In 1993, Konami released Batman Returns for the Super Nintendo, a licensed tie-in that was so well regarded that it recently ended up on our Best Beat 'Em Ups Of All Time list.
However, as the former Konami artist and designer Masaaki Kukino told us in an interview published today, this wasn't the company's first-ever attempt at making a game based on one of Tim Burton's Batman films. As they revealed, four years prior, they were keen to license the arcade rights to the 1989 film, but ultimately things didn't line up.
As Masaaki Kukino told Time Extension:
"...I was at one point planning to license Tim Burton's Batman for the Arcades. I couldn't do it though because other companies got in the way."
The other company he mentions in this scenario is almost definitely Atari Games, which released its own beat 'em up based on Burton's film in 1990. That game is a faithful yet often overlooked recreation of the original film, featuring action-packed batmobile segments and digitized renditions of Danny Elfman's now iconic score.
Given the quality of Konami's licensed arcade games at the time, which included the likes of Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, it's hard not to imagine, though, what would have been if the Japanese developer was able to go through with its plans in its place.
You can read the rest of the interview here.
Comments 5
This is one of the most depressing things I've read in a long time.
I played the Atari Batman game recently, it was actually quite decent and beating the balloon level actually triggers a voice clip of Jack Nicholson’s iconic “He stole my balloons!” line, which somehow is even funnier in the game.
That said, I’d have loved to have seen what ‘90s Konami could have done with a Batman game!
Sunsoft did a good job anyway.
I remember a local shop had the Batman cabinet for a little while and I really liked it at the time. I'm not sure it would hold up now that it wouldn't seem so advanced, but it was nice to experience and pretty typical of where the arcade scene was at around 1990 before Street Fighter 2 came out and blew up. I enjoyed what Sunsoft did with Batman on home consoles. Konami did get to make a few Batman games in the end, for NES and SNES, though it sounds like this designer may not have been involved. As it is, the SNES games are very arcade like.
Yes its hard to hear what could of been. Batman returns on the Snes is brilliant though:)
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