This Bat-ter be good. Oh dear...

As a kid I had a few different heroes, all of whom I've wanted to be at some stage or another. Luke Skywalker, Indiana Jones, Spider-Man, Mark from Battle of the Planets, a ninja, Batman; basically my comic book, cartoon and movie heroes.

Throughout my gaming life I've always jumped on the products featuring my favourite characters, more often than not finding them sorely wanting. The Star Wars games have been bad for a long time, while Indy hardly ever gets an adventure worthy of his whip-cracking skillz (and NO, Lego Indy does NOT count.) Spidey's been raped to death by Activision for years now, although the original 3D game on PlayStation was pretty damn cool. BotP don't have any games to my knowledge, although they have cropped up in Tatsunoko vs Capcom which I love. Only ninja have been truly well served really, with Tenchu, Strider, Shinobi, Ninja Gaiden and more bringing the wall running cherry blossom botherers to life in fantastic style.

Which leaves us with the Caped Crusader, and the reason for this post. Fans of the Dark Knight were well served back in the ZX Spectrum days, with not one, not two, but three fantastic games from the mighty Ocean software. Jon Ritman's original isometric adventure is probably the most highly regarded amongst 8 bit gamers, but for me it was the dual sided tape, dual adventure of the second Ocean Batman game that really brought the comics to life. With the Penguin on one side of the tape (or floppy disk), and the Joker on the other, the game was a flip screen affair with each room having it's own comic panel layout, and a caption telling you what it was. With chunky sprites and comic presentation, it was, to my young mind, the perfect comic book game.

It's aged horribly I imagine, but at the time, it was exactly what I wanted from a Batman game - batarangs, detection, fighting, exploration, a bit of humour from the camp tv show, and classic villains. It even had front cover art by the great Bob Wakelin, which to me was a sign of guaranteed quality back then.

Anyway, that's enough nostalgia - what prompted all this waffle was the screenshots of the latest Bat-game; Batman: Arkham Asylum. It looks incredible. Utterly incredible. The bat's pyjamas. The Penguins plums. Big chunky bad-ass Batman, comic book but realistic long faced Joker, stealth, bone crunching combat, gadgetry, and a back up cast of Batman's greatest and deadliest foes. It can't go wrong. It MUST NOT GO WRONG.

Yet, I'm wary, i've been burned before. The past few Bat-games have been awful, and the Mortal Kombatcrew recently co-opted the mighty cowled vigilante to try and give their dying beat'em-up a touch of class. Batman was made to look foolish, as was anyone who bought the shitty thing. And worse, it's published by Eidos, who haven't had a decent new game in years. Only the tidy revamp they've given Chesty Larue in the recent Tomb Raider outing gives me any hope. Well that, and the sheer majesty of the screenshots released so far.

Bat-fingers crossed Bat-fans...