One of the most interesting and obscure Batman adventures in videogames. And it's shady as it should ever be.
The Bad: Little variety of regular enemies along the game; more character's moves would have been appreciated; a little too short.
The first appearance of Batman in the NES was in this cart released in 1989 about the same time of the first Tim Burton's movie in the series. The game has not much to do with the movie (or even the comics for that matter), but the choices made by Sunsoft here ended fine.
"Batman" sends you walking through five levels (with its sub-stages) armed with your hands and limited throwing weapons--batrangs, a little rocket-launcher and spreading shurikens--to fight soldiers, futuristic machines and pretty tough original bosses, besides a terrific platform action. The controls work surprisingly well (even now in 2008), and the game claims technique and precision when jumping from one platform to another avoiding acid drops, electrical discharges or being hurt by giant cogwheels.
The environment design is a good surprise itself: backgrounds are both well detailed and dark, and even get totally blackened in the borders giving the game's presentation some personality. Amazing original music and nice sound effects don't let the "sound" score get down, but in the other hand the game loses some value being short, despite the fact you'll spend some time trying to beat it because of the high difficult level. And you'll see the darker side of the Dark Knight in the end of the game if you manage to get there (no spoilers here).
After all this is an interesting glimpse at Batman's universe from a different perspective. And it's also a small 8-bit art piece.