Batman: Arkham Asylum (2009) — the day “licensed game” stopped meaning “bad game”

August 25, 2009: the day a licensed game changed the rule

Hello, Toki here, with episode 38 of “Today Is Release Day.” For years the rule of thumb was simple: a game based on a comic or a film would be bad. There is a day when that stopped being safe to say. It is August 25, 2009, the North American release of Batman: Arkham Asylum.From Steam, “Batman: Arkham Asylum Game of the Year Edition” (Warner Bros. Interactive Entertainment)

It was made by Rocksteady Studios in Britain and published by Eidos Interactive and Warner Bros. Interactive Entertainment. PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360 came first.

Europe followed on August 28, Australia on September 3. Only the Windows version lagged, arriving in North America on September 15. The game was built on Unreal Engine 3.

Eidos had picked up the Batman game rights in the spring of 2007. The record says the publisher approached Rocksteady after seeing a prototype the studio had built.

One asylum, laid out like Zelda and Metroid

The setting is not a big city. It is Arkham Asylum and its grounds, nothing more. The inmates get loose, nobody can leave the island, and the whole story happens in one night.

What changes instead is the way the map is used. Some areas stay closed until the story moves on, or until you find a new piece of equipment. The developers named The Legend of Zelda and Metroid as their models.

The fighting is easy to pick up. As Japan’s GAME Watch put it at the time: “just by tapping the normal attack button, Batman produces a wide range of attacks, and a higher combo count unlocks stronger ones.”

There is stealth as well. The same review noted that “you can see enemies hidden behind walls, and even which way they are facing, so it is easy to get behind them.” Switch to Detective Vision and the colours change, making landmarks such as air ducts stand out.

There was a gift for puzzle players too: 240 collectibles left behind by the Riddler. You work out which place a riddle points to, find it, and scan it. It sends you back through the asylum with a different pair of eyes.

Paul Dini wrote the script. The voices were Kevin Conroy, Mark Hamill and Arleen Sorkin. Hamill’s Joker went on to win an award the following year.

A row of nines, and a place in the record books

The response did not split. Almost every score was high.

Metacritic averages came out at 92 for Xbox 360 and 91 for both PlayStation 3 and Windows.

Greg Miller of IGN gave it 9.3 and called it “the greatest comic book game of all time.”Thumbnail of “Batman: Arkham Asylum Video Review by GameSpot” (GameSpot, YouTube)

Edge gave 8 and called it “by some distance the best superhero game of modern times.” Dan Whitehead of Eurogamer gave 9, calling it “the best superhero game bar none.”

The rest read the same way. Game Informer 9.5, Giant Bomb 5 out of 5, GameSpot 9, Computer and Video Games 9.2, Chris Kohler at Wired 9, The Daily Telegraph 9. Thierry Nguyen of 1UP.com gave an A−, and X-Play 4 out of 5.

The numbers turned into a record. Guinness World Records listed it as the most critically acclaimed superhero game ever, on an average of 91.67.

Sales kept pace. Tracked figures show about 593,000 copies in North America over the first five days, close to two million worldwide within three weeks, and 2.5 million by the end of September. By October 2011 it had reached 4.3 million.

Awards followed. Best Game and Gameplay at the 2010 BAFTAs, Best Game Design at the Game Developers Choice Awards that year, Studio of the Year at the 2009 Spike Video Game Awards. At the Interactive Achievement Awards it took game design, adapted story, and character performance for Mark Hamill.

Only one thing came out differently from the plan: the Windows version. The May 2009 announcement listed PC alongside the others on August 25, but the PC release in North America was September 15.

Japan got it the next year, and the record passed to the sequel

Japan received the game about five months after North America: January 14, 2010, from Square Enix, at 7,980 yen including tax, on PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360, rated CERO C (15 and up).

GAME Watch published its review on January 21, 2010, written by Tetsuya Katsuta. The headline ran: “the definitive Batman game has finally arrived.”

One more line from that review: it is “a game whose play could only be expressed through Batman as a character — a model of how a licensed game should be made.” You can hear the reputation of licensed games being rewritten in that sentence.

The Guinness record did not last long. The 2011 sequel, Batman: Arkham City, took it. The pleasing part is who took it: the same studio’s next game.From Steam, “Batman: Arkham City - Game of the Year Edition” (Warner Bros. Interactive Entertainment)

The places to play it grew as well: Mac OS X on November 3, 2011, PlayStation 4 and Xbox One on October 18, 2016, and Nintendo Switch on December 1, 2023.

Has a licensed game ever caught you off guard?

A piece never feels finished to me until the year is written down, so here it is again: August 25, 2009, a Tuesday. Today makes it exactly seventeen years.

What survives after seventeen years is less the number 92 than the shift in a word. “Licensed” stopped being shorthand for “poorly made.”

Has a licensed game ever surprised you — one you expected nothing from until you played it?