FGC #659 Batman: The Video Game

The best part of any Batman story is obviously his rogue’s gallery. But when you sit down and look at all the foes Batman must face, only one question comes to mind: what are their favorite videogames? So please enjoy the fruits of some extremely dangerous reporting: a complete listing of Batman’s greatest enemies’ greatest games.

Azrael
The Champion of the Order of St. Dumas believes that the true path forward for the Mega Man franchise is obvious: Mighty No. 9. There can be no alternatives to the brainchild of Keiji Inafune, and Jean-Paul genuinely believes the Mighty franchise is coming back soon, it just needed a few years to rest. He still has the 3DS version on preorder.

Bane
Bane doesn’t have a favorite game, but he is currently trying to earn as many tool-assisted speedrun records as possible. He wants to focus on one franchise, but cannot decide on exactly which one.

Black Mask
Roman was initially into the Wario Land series because he appreciated Wario’s personality. He tried Mega Micro Game$ because he had a Gameboy Advance already, and is now hooked on any and all “10 second minigames” titles. Tragically, he has all but forgotten about Wario’s involvement.

Brother Eye
Somehow programmed its own version of Solitaire into itself. Batman has no need for Solitaire on the Bat-puter, so where it actually learned about this app is a mystery.

Calculator
Plays Professor Layton titles during any downtime. He claims his ability to quickly conquer these games marks him as a genius. Oracle loves reminding him that these are games for children.

Calendar Man
Persona 5 Royal.

Carmine Falcone
Carmine does not care for all this “color and nonsense”, so he relaxes by playing Lawn Mowing Simulator. He finds the concept of starting “a groundskeeping business in the suburbs” “quaint” (his quote). He once tried to get his son to play the game with him, but they mutually decided to quit when the younger Falcone set up an Excel document to “optimize play”.

Catman
Plays online fighting games often, with Guilty Gear -Strive- being his latest passion, and spends a lot of time on fighting game discords as a result. TomCat6969 weirdly made a lot of posts approving of Bridget being trans, but cannot stand Testament being non-binary.

Catwoman
Selena really enjoyed Sly Cooper and the Thievius Raccoonus. Unfortunately, later games made her think they were trying to steal her general motif, so she filed a lawsuit for copyright infringement. The case is still pending, but she hasn’t been able to enjoy the franchise since.

Clayface
Plays WRPGs like Mass Effect and Skyrim continually, but inevitably quits when the game forces a choice on him that he feels “does not fit the character [he] is playing”. Probably responsible for the most broken controllers over RPGs in history.

Clock King
Claims he can repeatedly and consistently “beat” Dwarf Fortress. Nobody believes him.

Condiment King
It’s Burger Time. He really didn’t have any other options here.

Deadshot
Is practically always online playing Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2. Seems to delight in headshotting the “noobs”.

Doctor Hurt
As an immortal scientist from the 18th century, Thomas Hurt has never paid much heed to videogames. That said, he saw a demo for Dante’s Inferno for the Playstation 3 once a few years back, and has been intrigued by it ever since. We are all certain the game he is imagining is much better than the actual product.

Duela Dent / Joker’s Daughter
Absolutely believes Joker would be into the Grand Theft Auto franchise, and thus plays a lot of Grand Theft Auto. Has been down the Grand Theft Auto Online hole for a while, and may start committing more real-life crimes to support her habit.

El Flamingo
Eduardo Flamingo is a man of specific desires: he needs a videogame that features cannibalism, motorcycles, whips, and a dandy with whips that exudes flamboyance. As such, there is only one game that was ever made for him: Xenogears. He is currently hesitantly testing Xenoblade Chronicles 2.

Firefly
Has played every mainline Pokémon title, and has successfully beaten every champion by exclusively using fire type ‘mons. You can still find info on the Gamefaqs Pokémon Red boards about his Level 40 Charizard squashing Misty.

Harley Quinn
Would like to enjoy some 2-player coop game, like Boxboy + Boxgirl, with one of her significant others, but no one she is with ever seems to sit down to play. So, instead, she mostly plays Saints Row titles. She can’t tell you why that makes her sad.

Hugo Strange
Has an Animal Crossing: New Horizons island named “The Asylum”. He just spent multiple days trying to “expose” the real reason Raymond is wearing a maid uniform.

Hush
Got obsessed with Mega Man Powered Up, and how you could control Mega Man, Roll, Protoman, and all the Robot Masters. Does not seem to care about any other Mega Man titles.

Joker
Plays Shin Megami Tensei titles religiously as soon as they are released. Makes a big deal about how he always plays the “order” route, and demands his henchmen laugh at his choices in a 50-hour RPG. He told Batman about it once, too. He wasn’t impressed.

KGBeast
Krazy Ivan for the Playstation. Claims he will not rest until he is able to play the Sega Saturn version. Yes, it is 2024.

Killer Croc
Killer Croc’s physical deformity makes traditional controllers and action games too much of a challenge, but old-school, all-ages RPGs don’t require much more than being able to press an A button. Current favorite is Final Fantasy 6, but mostly because he likes Gau.

Killer Moth
Might have never even played a videogame before August of 2014, but now will do nearly anything to “own the libs” in the gaming sphere. As a result, he claims his current favorite is one of the Dead or Alive volleyball games that he imported from PlayAsia. He may or may not have ever played it.

Kite Man
Brother likes Flappy Bird a lot, and was playing it well before it was so memetic. He has a few other “favorite games”, but that was the first one that came to mind.

Lady Shiva
The martial arts grandmistress believes that all forms of physical expression must be mastered, and any challenge must be conquered. As such, she sat down and achieved the greatest score in history on QWOP after a marathon playing session of seventy hours. She was disappointed. It only took her 24 hours to master Jiu Jisu.

Lord Death Man
He was addicted to The Idolm@ster Cinderella Girls Starlight Stage. Then he found out about Skullgirls Mobile, and claims the whole enterprise was “made for him”. It is not much more than an advanced gacha, Lord Death Man. Your minions are starting to get concerned it is interrupting your work.

Mad Hatter
Has been playing nothing but Super Mario Odyssey since 2017.

Man-Bat
As Kirk Langstrom, he played a lot of Starcraft in college, but hasn’t had time to get back into it in later years. As a Man-Bat, he mostly just quizzically stares at screensavers.

Maximillian “Maxie” Zeus
He has played every game in the God of War franchise, but barely ever gets past the opening levels. Please do not tell him how God of War 3 ends.

Mr. Freeze
Victor has been playing The Sims since the aughts, and has upgraded to the latest iterations along the way. Continually makes families with “Victor and Nora” as father and mother of multiple children in happy little neighborhoods. It is always sunny and warm there. In The Sims

Onomatopoeia
Comix Zone, the 1995 Sega Genesis beat ‘em up. And you do not want to know what happens if you ask him if he actually beat it.

Orca
For reasons completely unknown to her, Orca has always been pathologically drawn to Bucky O’Hare on the Nintendo Entertainment System.

Owlman
In his alternate universe where good is evil and evil is good, Owlman enjoys a fun game of Normal Smash Brothers Beginning while playing as his favorite character, Dark Pit.

The Penguin
Oswald tells everyone his favorite game is Tetris, because that is considered intellectual, and no one ever asks a lot of follow up questions to that answer. When no one is within earshot, he dotes on a used copy of State of Emergency for Playstation 2.

Poison Ivy
Played Harvest Moon: More Friends Of Mineral Town religiously on her Gameboy Advance, and eventually even enacted a plan to convert Gotham City Park and the surrounding area into a perfect replica of her farm. Unfortunately, she stopped playing when the game “forced” her to marry a man. Hasn’t looked back.

Professor Pyg
Lazlo Valentin occasionally unwinds from his activities with the Circus of Strange to fire up Black Desert Online. He has never once gotten past the character creation portion of the game. But one day he will complete his masterpiece! And everyone on Black Desert Online will rue the day! Rue!

Prometheus
Prometheus is a tremendous fan of specifically Mortal Kombat: Deception. Weirdly enough, he does not care for the rest of the franchise, nor many fighting games in general. He played Tekken 4 for a little while, though.

Ra’s al Ghul
He has enjoyed exactly one videogame over the course of thousands of years, and it is 4.6 Billion Year Story: The Theory of Evolution for the PC-9801 home computer. If you respond to his love of said game with “Oh, you mean E.V.O.: Search for Eden for the Super Nintendo?” you will be beheaded.

Riddler
Believes that the Adventures of Lolo franchise could be described as “artisanal puzzle games”, and will tell you about it for hours if you so much as glance at a blue ball in his presence. Will then waste further time explaining how HAL chose the wrong mascot for its future games.

Scarecrow
Dr. Crane got into “survival horror” on a henchman’s recommendation. While he enjoyed nearly everything in the genre, he attached himself to Dino Crisis, and occasionally writes Capcom from Arkham to demand a continuation of the franchise.

Slade Wilson aka Deathstroke
He is a huge Hatsune Miku / Vocaloids fan, and is passionate about any game where that virtual idol performs. The Terminator was able to mask his obsession for a few years while Rose Wilson was hanging around, but when his daughter moved out, mysteriously “her” Hatsune Miku statues remained on display.

Solomon Grundy
A few lifetimes back, he found a Gameboy with Alleyway, and played that for hours. Unfortunately, the batteries eventually ran out, and he kind of forgot about all of it. Guess that wins by default.

Talia al Ghul
Has played through Fire Emblem: Three Houses an uncountable number of times. She always chooses to play as Male Byleth, always joins the Black Eagles, and always focuses all romance options on Edelgard von Hresvelg. If pressed, she will rationalize this as she really got into the franchise with Fire Emblem Awakening. This, ultimately, does not explain anything.

The Batman Who Laughs
As an evil duplicate of Batman that travels the multiverse, he purports that his favorite game is Mother 64, which was only released in his universe, but was destroyed forever when his world fell into the darkness. He might be lying to annoy Tim Drake.

The Court of Owls
For reasons that have been lost to the generations, the waiting area for the main Court of Owls audience chamber contains an old CRTV, working Nintendo Entertainment System, one NES controller, and a single copy of Shadowgate. Lincoln March claims he saved Stormhaven once, but the Talons mostly just find new ways to die during intermittent downtime.

Two-Face
Harvey Dent played Undertale roughly 7,000 times, and will one day get enough consecutive coin flips to finally see the True Pacifist or Genocide Ending. He no longer cares which finale he sees, simply that he sees it at all.

Vandal Savage
Plays Civ all the damn time, and constantly writes “helpful” letters to the developers explaining exactly what they got wrong about past civilizations and leaders.

Ventriloquist & Scarface
Arnold Wesker plays Bioshock while “alone”. He gets a really weird look on his face during that bit where you learn the true meaning of the “would you kindly” trigger phrase. He has a save file that will load the game right there.

Victor Zsasz
He doesn’t much care where it is in the franchise, but if Zsasz is playing a game, it must be Dynasty Warriors. Just think about it: so many people murdered with blades, all killed with the press of a button, and there is an automatic counter tallying every last homicide. That’s the dream for Gotham’s number one serial killer.

… Actually, come to think of it, Arkham Asylum is now discontinuing all videogame privileges for the inmates. These yahoos want to play games, they can go ahead and try to escape.

FGC #659 Batman: The Video Game

• System: Nintendo Entertainment System. It is a shame that the combination of license and parent company likely means this will never see a rerelease.
• Number of players: I’m Batman. Not anybody else. One player.
• Goggle Bob Fact: The majority of this article was originally a series of tweets from back in 2022. The original data is lost, as I deleted everything I had on that platform prior to 2023 because… Well… you know.
• Maybe actually talk about the game for a second: Batman: The Video Game is one of the best 2-D action platformers on a system known for 2-D action platformers. In an alternate universe, Castlevania was never successful, and “Batman-alikes” are how we label tough-but-fair action games from the late 80’s (technically a 1989 release!) Batman: The Video Game should be referenced with the same hushed reverence as other phenomenal licensed games like Ducktales or Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles.
• I’m Batman: This is 100% a 2-D action game for the NES, and technically could slot in most any hero, and you would still have a very similar battle against flamethrower guys and spikey robots. That said, you basically have to stalk your opponents and carefully take them out from a distance if you want to make any platforming progress, so this feels more “Batman” than a number of beat ‘em up style adventures between this and Arkham Asylum. Stealth is the bat’s greatest weapon!
• The Bat’s Greatest Weapon: … But throwing batdisks in groups of three is also very effective. The batpoon is also a delightfully weird choice if you want our favorite varmint to have a gun.
• Favorite Boss: Is the penultimate boss supposed to be Maxie Zeus, the Electrocutioner, or Firebug? I have seen reports of all three. Whatever! Point is that Batman should fight monsters that toss around lightning more often.
• Say something mean: In a game that could potentially contain any Batman villain, two of the bosses are generic robotic blocks. This is not a Mega Man game, dammit!
• All images that are not directly taken from games are copyright DC Comics… except that one Animal Crossing bit for Hugo Strange, which was provided by frequent commentator Metal Man Master. Here’s the whole pic, because it is too good to crop for the article format permanantly.
  
  He is so hard at work!
• Did you know? According to a prototype that has been floating around for ages, the original final boss of this game was not the Joker, and the finale was simply Batman punching out the Clown Prince of Crime in a cutscene. He still kind of looked like Dril, though.
• Would I play again: If you know what you are doing, you can wall-jump Batman up to the finish inside of a half hour. And considering how much I played this game as a kid, I know what I am doing. So I will probably do that again at some point in the future, as I would hate to see my bat-skills atrophy.

What’s next? Random ROB has chosen… Battle Chess! Let the battle (in chess) begin! Please look forward to it!

One last villain for the road