A new patch has just been released for the Mega Drive / Genesis game Batman: Revenge of the Joker, introducing a new set of coloured costumes for Batman as well as a range of impressive gameplay improvements.
In case you've never heard of it, Batman: Revenge of the Joker is the 1992 US-exclusive remake of Sunsoft's Batman: Return of the Joker for the NES. It was developed by Californian developer Ringler Studios, and has a fairly negative reputation online, with many considering it inferior to its 8-bit counterpart and a missed opportunity to take better advantage of the Mega Drive / Genesis hardware.
As a result, the notable ROM hacker BillyTime!Games has recently been looking into making some improvements to the Caped Crusader's disappointing Sega outing and believes he has come up with a hack that is "a step in the right direction" to making the game a little more fun to play.
As mentioned above, the hack, which is being called Batman: Revenge of the Joker DX, adds a bunch of different coloured costumes for Batman, which can be accessed by entering a series of inputs on the main menu screen. Here are all ten costumes and how to unlock them.
- Start - Blue and Grey (Original)
- A - Blue (Movie)
- B - Purple and Blue (Batzarro)
- C - Red
- A + Left - Green
- B + Left - Grey
- C + Left - Orange and Red
- A + Right - Purple
- B + Right - Pink
- C + Right - Gold
It also removes various superfluous animations to cut down the slow response times after button inputs and makes various other tweaks to gameplay. Weaponry, for instance, has been given a buff to more closely match the NES version, Batman's health regenerates upon entering a new level, the hitboxes for the jump kick have been slightly adjusted, and BillyTime!Games has added short invulnerability windows to the slide and other actions.
If you fancy giving the patch a try to test it out yourself, you can download it now from romhacks.org. It is also compatible with BillyTime!Games' previous SRAM hack for the same game.