For some reason, this game gets kind of a bad rap, especially in comparison to the Super Nintendo Batman Returns game. That game was just an uninspired beat ‘em up title with the Batman license, the only thing interesting they really did was copy the Sega CD's Driving Stages. This game is completely different, whereas the SNES game is a beat ‘em up, Batman Returns for Genesis is an Action Platformer and fairly decent one at that.
As stated above, this being an Action Platformer, you guide Batman through various stages in the game. You fight off bad guys, jump around and use your various gadgets to traverse the levels. Batman's actions consist of physical attacks, using his weapons from the Utility Belt, and jumping, firing his grapple gun, and gliding. I'll go over each of these in that respective order. With his basic physical attacks Batman can do things such as a punching, which you can also perform while jumping, a kick, and a crouching kick, just by pressing the assigned physical attack button.
Each physical attack has different properties to it and they aren't just different looking. Punching can be done rapidly and is actually effective on certain kinds of normal enemies and even bosses. You can actually kill specific kinds of enemies by punching them in the game before they can even touch you. The standing kick move is the strongest physical attack in terms of damage and has good reach, the trick to it is that it technically hits multiple times so sometimes you can kill enemies in one kick if you're within range and it's well timed. The crouching kick has the most reach but does the least amount of damage, usually it's best to throw this move out if some acrobat or something is flipping all around you and you're too close to use any gadgets, because then you drastically reduce your chance of being hit while still being able to attack.
I'd say the most unique part of this game is the inclusion of the infamous Utility Belt and various gadgets. To my knowledge, this is the first time in a Batman game that you have access to the Utility Belt and a full arsenal of things to use. The only other game I know of that did this during the 16-bit days was The Adventures of Batman and Robin on Super Nintendo, and that game came out two years after this one. Anyhow Batman has access to five different gadgets in his belt, normal Batarangs, Smoke Bombs which stun enemies, a swarm of bats, a Speargun, and a Homing Batarang. All you have to do is press Start and select what you want to use, as you play through the game you can pick up more of these through various stages in the form of power ups.
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