. If you were lucky enough to own a 128k speccy then this game loaded in one part and had a VERY good soundtrack - including different music for each level. The graphics are also excellent throughout the game and hang together very well - it does all feel like one game rather than several bits 'stuck' together as some other multilevel games could.
And I did finally see that movie a couple of years later. It was okay, but I'd struggle to tell you much about it.
Luckily I can still remember the game well enough to knock that joker off the museum roof! One of my favourite spectrum games.
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