The
1989 Tim Burton film spawned several different video game interpretations of the Batman /
Joker story. There was the standard
Ocean film lisence platformer, released for
Commodore Amiga,
Atari ST, and whichever 8-bit formats they could manage to port it to while still riding the wave of the movie hype. This had some inventive elements (such as a
Batmobile driving subgame) but can pretty much be dismissed as standard waste-of-a-lisence fare.
At the same time, Sunsoft developed a Sega Megadrive game based extremely loosely on the film. This was successful in Japan, but of course did not reach any other territory in time to cash in on the film or its subsequent video release. The game was still heavily in the 8-bit / PC Engine school of game design. Elements are lifted from Bionic Commando, Ninjawarriors, and Shinobi. This game, although fairly unremarkable in itself, was the first of a protracted series of Batman-based games, each developed by different companies but retaining the same basic premise. The caped crusader was repeatedly called into action throughout the Megadrive's evolution : Sega's in-house Batman Returns (which spawned an enhanced Mega-CD version), Acclaim's Batman : Revenge of The Joker, a very poor Batman Forever tie-in, and the sublime Adventures of Batman and Robin, which also appeared on the SNES, and was developed by Clockwork Tortoise.