Oh, my goodness.
I don't even know where to begin.
Well, maybe starting with a couple of facts will get the ball rolling. Developed by Novotrade and released in 1995, The Adventures of Batman & Robin is an interactive software product for the Sega Game Gear. Oh no! Robin has been kidnapped! Over the course of ten levels, the Caped Crusader battles the Rogues' Gallery and their henchmen in order to rescue him. Succeed, and the dynamic duo will be reunited. Fail, and who really gives a damn? Okay, fact time is over. Good thing too, because we're about to dive into one of those games. I'm talking not just bad, but that extra special bad. Anyone who dares to spend more than a few minutes playing this mockery is going to feel like they were transported to a realm completely divorced from all things sensible. A hostile realm where the clouds devour everyone who steps outside, and gravity turns the flowers inside out.
First off, I can't comprehend how Robin was immediately kidnapped in his own game. Maybe it's not something that should be questioned. After all, there's been a hundred Legend of Zelda games, yet Zelda gets kidnapped in all of them. Okay, but seriously, I'm going to take an uneducated guess and say that at one time or another, Robin was planned to be a playable character. However, as we'll soon see, Novotrade must've ran into a lot of problems during the game's development. Robin got the ax, and his kidnapping was relegated to a single throwaway line in the intro. They didn't even have time to create some key art of Boy Wonder tied up or blindfolded with his shirt off. Anyway, his absence is the least of the game's problems. I'm just trying to set the scene.
Upon starting the game, I was immediately treated to what might be the worst controls in a 2D Batman game. There's a lot to say about Batman: The Arcade game and Batman Returns on the Genesis, yet neither can compare to the insanity I'm going to attempt to describe. The simple act of turning around is either instantaneous, takes a half-second, or Batman stumbles like he tripped over his own foot. I sincerely believe this is caused entirely by RNG. Whether or not he jumps when I press the jump button is also random. There's a double-jump but getting that to work properly AND land on the intended target is like trying to roll three 7s in a row. There's a special irony in that a company capable of making one of the first and best examples of controlling a dolphin in a video game could fail so spectacularly at a game about controlling a bipedal mammal. It really is shocking that so much of what I want Batman to do is governed by forces beyond understanding.
I can't even pretend to be shocked that the camera won't keep up with what's happening. There are times when it actively refuses to show me what needs to be seen, and you know what? That's fair. I shouldn't be so hard on video game cameras anyway. They do so much, yet nobody is ever around to praise them when they're working perfectly. In this game, where the controls only ever work when they feel like it, my complaints about the camera just make me look like a worse person than I already am.
Seeing as how we're dealing with a piece of entertainment media that has dysfunctional controls and an unresponsive camera, each level is designed to continually remind us of those issues over and over again. I'm saying that there are endlessly large stages with gobs of vertical platforming. There will be countless, and I mean countless times where the controls will fail, and Batman will fall. Sometimes, this isn't a massive problem. Other times, like in the Mr. Freeze stages, falling means redoing so many RNG-boggled jumps that I just wanted to lie down and take a month off. Just use save-states. A "legitimate" playthrough is a pipe dream anyway.
Ah right, can't forget about the goons. There are of course several of them dotting each stage, and they all respawn, because what the heck. Fighting is not nearly as clumsy as running or jumping, but it's still pretty terrible. The best strategy when dealing with regular enemies is usually just getting close enough that a mash of the attack button will put an end to them. With the rest of the game being what it is, you're unlikely to get past anyone without taking at least a little damage. Just... do yourself a solid and ignore it. Bosses are a bit different in that they're more durable and have some unique means of attack. Don't waste time trying to learn a pattern or whatever. Break out the special weapons and destroy the boss in seconds. If need be, you can get in their face and mash away. It'll cost a few lives, but it doesn't matter.
Yeah, I probably should've said this in the beginning: "It doesn't matter." Death in The Adventures of Batman & Robin is a mild inconvenience. Batman lies on the ground for a second, then gets right back up. He has nine lives, you see. Dying also places him in the exact spot where he bit the dust. If that spot was in front of a half-dead boss, then so be it. Continues are unlimited and you can even use passwords to save progress or skip ahead. There isn't a doubt in my mind that Novotrade reached a point where they threw up their collective hands, said "It doesn't matter." and did whatever they could to erase any semblance of friction.
The fact that Batman's hurt-box doubles in size while he's running doesn't matter.
The framerate that hovers somewhere between 10 to 15 FPS doesn't matter.
In this game and this game alone, there's a difference between standing on spikes and standing in spikes. Only one of which actually depletes health, yet it still doesn't matter.
I try to throw an explosive at The Scarecrow, and he rolls into a ball like Samus freakin' Aran, but that absolutely doesn't matter.
It doesn't even matter when I'm trying to fight a toy plane and none of the projectile weapons do anything.
What gets me is despite how little anything matters, Novotrade were still thoughtful enough to place health restoratives in areas reasonably close to the boss battles. What was Batman Returns' excuse!? Swear on my everything, it's like the more time I spend with video games, the less I understand them. Anyway, I think there's nothing left to say about The Adventures of Batman & Robin. It's a total disaster. If you must experience at least one bad game in your life, then make it this one. The sole redeeming quality is that you can learn a lot from it and never have to worry about losing progress.
Try it if you dare.
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