Imagine that you’re watching the nineties cartoon show The Adventures of Batman & Robin, also known as Batman: The Animated Series. Instead of being treated to the admired artwork, you’re instead greeted by grainy, low-quality video. Now imagine that after every few minutes, you’re forced to drive the Batmobile through endlessly crowded environments such as the city streets of Gotham or a devious race track of the Joker’s. This sounds familiar? Well then, you must’ve played the Sega CD version of The Adventures of Batman & Robin.

I bet that when you began playing, you didn’t expect the game to consist solely of driving, with the exception of the finale where you got to pilot the Batwing. Now I only bring this up because I remember how you complained during the first mission. You got frustrated very quickly when you kept getting killed when fighting the bosses of the mission. You had to dodge a plethora of hard-to-miss attacks all while trying to take out the baddies. It upset you so much because it took you many tries to get to this point at all. The driving portion consisted of congested city streets that required pinpoint timing; otherwise you wouldn’t be able to get to your destination before time ran out.

Sure, it took you a long time to get your groove, but when you did you were able to blow through much of the game on your first try. Then again, the game really only tested your reflexes. I do remember you enjoying the later missions; the ones that took place on a casino-style game board of the Riddler’s, a circus-style race track of the Joker’s, and the high-flying Batwing level through bridges. Well, never mind, you only liked the last one because it was slightly different. Speaking of differences, the animation and story was unique to this game, being referred to as “the lost episode”. It featured the aforementioned villains as well as Robin, Poison Ivy, and Rupert Thorne and you liked that part of the game, besides the low-quality video.

So you said you grew up on the classic cartoon show, what did you think of the Sega CD game? Oh, well, that’s about right. I mean, I’ve pretty much discussed the game in detail and I wasn’t super positive, so that makes sense. I wouldn’t play the game again, or recommend it to others either. It’s a shame Clockwork Tortoise and Sega couldn’t put out a more polished game.