Batman: The Monochrome Knight

14 Apr 2009 at 19:34:53 by Peter Parrish

Thanks to Christopher Nolan's terrific ability to disguise bleak, arthousey films as summer blockbusters, Batman's cape casts a larger shadow than ever. With The Dark Knight making one billion dollars at the worldwide box office, public demand for Batman has never been higher and licensing rights have probably never come dearer. It's worth repeating: the character that twelve years ago had nipples on his outfit and flashed around a Bat-credit card can now reap one BILLION in ticket sales for a gritty, three hour exploration of nihilism and the morality of state surveillance procedures. Quite a turn-around, really.

With such cinematic triumph come the accompanying videogames, and we can only hope that the promising looking Batman: Arkham Asylum (developed with the rights to the Batman comics, rather than the films) will improve upon the lackluster Batman Begins release. Not to mention Pandemic's much-beleaguered (and ultimately cancelled) Dark Knight game. Amidst such gigantic revenue figures and the restoration of Batman as pop-culture icon, it can be difficult to imagine a time when the rights to a Caped Crusader videogame could be acquired with ease- let alone for an unusual, 8-bit isometric exploration game.

Yet in 1986, that is precisely what happened.

BIFF!

The pairing of Jon Ritman (programming) and Bernie Drummond (art/graphics) is perhaps best known for the multi-character, puzzle-platform spectacular Head Over Heels (1987). Some of the foundations for this title, however, had already been laid a year earlier by another Ritman-Drummond production - Batman.

IncGamers contacted Jon to discuss the game, and the surprising simplicity with which the Batman rights were secured.

Long before any decisions about characters were even made, it was Jon's desire to make a game using an isometric 3D engine that provided the inspirational spark. He'd seen such an approach used by Knight Lore, a 1984 Ultimate Play The Game release, and was intrigued. "When I first saw Knight Lore I didn't have a clue how it was done," Jon admits. After several months of hard work however, he had a functioning engine in place: "I think it took three months plus to make the engine and then a pile more to make the game."

This was the mid-80s, the era of the lone programmer, before technical and commercial demands would result in much larger teams of people working on the same title. The process of creating a working engine was a far more individual pursuit, though not without its familiar problems - "As with every game, obstacles are what we do, on a more or less daily basis." But as Jon would discover, his hard work had actually improved upon the Filmation code used by Ultimate: "I later found out after talking to Chris Stamper (writer of Knight Lore), I made a much more advanced engine, not least because Chris's system needed a 6k buffer whilst mine only needed 0.25k."

POW!

Jon's summary of the development process highlights the creative autonomy that programmers enjoyed in that era: "Like all the stuff I did at that time I just made a game I liked or would want to play and then I built a scenario around that." During the early stages there was no specific intention to use Batman in the lead role, although there was a desire to secure a known face. "I had realised that it could make a big difference to sales to use a recognised character or scenario and was therefore searching around for something suitable," he says.

It was during one of these searches that the possibility of using Batman was struck upon. "Batman was chosen simply because I had started a brainstorming session with Bernie [Drummond] and suggested Batman simply because it was a known character," Jon recalls, "But then I dismissed it in the next sentence because I realised how long ago the Adam West series had been on." It was Drummond who suggested that this may not be as much of a problem as first thought: "[He] told me that Channel 4 was currently repeating it and therefore all the kids knew about it."

This was enough to prompt a meeting at Ocean Software with founder David Ward. "I showed him a mocked up version of a batman character trotting around a cave," says Jon. "He was running around the board room singing the old Batman theme. I just left it in his hands after that."

This encounter strikes quite a contrast with the high-level negotiations that must surround the rights to Batman today.

Such a laid-back approach made sense however. Tim Burton's Batman would not be released until the end of the decade, so, although still widely known, the character presented kn the ro,ealth ug st mid-80s by his comic book origins and the 1960s Adam West television series. Gaming was still finding its feet, and the idea of licensing a character for a piece of software still relatively novel. As Jon puts it: "It wasn't like we were against competitors, we offered them money in an area where they had never been offered money before, they took it ..."

WHAP!

The combination of Jon's isometric 3D engine, Bernie's somewhat surreal graphics and the Batman license meant the first ever Caped Crusader videogame was a rather unlikely mixture of styles. Despite the potentially menacing premise of Robin's kidnapping, the game was an upbeat, colourful affair (within the limitations of the age) - "The Amstrad had the best colour" notes Jon - closest in tone to Lego Batman, with a similar focus on puzzle-solving and platform jumping. It tried to remain true to Batman's ideals as a detective, with the only ‘powers' being provided by a variety of collectable gadgets such as Batboots and the Anti-Gravity Batbelt. There were also a series of rudimentary save points in the game (a rare luxury in that era), meaning players would not necessarily have to start again from the very beginning when all lives were lost.

Batman was well-received across the board, earning a 9/10 in the pages of Your Sinclair and given 93% by Crash. Replaying it today, it's easy to be drawn in by its charms. Though it may not mean much to those born after the 8-bit age, for gamers who recall the revolutionary nature of isometric 3D, it remains one of the great titles written in that style. Notably though, even with the benefit of emulation and save-states, Batman is a punishing game in parts. We asked Jon whether this indicated a creeping over-reliance on quick-saves in contemporary gaming, but he accepted full responsibility for the title's toughness: "It was too hard, I got it wrong, sorry."

Perhaps part of the difficulty stemmed from Batman being a little out of shape. It didn't require especially keen eyes to spot that the main sprite seemed to have something of a weakness for Batpies or other delicious Bat-based snacks, to the extent that he'd developed a visible paunch. Had Bernie added some intentional podge to make Batman appear cuddlier for the game, or had it been some kind of accidental optical illusion? Jon clears everything up with just ten simple words: "It was based on Adam West, need I say more?"

Mystery solved.

He states that he has not replayed Batman of late, simply for lack of time, but this hasn't stopped him revisiting other games he developed. "I did play Monster Max [a 1994 Ritman-Drummond title on the Game Boy] recently - I think it's pretty good even if I say so myself."

BOFF!

Attempting any sort of comparison between the 8-bit Batman and his latest cinematic portrayal would be a futile task, not least because of the span of time, vast differences in tone and intent, as well as the variance of mediums. Indeed, when asked about a favourite interpretation of the Batman character, Jon is unsentimental: "Look, I loved comics when I was a kid, I would even say a little obsessed ... But by the time I started writing games I was in my late 20's, I hadn't done comics for more than a decade. It's great that they can now make a serious attempt to carry a comic character onto film but they are only a bit of fun."

It's a sobering statement. A timely reminder that, for all the seriousness bestowed upon him of late, Batman is essentially a chap who wanders around at night beating people up. While dressed as a giant bat.

But it is also worth considering how Batman has endured, chameleon-like, through so many different forms. From campy 60s romps and pulp comics to serious, po-faced graphic novels and weighty 00s cinema - even during some of the lower ebbs, he has not only survived, but ultimately thrived.

Ritman and Drummond's own contribution to the Batman legend was released prior to a burst of renewed interest in the character, similar to that of today. Jon, though, quietly refutes any credit for nudging Bob Kane's creation back into the daylight: "Maybe [we had] a slight effect in a small part of the world's population, [but] certainly nothing worth talking about." Credit for that particular rush should no doubt go to Burton's film. Yet no matter how many people it reached, the Batman of 1986 is important for being not just the first, but still, perhaps, most inventive, videogame to carry the distinctive black on yellow logo.

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