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A
successful film sequel and widely promoted game in both Commodore
Format and Commodore Force magazines
here in the UK. Konami, not often renound
for releasing their own C64 games at that time (You had to look
way back to Nemesis and Jailbreak for that occurance), decided that
their computer licence of Batman Returns should be spread over to
the C64 as well as the others.
Who
better to recruit for the job, but a member of Denton
Designs, Roy Bannon. Already producing the great World
Class Rugby for Audiogenic the year before, Roy was given the
job of the C64 conversion, along with Ally
Noble and Paul Salmon helping with the graphics.
To
follow Roy's progress through the game, various previews were
spread over C-Format and C-Force, and even C-Force went to the
extreme of starting up a Diary Of A Game.
This showed a gradual process of the game, showing much promise
and gorgeous main character animations, although much was ported
from the Amiga. The game followed similar suite to the Amiga conversion
(And Roy tells that the C64 conversion was overtaking the Amiga
version at one stage), and followed closely to the film. Even
both magazines commented on how the game looked awesome from its
previews.
However,
things seemed to turn weird in the last diary which appeared,
where Roy didn't seem to do too much on the game and really the
whole article was strange (Which is probably due to the reason
below). Check the diaries coming soon.
With
the actual final state of the game, only
two levels were ever really completed. The first level
being fully completed and playable, and the second level half
completed. The game's animations, graphics and general physics
were all completed, so really it was just music and other levels
to be finished. Paul Salmon suggested that the conversion was coming on very well and was playing very well too, with all the complicated fight sequences in place too with the two levels that ran.
It
has been confirmed by Roy himself that the game was canned by
Konami, because they felt that it wasn't a viable project to continue
with and money couldn't be made on it. I suppose that it was the
sad truth as the C64 market crumbled away in 1992. A big shame
with sadly the C64 version being therefore scrapped.
The
game is 50/50 on the chances of existing
still in its final form. A series of demos were created
for Konami, and these could still exist. Roy has currently not
been able to find anything of the C64 conversion, but hopefully
if he does, he may allow GTW to show you all the work done.
Other
possible sources who may have bits of the game, are John
Heap and Ally Noble. GTW has been in contact with John
as well as Roy, and hopefully more can be found out soon, and
this review will ever be updated. Unfortunately Paul Salmon no longer has anything of his work from them days, so it really is down now to John Heap to confirm if we will be able to save anything from this long lost conversion.
Recently added are yet more shots which have been taken from
Mort's Zzap DVD, and tidied up for you to see. Some are unclear
due to the paper quality C-Force had, but you'll get the general
gist that the game was shaping up very nicely indeed.
There is an indication in the change of the graphics, and the
level descriptions in Commodore Format's preview writeup of
Batman Returns that there was indeed 4 levels running, and not
3. We need to find Roy again to confirm this though.
Check
out Roy's and Paul's own account of Batman Returns in "Creator
Speaks"... But the reason for Batman Return's C64
demise has finally been solved...
A
stunning conversion, sadly let down by the C64's demise...
Frank.
(Additional source credits - Roy Bannon, Paul Salmon, John Heap, Simon Scott,
Jazzcat, Andrew Fisher, Ally Noble, Mort (for scans))
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