In the long-awaited second installment of my journey through one of the greatest game libraries of all time, we take the Dark Knight’s second (!) Sega CD adventure for a spin.
First, some background. Batman Returns on the Sega CD is one of the greatest Batman games ever made. There. I said it. And this is due in no small part to the inclusion of some amazing Batmobile segments that really put the peripheral through its paces. They put the SNES’ sheet-of-paper Mode 7 effects to shame (unless you were an EGM editor back in the day…). Pure sex.
The followup is based on the awesome Warner Bros. cartoon featuring Batsy and his acrobatic sidekick. This would be cool enough on its own — after all, the SNES and Genesis games based on the cartoon were both great. But on top of that, it uses the same engine that powered those amazing Batman Returns driving segments. The lead programmer is even the same dude from 
Batman Returns. What could possibly go wrong?
Everything!
First of all, basing an entire Batman game around driving stages alone really doesn’t make for a lot of variety, though I will admit the developers tried to get a bit creative. The Riddler’s virtual reality level in particular is a nice change of pace.
The bigger problem, though, is the ridiculous difficulty right from the word go. You press start, and you’re immediately dropped into traffic that would put rush hour on the LA freeway to shame. And these aren’t cars you can shoot. They’re civilians…you have to avoid them at all costs. And there’s a very unforgiving time limit. So you have to drive fast, you can’t hit anything, and you’re not allowed to shoot anything? Sounds almost as awesome as it plays!
The Sega fanboy in me is desperately searching for something positive to say about this mess. Oh! The visuals are pretty darned impressive for a 16-bit game. Considering how fast everything is moving, and how many sprites are on-screen. Yeah! This is a great tech demo! Just never, ever pick up the controller and try to play it, and you have one of the best Sega CD games ever made.
Actually, there is something very unique and kind of cool about this otherwise unplayable disc. It features around 25 minutes of completely original animation. So you could technically call this a lost episode of the Batman & Robin cartoon. And it features just about every villain, including the Joker as voiced by Mark Hamill himself. And thanks to the magic of the internets, every bit of that animation canbe found on Youtube.
So far my foray into the best the Sega CD has to offer has turned up two of the worst games on the system. But hey, there was a fair bit of crap on this system. And while I can promise installment #3 will arrive a bit quicker than this one did, but I can’t promise the quality of game will get any better.
Greg Sewart Batman, Sega CD, Video Games
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