"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...

"Batman Returns", SNES, 1993.

Another game of the same name, with more horsepower and a different spin. (A different deadly spin attack? Well, maybe.)

"GENTLEMEN
START YOUR SCREAMING"
Your windpipe will get a workout when you see what Konami(r) has prepared for you in the Batman(tm) Returns game for Super NES(tm).
But your screams will be drowned out by crunching bones, cracking skulls, shattering glass and other cool CD quality sounds designed to make you cringe.
Because Batman has rapid-fire fists and is a master of flying body slams, spinning judo kicks, double head knocking and other means of maiming. And check out your hero's humungous size. We're talking big!
In seven 3-D movie-like levels, experience the agony of Catwoman's claws, kicks and whip and the ecstasy of pummeling The Penguin and his clan of delinquent clowns, all talented in terrorism.
Inside your cape of fear are Batarangs and test tubes, essential for battling the Tattooed Strongman, the Organ Grinder and the rocket launching Duck Vehicle.
Blow away renegade bikers with the Batmobile loaded with Batdiscs and catapult yourself to safety with your trusty Grappling Hook.
The frigid fiend is chillin' in his way cool lair waiting to put the Caped Crusader on ice. So put on your cowl and put up your dukes. Can't you hear Gotham City screaming for help?!

This ad's design is essentially a perfect marriage between the comic-book origin of the material and the comic-book-readership of the audience. Comics folks like comics! Sell it to them as a comic! And it doesn't matter if the perspective is off or the viewpoint uncertain... comics readers are used to dodginess in that department!

Future references to windpipes getting workouts are to be left on the cutting room floor by notice of the department of good taste and lousy innuendo. Rarely do sound effects take such a forefront role in an ad, and still more rarely yet are you told that they are "designed to make you cringe." But I always cringe when I see "cool CD quality sound" bandied about. Hootie & the Blowfish: cool CD quality sound. FAIL.

The "and other means of maiming" gets a big thumbs up, but the emphasis on his size is again a bit strange -- presumably using a big, detailed character sprite as a selling point where historically it has been a drawback (can't show much on screen at a time; invisible, indefensible attacks often come from off-screen as a consequence).

Uh-oh, more of those regrettable '90s marketing buzzwords! "3-D"! BZZT. "movie-like"! BZZT. There is a reason we're playing 2D video games, and it's not because we want to watch a 3D movie. (If we did, we could play Tempest or S.T.U.N. Runner.) Points for the "agony and the ecstasy" reference, flying way over the comic readers' heads. This copywriter had some fun, between snorts of blow, and isn't afraid to wave his education around. "Cape of fear" is a bit awkward, perhaps a play off of contemporary suspense movie "Cape Fear"? Even this whizkid can't do much with "rocket launching Duck Vehicle." Punch it up a bit, maybe? Nothing can really ice that cake. He was spent after "his clan of delinquent clowns, all talented in terrorism", understandably.

Then the '90s drags the ad back, screaming, into Hades, with "chillin' in his way cool lair". We're talking the Penguin here, not Mr. Freeze, and certainly not Vanilla Ice. Also, the obligatory shopping list of weapons and vehicles is a big drag factor on the prose's flow of otherwise virtuosity.

But the ad is, by weight, more win than fail. I like the way the cartridge's slogan also gets included by virtue of printing the whole box art also. Other points I could comment on but won't! What a pleasure, to have a surplus of material.

(Hey, my blog has contributed to further scholarship! Right on!)

"Batman Returns", NES, 1993.

Tim Burton may not have known what he was doing with the Batman movies, but it sure was different! The second one hits that sweet spot on the timeline where umpteen different unrelated versions of it are licensed for every machine under the sun. This ad's target audience? Somewhat clueless dad, whose kids still have last generation's console, but isn't being sold on the game by anything remotely related to the content of the cartridge.

OUR NEW BATMAN GAME IS ANYTHING BUT TAME.
Batman Returns for your NES brings it with the misery of a city that has fallen prey to Catwoman, The Penguin, and the Red Triangle Circus Gang. Now as these maniacal freaks tear at the heart of Gotham City in a six-level, jaw-breaking spectacular, you must once again venture into the dark night as Batman. But you'll need more than the Batmobile, Batskiboat and Batarang to tame their fiendish frenzy. You'll need all your fighting skills and the deadly spin attack to thrash hundreds of arch enemies who are looking to destroy you!

"Brings with it the misery of a city that has fallen prey"... extraordinarily glum ad copy, but a moment of surprising poetry! We get a glimpse of it again, with the "maniacal freaks tear[ing] at the heart of Gotham City", but quickly the English Lit grad student is sacked as we fall back into the tired cliches of alliteration (fiendish frenzy) and shopping lists of regrettable obligatory tie-in trademarks (Batmobile, Batarang, AND... Batskiboat? Not actually a skiboat for Batman, but actually just a regular boat for Batman's Russian counterpart, Batski.) It gets worse with the gameplay described: you'll need all your fighting skills AND the deadly spin attack, which for reasons we can't adequately explain are categorized external to the fighting skills portfolio. You'll use them to thrash (wicked!) hundreds of arch enemies (each one archer than the last?) I think an arch enemy worth his salt might aspire to ruin your good family name, deceive you into destroying that which is most dear to you, sour your family fortune or at least cast your loving partner's fidelity into suspicion -- consider the Count of Monte Cristo -- but these ones are content to simply destroy you. (Well, those outcomes would also likely destroy you emotionally, but I haven't yet seen the video game bold enough to depict them.) Dad noticed none of this as none of these words were decked out in vinyl fetish gear.
I like the hint line advertised at the bottom. 70 cents a minute for a pre-recorded voice to ask you if you were using the deadly spin attack adequately to thrash maniacal freaks on your Batskiboat. That's cheaper than a hit of LSD and gets you roughly the same experience!

Acclaim's Nintendo Double Player Wireless Head-to-Head System, 1989

Here we are presented with the grim spectacle of two angry preppies -- seemingly the same spoiled pair as on the box art. Bet these overstuffed rich kids not only got their parents to shell out for the wireless controllers, but a special vibrating gaming chair with cup-holders and speakers in the head-rest.

GO HEAD-TO-HEAD,
WIRELESS!
With The Nintendo Double Player
Wireless Head-To-Head System From Acclaim.

Playing games on the Nintendo Entertainment System will never be the same with Acclaim's new DOUBLE PLAYER System -- the two player set of wireless controllers that really gives you and a friend the power to move when playing your favorite video games -- especially games with head-to-head, 2-player action!

Officially approved by Nintendo, the DOUBLE PLAYER System scores BIG with score-raising features like twin turbo rapid-fire, slow-motion, and pin-point accuracy from up to 30' away. Get the winning edge.

THE HEAD-TO-HEAD WIRELESS winning edge!

Two wireless controls are never really needed, since with one wireless and one wired, the players would never get entangled.

But the (questionable) premise is that the wireless controller gives players an "edge" over the competition (not just an edge, a winning edge -- and not just a winning edge, THE HEAD-TO-HEAD WIRELESS winning edge!), so this is the only way they can duel on an even playing field. So like many 3rd-party controllers, it has rapid-fire (here somewhat overstated as the hyperbolic "twin turbo rapid-fire" -- so not just one player at a time can enjoy it? And it's turbo rapid-fire, not the regular logey kind. Er, unless you engage the slow-motion. Maybe if you enable both simultaneously, Acclaim delivers an unprecedented approximation of gameplay at regular speed, now called ACCLAIM ACTION SPEED!)

(Am I the only one getting a vaguely homoerotic subtext with all the emphasis on "head-to-head, 2-player action"?) (A: Yes.)

I must confess to some curiosity regarding how this product would differ from, say, a pair of the Acclaim Remote Controllers. An infra-red receiver tuned to two frequencies instead of just one? The joysticks definitely appear to be thoroughly skinned with their new brand. There are a lot of buttons on these joysticks; it looks like Acclaim is offering rapid-fire not only with A and B but also with Start and Select. (Maybe rapid-firing Start is the sad secret of how they achieve their slow-motion effect?)

It's good to see Acclaim continuing to get good mileage out of their renting of the WWF license. And because you can see a few pixels of Hulk Hogan (seemingly getting kicked in the nuts by Andre the Giant... that's gotta hurt!) in the background -- hey, if these guys are posing with their controllers, who's playing that game? -- you catch a hilarious bit of business in the very small print at the bottom: Hulk Hogan^TM is a trademark of the Marvel Comics Group. The word "Hulk" existed before Stan Lee, and it's not like Hogan was green, incredible, or irradiated with gamma radiation. It makes one wonder how that bit of backroom paperwork played out. (I don't even want to imagine just how the complicated Sgt. Slaughter's dual existence between the wrestling ring and G.I. Joe was hashed out.) In any case, you can bet that this ad appeared in a Marvel comic... who knows if they would have bothered with that in a DC one?

"Willow", NES, 1989.

The movie Willow was pretty great at what it was: a tour de force tech demo for newly-developed morphing special effects, an in-house answer to "what would you get if you recycled Star Wars as high fantasy?", and a showcase for Warwick Davis' formidable acting chops without the Wicket teddy bear prosthetic drag factor. (And something nice to remember Val Kilmer as before he got old and fat.) Three entirely distinct video games were adapted from this film -- the top-down RPG NES version advertised here as well as a platforming arcade game and a collection of minigames for the PC. Though the movie was a Lucasfilm property (and hence now part of the deep Disney back catalogue!), I felt it missed out by being outsourced in this way, never justly being adapted properly into a Lucasarts style game -- which is to say, a SCUMM adventure game! (A few other Lucasfilm properties like Captain EO and, say, American Graffiti suffered this fate, but I don't know that anyone but myself will ever regret the absence of a Radioland Murders adventure game.) That said, these other adaptations leave a wealth of sprite materials for potential re-use by enterprising fangame creators. I like to believe that if I keep tooting this horn every few years, surely someone will eventually pick it up, so I won't have to. Just where is the Willow fandom, anyhow? (The conventional wisdom has it: look for the slashfic. And here, perhaps even more than usual, I must say... I'd rather not.)

P r e p a r e   f o r   a
wicked
fantasy

Travel back to a time of sorcery and magic when the evil Queen Bavmorda ruled the land under a reign of terror.

According to legend, a baby has been born who will destroy the heartless ruler. But the queen vows she'll slay the child first!
As Willow, the baby's chosen protector, you must face the deadly challenges of mysterious forests and villages while battling the Queen's Nockmaar army. In the meantime, your fate depends on collecting an arsenal of swords, shields and magic for the ultimate confrontation with Queen Bavmorda!
So prepare yourself for the only action fantasy with wicked graphics and playability. From Capcom U.S.A.
Travel through mysterious forests and villages, accumulating weapons and magic.

In retrospect, these generic badnasty names (Nockmaar?) are difficult to take seriously when seen in print. As you can see, if you can remember back a week, this ad is laid out just like the first of our two Bionic Commando ads, only with a greater emphasis on architectural sketches around the box art (itself with a great emphasis on Warwick Davis' comely lips!)
The text lets us know that this movie takes place in the past, but if its setting isn't Earth, I don't see why that need necessarily be so -- Star Wars, after all, takes place "long ago", so why couldn't this one take place in some distant, low-tech, perhaps post-apocalyptic Canticle for Leibowitz future? The big reveal at the end when Bavmorda's castle crumbles, uncovering... the Statue of Liberty! This perhaps also explains Willow's entire race as a hardy breed of radiation-blighted stunted survivors. Or am I overthinking this?
I must say, the prospect of collecting an arsenal of shields doesn't fill me with enthusiasm. Apparently this game is "the only action fantasy with wicked graphics and playability"; what is an action fantasy, anyhow, and are there other ones with less wicked playability?
In that brief (yet somehow interminable) moment in my '20s when I had both free time, loose morals, and false nostalgia, this was one of the games I looked up to power through, having missed it the first time around. It was intriguing, contained much that did not originate from the movie, and contained an early boss fight a couple of hours in that would tie up the whole game if certain Game Genie codes were enabled. This game was one of the first times I ran up against an explicit grind wall of "You can't cross this bridge until you reach Level 7!" which was somewhat deflatory of my enthusiasm for what the game had to further offer, as it felt I needed to see a lot more of what I'd already experienced thus far before I'd be allowed to progress. I begged to differ.
I like the way that the screenshot caption acts as a species of nonplussed TL;DR summary, functioning to describe the game if not exactly hype it.

Acclaim Remote Controller

Because my last wireless joystick post was so well received, here's another one... but wait, it's not just a tragic ad, it's also a terrible comic strip!

Acclaim
presents
Kid Remote
in
THE POWER TO MOVE!

Kid Acclaim: "(... STUCK IN A RUT...)"
THE KID WAS AT THE END OF HIS ROPE

KABOOM
WHEN OUT OF THE BLUE...
Kid Acclaim: "AWESOME!! THE ACCLAIM REMOTE FOR NINTENDO!"
NOW...
THE KID CAN PUT THE MOVES ON THE WWF SUPERSTARS
Hulk Hogan: "WHAT HIT ME?"
Kid Acclaim: "THE ACCLAIM REMOTE!"
WHEN SUDDENLY...
AIRWOLF ENCOUNTERS THE ENEMY

KA: "EAT SOME RAPID-FIRE!"

LATER...
BATTLING WITH IRONSWORD -- THE REMOTE'S 30 FOOT RANGE KEEPS THE KID OUT OF DANGER.
PLAYING WITH NINTENDO WILL NEVER BE THE SAME
KA: "THANKS TO THE POWER TO MOVE!"
TO BE CONTINUED...
The look and feel you already know.

• No messy wires
• Rapid-fire for higher scores
• Accurate up to 30'

So, the requisite panel-by-panel analysis: The scene opens on Kid Remots, described at the end of his rope and self-described as being in a rut. Neither of those is the case: his game has reached the GAME OVER screen and he is all tangled up in a joystick cord. Here's a pro tip: your game sessions will last longer if you keep the joystick in your hand rather than winding around your torso and then lead it off-panel.

This next panel is a great one to take out of context. Shazam! In my pants! The lightning bolt not only frees Kid Remote from his self-inflicted Japanese joystick bondage, but also vaporizes the armchair in the room with him. Miraculously, the electronics in the room are not only spared, the GAME OVER message on the screen doesn't even flicker. (Maybe KR is so inept a gamer the message is actually burned-in?)

That controller would be great if it wasn't so cartoonishly large the start and select buttons would be inaccessible during play. Then we have more oversized things, meaty wrestler arms (or "monster python quads" as I like to remember them), and even more oversized legs (put together, their bearer much be pretty disproportionate!)

Really, Kid Remote, of all the companies to wear the logo of, you picked Acclaim? Was Acclaim popular enough to even have shirts?

OK, what else does the remote do? We've pretty much covered it in the first four panels. But let's demonstrate its use with some Acclaim games, all of which benefit from being played 30 feet away!

I don't even know what the kid is supposed to be fighting in the Ironsword panel. Its scales make it look like it aspires toward a kind of dragon paw, but the shape is closer to a man-eating plant of some kind, like some sinister sunflower Triffid.

In the closing panel here we see that sadly, overuse of the Acclaim remote has resulted in gigantism in Kid Remote's hand, leaving him unable to operate an NES controller, his grotesquely oversized fist painfully swollen shut. (He was vindicated however when the first round of Xbox joysticks came out.)

Looking at the minuscule small print on the bottom, puzzlingly, Ironsword (of Fabio cover art fame) is indicated to be a trademark assigned to both its publisher Acclaim and then later its developer Rare Coin It. There's another head-scratcher in that area which I'll save for a future post, since I have just so much to work with here.

I have my doubts that Kid Acclaim's adventures really were continued. However, it may be worth noting that Kwirk (remember him?), along with other Acclaim-published characters, appeared in a TV show -- "the Power Team" -- that was essentially an unlicensed Captain N knock-off, only with Acclaim's characters. Anyhow, a real-life video game genius, Johnny Arcade, directed the team's activities with a special joystick -- perhaps a Acclaim wireless controller?

Well, I won't get to the bottom of this one tonight.

Just before I wrap up, I discovered that this comic was also a storyboard for a TV commercial. Who knows, perhaps someday I'll analyse those here too -- though it would have been tough squeezing a TV commercial into a comic book!

"Bionic Commando", NES, 1988.

OK, note to self -- posts about ads for hardware are unpopular, except with spambots in the comments section. So let's revisit recent territory -- Bionic Commando, who incorporates the hardware into his software presence!
 

Bionic Commando.
Experience the Power of a One-Man Army.
Get set for rapid fire action as you're transformed into the Bionic Commando. This best-seller from Capcom is a dynamic adaptation of the original arcade classic. Expect an onslaught of challenges and extraordinary graphics when you battle enemy forces in their futuristic lands. Your powerful extending bionic arm and incredible arsenal of weapons gives you all you need to become an unstoppable one-man army.
To the most daring soldiers, this might seem an impossible test, but they've never experienced the power of Bionic Commando!

• Bionic arm extends, providing unbelievable power and strength.
• Earn the weapons necessary to battle enemy forces.
• Bionic Command offers some of the best high resolution graphics available.
• This is a challenge for even the best video game players!

Again, they stress the arcade origins of the franchise to people who never played it and consequently will not notice the significant differences this NES version has from it. (That's why we call it a "dynamic adaptation"... very dynamic!) And another question -- is the bionic commando really bionic or is his grappling arm just a machine he wears outside his body, making him a kind of ... prosthetic private? (I know, I'm coming down with all the hard-hitting questions everyone else has been afraid to ask.)
Oh, I say! How embarrassing to overlook -- the body text in this ad is identical to that in the previous ad, except that it offers some bullet points at the end. Just as well I figured that out as soon as I did before seeing just how much fresh blood I could squeeze from this particular stone the second time around. ("Am I repeating the same points too much?") Plus now I get to speculate regarding what factors inspired Capcom to run -the same ad- in two different permutations. (It's not like they could use a referral code to determine which ad was more successful with consumers...) Less emphasis on the box art here, more on setting the box in a setting seemingly torn from the "pages" of the game. (When the Bionic Commando needs to unwind -- no, relax, not unspool his grapple -- he heads to a neutral UN area and relaxes with a round or two of Bionic Commando. Sadly, he is a tremendous narcissist.)
OK, let's look at the new bullet point business:

• I agree with the first note regarding the bionic arm -- that it extends -- but not so much with the exposition. Unbelievable power and strength? Can be used to block bullets and will not break under the porky commando's body weight. That's not unbelievable, it's the minimum level of function needed to make the mission possible at all.
• Earning the necessary weapons doesn't sound as fun as just being granted access to them. If I, the one-man-army, really am your last, best, hope to tame the menace of the Badds, then why require me to grind just to obtain the materials required? This is the capitalist system we're fighting to uphold: no free rides, even for heroes. It's as bad as the under-equipped Russian army in WWI, in which gunless soldiers were instructed to retrieve weapons from the previous, slain, line of Russian soldiers for their own use.
• I'm not really in a position to judge the quality of its high-resolution graphics vis a vis what else was on the market at the time, but I can corroborate the rumours of its challenge level -- I got to watch friends play this on loan back in the day, but watch only after my first attempt at grapple use ended up as you might imagine, at the bottom of a bottomless pit, ending my turn within about five seconds. My alleged friends refused to allow me to jeopardize any more of the precious in-game lives, so naturally I never got any better at manipulating that bionic grapple. Once you got the knack of it, pretty much an unprecedented new way of navigating video game space at the time, you can comport yourself aerobatically almost indefinitely, deliberately provoking the UN peacekeepers for kicks... but until you grok it, you will always get killed at the very first moat you encounter.