Thursday, November 29, 2012

"Batman Forever: Double Dose of Doom", LCD game, 1995.

The movie Batman Returns divided the critics, but its sequel united them with noses firmly plugged. Still, it followed in BR's lead in featuring two villains in the film, a template virtually all subsequent Batman flicks have followed. (As best as I can tell, the Joker is the only Batman enemy who warrants a whole movie to himself.) This is one of the very few occasions that I know of where that pattern has followed through to the game, the player fighting multiple enemies with multiple protagonists simultaneously!
BATtle YoUr BrAins OuT
Here we have a specimen of mid-'90s "StUdLyCaPs", so described as a function of... the author's ability to get the letters' case up and down again with such a brief refractory period? ... I don't see how this can work. Two thumbs (literally that's all, the dotted line indicators omitting any other fingers holding the game -- apparently it's flat on the floor, fingerless player mashing their overdeveloped thumbs against it in an orgiastic frenzy) to maneuver two characters around the screen in response to two more? "I'm all thumbs" isn't supposed to be in reply to a good, responsive control scheme! While Tiger handhelds were viewed as being simplistic trifles, I don't know that making them more complicated in this particular way seriously challenged any of their detractors' reservations.

The copywriter has followed the Wired school here: a brief, lurid phrase, ultimately meaningless, presented in toxic ink (the same colours, apparently, as the outside of the game is skinned with, so maybe they were just rolling with the punch. The two-tone character portraits look like Frank Miller's work to me, and conspicuously for this film -- I don't see any nipples on our heroes' body armour.) "Play our game until you are encephalic." Tempting, but...

4 comments:

  1. While LCD games have a cute place in the history of gaming, 1995 was a bit late. A three year old child insisting that Sesame Street is real is cute. A fifteen year old child insisting that Sesame Street is real is much less cute.

    ...if that makes sense...

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Batman Forever was the kind of Batman movie for which perhaps a '90s LCD game adaptation would be the most appropriate. They were both cases of "aren't we done with that, yet?"

      Delete
    2. Maybe they should make an LCD game about climate change denialism, then.

      Delete
    3. An LCD game about climate change denialism would be really simple. Two buttons, one saying "The research isn't conclusive" and the other saying "Orthodox alarmists moving in lockstep". Just mash those buttons, over and over.

      Delete