In 1995, Acclaim Entertainment (famous for its Spider-man games, and infamous for its Simpsons games) and Probe Entertainment (famous for its work on the Genesis ports of Mortal Kombat and Mortal Kombat II) teamed up to make Batman Forever, a beat-em-up based on the movie.
The story follows the plot of the movie almost to the letter. You have Batman and Robin going through six levels (Arkham Asylum, the bank, the circus, Two-Face's lair, Wayne manor, and the Riddler's lair) to go after (surprise!) Two-Face and the Riddler. The final boss fight is based off the scrapped ending for the movie in which the Riddler jumped out of a giant version of himself, but in the game you are fighting the giant Riddler, which is pretty stupid, but it's also pretty minor.
The music in the game is pretty standard. The title screen music doesn't stand out, the inventory screen is annoying as all hell after the fourth time, and the music on the levels isn't particularly memorable. All in all, it's there, but doesn't stand out.
The gameplay is where the game eagerly runs into a pit of lava and dissolves into mediocrity.
The movement is stiff, and while the fighting is somewhat fluid, it is also ripped off from Mortal Kombat. I'm serious. The gadgets are just useless, since actually using them is ridiculously counter-intuitive. Remember the special moves in MK II? Remember how annoying they were to do on a gamepad? That's right, the gadgets are the equivalent of the special moves. For example, to use thee heat ray, according to the manual, you press toward, away. toward. away, A. I find none of that works, so I just headbutt the controller. The grappling hook never seems to go up when you want it to. All in all, this is the main reason this game sucks.
The graphics are decent, with the bosses, along with B&R, looking like themselves. The environments are somewhat varied. There are only six enemy types (inmate, inmate with BO, goon with a flamethrower in his sleeve, lumberjack who uses a chainsaw to emasculate you, goon with a gun, and clowns) but they all have different names, which is fairly impressive.
Some odds and ends. The difficulty is much higher than it should be, due to the broken control scheme. The load times are fairly short, but...IT'S A CARTRIDGE. Why, in the name of all that is holy, are there load times on a cartridge. There are two players, but they share the same life bar, and the same number of lives. WTF? And there are secrets, if you can bother playing the game long enough to find them. Avoid this game at all costs, unless you find it in a flea market or something and want to say you own it. You sad, sad masochist, you.
The story follows the plot of the movie almost to the letter. You have Batman and Robin going through six levels (Arkham Asylum, the bank, the circus, Two-Face's lair, Wayne manor, and the Riddler's lair) to go after (surprise!) Two-Face and the Riddler. The final boss fight is based off the scrapped ending for the movie in which the Riddler jumped out of a giant version of himself, but in the game you are fighting the giant Riddler, which is pretty stupid, but it's also pretty minor.
The music in the game is pretty standard. The title screen music doesn't stand out, the inventory screen is annoying as all hell after the fourth time, and the music on the levels isn't particularly memorable. All in all, it's there, but doesn't stand out.
The gameplay is where the game eagerly runs into a pit of lava and dissolves into mediocrity.
The movement is stiff, and while the fighting is somewhat fluid, it is also ripped off from Mortal Kombat. I'm serious. The gadgets are just useless, since actually using them is ridiculously counter-intuitive. Remember the special moves in MK II? Remember how annoying they were to do on a gamepad? That's right, the gadgets are the equivalent of the special moves. For example, to use thee heat ray, according to the manual, you press toward, away. toward. away, A. I find none of that works, so I just headbutt the controller. The grappling hook never seems to go up when you want it to. All in all, this is the main reason this game sucks.
The graphics are decent, with the bosses, along with B&R, looking like themselves. The environments are somewhat varied. There are only six enemy types (inmate, inmate with BO, goon with a flamethrower in his sleeve, lumberjack who uses a chainsaw to emasculate you, goon with a gun, and clowns) but they all have different names, which is fairly impressive.
Some odds and ends. The difficulty is much higher than it should be, due to the broken control scheme. The load times are fairly short, but...IT'S A CARTRIDGE. Why, in the name of all that is holy, are there load times on a cartridge. There are two players, but they share the same life bar, and the same number of lives. WTF? And there are secrets, if you can bother playing the game long enough to find them. Avoid this game at all costs, unless you find it in a flea market or something and want to say you own it. You sad, sad masochist, you.
