Batman: Return of the Joker

Batman: Return of the Joker is Sunsoft's second NES Batman game, and the one that drops the film licence for an original story. It is also the one that leans harder into weapon variety, giving the player three separate attack types to switch between.

Batman carries a batarang, a handgun and a directional energy weapon, and while the first of those is the default, the game is built around picking the right one - the handgun for vertical shots, the batarang for coverage. Batarang energy is limited and refilled by pickups, so the choice has a cost. The structure is a shorter run of long stages with fewer checkpoints than the first game, and the difficulty curve is steeper for it. In Japan the game shipped as Dynamite Batman, with a different name and a harsher reputation, and the two-region split is one of the more notable localisation oddities in the Sunsoft catalogue.

• ▸Three switchable attack types - batarang, handgun and energy weapon
• ▸Ammunition as a real constraint on the stronger attacks
• ▸Long stages with sparse checkpoints and a steep difficulty curve
• ▸Released in Japan as Dynamite Batman with different framing