Click here for covers

Released: 1985

Publisher: Ocean Software

Platforms: Sinclair Spectrum, , Amstrad CPC & PCW, MSX, Einstien, Enterprise

Programming: Jon Ritman

Art: Bernie Drummond

SFX: Can't remember who did this, Guy claims it wasn't him

Music: Mark Serlin

History: After seeing Ultimate’s Knight Lore (The very day I handed the master for Match Day over to Ocean) I was determined to write an isometric game, it was what I had always wanted, a Disney film that you could control. I knew a friend of a friend called Bernie Drummond who drew a lot of cartoon characters, I asked him if he would like a go on a computer and he was willing – the session looked like a complete waste of time, watching Bernie create what looked like a random mess of dots with no sign that he had any idea where he was going – after a couple of hours I was preparing to give it up when Bernie suddenly saw the outline of an eye in the random mess. He went from crazy doodler to craftsman instantly, sculpting a matching eye and then an entire character – it was without doubt one of the best bits of game art I had ever seen. The character was christened Budweiser and is one of the first characters you meet in Batman.

Bernie and I had a brainstorming session to try and find a known hero we could use, I finally came up with Batman and then dismissed him as quickly on the grounds that the 60’s TV series had been a long time ago and the kids of the 80’s wouldn’t know who he was, Bernie disagreed and told me that the old series was showing on channel 4 and the comics were popular as well.

Batman turned into an epic game and I loved designing all the puzzles – it was great just programming a physics engine and then just using parts to build puzzles so that the game exhibited a consistent set of rules. Batman was a huge success, getting rave reviews in every magazine and gracing the cover of several.

Next