During 1995, fans rejoiced with the above average but madly frustrating Adventures of Batman and Robin on the Sega Genesis. In January 1999, Batman Beyond premiered on Kids WB and unlike many viewer expectations, the series rivaled Batman: TAS in terms of storyline, dialogue, and animation. In 2000, fans eagerly received a game based on the new direct-to-video (though it was good enough to have earned a theatrical release) Batman Beyond movie, Return of the Joker and to this day, we continue to hold our breath.

The new bats did manage to bring some cunning to his video game outing. Batman Beyond: ROTJ easily presents itself as a beat-em-up to the primitive eye. However, being as the collision detection is a mile off the mark and all the cool bat-gadgets are useless compared to your wildly powerful kicks, Batman Beyond: ROTJ could be placed under the kick boxing category and no one would be the wiser.

That’s not to say ROTJ is as unbearable as other super-hero farces such as Superman 64; there is just absolutely nothing positive to say about this featherweight cartridge. Enemy AI is brain dead. The sound is atrocious with no voice samples whatsoever. The animated cut-scenes are sloppy. Batman looks jagged and the levels are a bland and muddy mess. What is up with the split second pause in-between each step Batman makes? Did the developers forget the year was 2000 and framerate garbage like this is inexcusable? Yeesh. To top it off, the game can be completed in less than an hour, not quite worth the 10-20 dollar price tag in terms of time or money.

With incredible titles like Resident Evil 2 and Rayman 2 pushing the N64 to its limits, It’s amazing Ubi Soft (who actually developed Rayman 2) published this monstrosity and shelled it out to the market. Maybe someday Batman Beyond fans will get what they deserve. Unfortunately, nightmares do come true.