Batman Beyond: Return of the Joker

Batman Beyond: Return of the Joker brings to Game Boy Color the futuristic version of Gotham's protector from the animated series Batman Beyond, in which the mask and cape are worn by young Terry McGinnis under the watchful eye of an aging Bruce Wayne. The game, based on the feature film of the same name, is a classic side-scrolling platformer in which the player fights through gangs, robots, and finally a resurrected Joker across the industrial backdrops of a future Gotham. Terry has bounce pads, close-range attacks, and the ability to glide in his winged suit at his disposal, giving the level design a vertical dimension too and allowing levels to be built across multiple floors with pits and platforms stacked above one another, forcing the player to carefully choose which way to go next.

Despite being a licensed film tie-in, the Game Boy Color rendition is unusually crafted — the characters are well animated, the environments alternate between factory halls, sewers, amusement parks, and dark alleys, and the difficulty is calibrated to challenge even more experienced players who have experience with classic platformers. The game also wasn't afraid to lean into the darker tone of its source material, an unusual approach for a children's console at the time, of course within the limits of what Nintendo's content policy for the handheld allowed at the time, so the violence remains only implied.

Contemporary reviews particularly praised the fidelity to the animated series and the solid gameplay mechanics, which kept the game from feeling like a mere cash-in on a film license, as was common for similar titles at the time and as players and journalists alike had come to expect. Among GBC platformers based on comic-book and animated properties, Return of the Joker ranks among the better-crafted ones, and fans of Batman Beyond still enjoy returning to it today as a pleasant reminder of the late nineties, when Warner Bros. Animation defined the visual style of the dark hero for an entire generation of viewers and players.