Highlights
- Batman games have had their highs and lows, offering challenging experiences for gamers over the years.
- Some games, like Batman: Arkham City, provided iconic Batman experiences with tough boss fights and gameplay.
- Older Batman games like Batman Forever from the 90s were brutally unforgiving, offering challenging platforming elements.
Superhero games have had their ups and downs over the years, with many flops and memorable successes. Fans may struggle with loving the idea that they can get into the shoes of these larger-than-life characters, especially since many attempts to successfully put gamers in said footwear don’t feel right.
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Batman games haven’t always been at the forefront of the superhero gaming genre, but the Caped Crusader has been one of the biggest names in recent years representing DC in games. From the infamous Arkham franchise to the other gaming appearances Bruce Wayne has made over the past few decades, Batman games tend to offer riveting experiences for gamers to dive into, but not all of them are easy.
8 Batman: Rise Of Sin Tzu
GameFAQs Difficulty Score: 3.14/5
Batman: Rise of Sin Tzu
- Released
- October 16, 2003
Considering the joy that players found in the stealthy, story-focused Batman Arkham games, it’s strange to think back to 2003, a time when the most prominent game available for Batman lovers was Rise of Sin Tzu, an action beat-em-up game that was based on The New Batman Adventures and featured many members of the voice cast from that series.
While the story was an interesting one, featuring an Asian Crime Lord who was brought to Arkham Asylum and began manipulating events around Gotham, Rise of Sin Tzu made for an enjoyable game, but most of the gameplay was action focused, and some of the controls took a lot of getting used to. This presented more of a challenge for gamers than they might have expected from a game based on the DC Animated Universe, which fans are still hoping to see again in the modern gaming sphere.
7 Batman: Arkham City
GameFAQs Difficulty Score: 3.16/5
Batman Arkham City
- Released
- October 18, 2011
The second and arguably most popular of the Arkham games is also considered the most challenging by many players. Arkham City was released in 2011 at the height of the superhero cinematic boom, and as a result, the game had a lot to accomplish. Not only did it need to be a satisfying sequel to Arkham Asylum and deliver an even larger open-world experience, but it also had to satisfy the cravings of superhero fans who didn’t have a lot of games in the genre to check out at the time.
Arkham City was an iconic Batman gaming experience, but it also came with a lot of gadgets that players would gain throughout, providing even more mechanics for players to familiarize themselves with and use in order to defeat the ever-larger number of enemies. With a fantastic sequence of boss fights that were all challenging in their own unique ways, players had a lot to get through, even just to complete the main story. And that’s not including all the fascinating extras and side quests available across the city. Though Arkham Asylum is considered to be a fantastic Batman title, it is full of challenges that players may struggle with.
6 Batman (1990)
GameFAQs Difficulty Score: 3.23/5
- Platform: Sega Genesis
- Released: 1990-07-27
- Developer: Sunsoft
It is only natural for older games to have a little more challenge to them. At the time, games generally were quite short, so developers made each section of a game more difficult than the longer games of today need. The 1989 Batman film prompted multiple games based on it, and the 1990 one was a side-scrolling beat-em-up that remained quite faithful to the film.
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Developed for the Sega Genesis, this Batman game was not quite as difficult to get through as some similar games of its time, but looking back on it now, gamers will find plenty of challenges in comparison with modern games as they try to make their way through the dark, brooding backgrounds inspired by the style and palette of the 1989 movie.
5 Batman (1990 Arcade)
GameFAQs Difficulty Score: 3.24/5
- Platforms: Arcade
- Released: 1990
- Developers: Numega Team
Another old video game that was considered quite challenging even at the time was the Batman arcade game. This 1990 arcade machine was also based on the 1989 Tim Burton Batman film, and it is a beloved classic of its style. Even by the standards of arcade games, it’s also quite challenging.
Players had to deal with the traditional arcade beat-em-up style while chasing the Joker, cleaning up Gotham City, and moving through the vague plot points of the 1989 film. But as with any quarter-filled machine, this arcade game had many ways in which it could suddenly kill players off, making it one of the more challenging games featuring the Caped Crusader.
4 Batman: Vengeance
GameFAQs Difficulty Score: 3.36/5
Batman: Vengeance
- Released
- October 15, 2001
Another game based on The New Batman Adventures, Batman: Vengeance, was released in 2001 and provided gamers with a shocking level of challenge. Batman was focused on investigating the apparent death of the Joker while dealing with other problems appearing around Gotham. It also featured surprisingly hard combat.
One of the few criticisms of Batman: Vengeance was against the reliance on combat, as the game didn’t introduce many mental elements, like the Arkham games and other Batman games managed. Vengeance was a combat-heavy experience, and on some systems, the combat was considered especially egregious in difficulty as the game progressed.
3 Batman Returns
GameFAQs Difficulty Score: 4/5
Batman Returns
- Released
- 1992-00-00
- Developer
- Aspect, Malibu Interactive, Konami, Denton Designs, Spirit of Discovery
If the games based on the 1989 Batman film were challenging, they were nothing compared to the games based on Tim Burton’s cinematic Batman outings. Batman Returns was released alongside the sequel in 1992, developed separately by different companies for different systems, but it was the Sega CD version that produced the most heartbreaking challenges for gamers.
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Not only did the Sega CD version have all the challenges of the Sega Genesis edition of the game, which loosely followed the story of the Batman Returns movie, but it also took advantage of the hardware’s capabilities to add exclusive racing-themed levels. This, in addition to all the combat-filled levels that were incredibly challenging (even for the early 90s) made for a memorably difficult game that remains one of the hardest for Sega systems.
2 Batman Forever
GameFAQs Difficulty Score: 4.18/5
- Platforms: SNES, PC, R-Zone, Game Boy, Game Gear, Sega Genesis, DOS
- Released: 07-10-1995
- Developers: Acclaim Studios London
The Tim Burton films continued without him throughout the rest of the 1990s, and games based on each of them were bound to follow. Batman Forever hasn’t stood the test of time like the film, but as a game, it remains a great example of how brutally unforgiving a video game can be. This goes for whichever version of the game players attempt to take on, though the PC version was considered the most challenging of the lot.
Batman Forever had all the elements of a great fighting game, but it introduced many platforming elements that gave the controls a confusing nature. While some players were able to get to grips with it, Batman Forever doesn’t have a much better reputation today than the film it was based on.
1 Batman (1986)
GameFAQs Difficulty Score: 4.46/5
Batman (1986)
- Platform(s)
- ZX Spectrum , PC
- Released
- 1986-00-00
- Developer(s)
- Ocean Software
The concept of a Batman game is as old as The Legend of Zelda franchise. The first Batman game was developed in 1986 for basic PC models. Set in an isometric 3D universe, the game featured Batman attempting to collect the various pieces of the Batmobile in order to put it back together and save Robin.
Despite being aged, this Batman game is fairly interesting in that it introduced some early gaming features, such as a precursor to the save system, and it was considered a classic at the time. Despite this, trying to play this 1986 game now is difficult as the style of video games has moved on a great deal, and the short length of the games at this time made it necessary for them to be challenging. If gamers somehow manage to find this game, they are sure to be in for a tough time.
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