Batusi

I was recently in a conversation with someone about the Genesis/ Mega Drive version of Sunsoft's Batman, which is something close to my heart. This sparked some interest in further dissection of the game, which is what we'll do this week.

Let's get one thing out of the way, first: Batman is a shitty video game. Often unimaginative, most of it has to do with running from one end of a playfield to the next while punching bad guys dressed as street thugs and mimes. Some light platforming is sprinkled in to break up the running and the punching, but most are obviously out of place (like the pits in the museum level). A few stages break the monotony and turn it into a scrolling shooter as you take control of the Batmobile and Batplane, but these levels wind up being more about attrition than skill as you stumble through the lousy collision detection while deciding when it's the best time to break out those precious missiles you've been stockpiling. It's really not a difficult game, and it's fairly short, so if one were interested in playing through it you wouldn't kill a whole afternoon. You can probably buy it for a dollar off of eBay if you're so inclined (and still had your Genesis laying around).

But like a lot of Sunsoft games of that era, and especially like it's NES counterpart, the Genesis/ MD Batman is best remembered for its sound design and music. In comparison to the contemporary SNES, the Genesis has taken some heat over the years for having inferior sound, and much of that is probably true, to be fair. Still, I'm a big believer in great art overcoming restrictions, and a lot of the best Genesis music is a testament to that (Thunder Force IV, Streets of Rage 2, etc.). There seems to be agreement that the really good music that was composed for the system was percussion-based, and I suppose I agree, but a lot of Batman's music sets a different tone. While the more driving compositions from the first level and the museum stage are probably the best remembered, a lot of the percussion is more subtle than some of the more contemporary proto-electronica of 16-bit game music, and the opening and ending themes are really eerie and atmospheric. When I sit back and listen to it again, it seems more like the score of a television series than a video game in that it's not too hard rock (also like a lot of other games at the time), but clearly not as faux symphonic as much of the industry to would go one generation later.

All of this was scored by Sunsoft super genius Naoki Kodaka, whom worked on not only the NES Batman game, but also classics like Blaster Master and Journey to Silius (which, I'll admit, I've never played, but it's also supposed to have an amazing soundtrack). Sunsoft was was never really a major player in the 8- and 16-bit eras, but was respectable enough in hindsight. Their composers developed a method of making the NES's meager sound capabilities sing like Aretha, though. Essentially tricking the machine into using the percussion channels to play a bass sound, they coined a method supposedly called "the Sunsoft bass" for a lot of their output, which, again, were only above average games with music that was better than it deserved to be. A lot of it is probably floating around the internet if you're curious.

Enjoy a quick sample of some Batman tunes to get your weekend bumping.