The Adventures of Password-Reliant Man!

I used to have a copy of Batman Returns for the SNES,

...but despite it being a relatively beefy beat-em-up, I sold it. There were two reasons for this:

It was one of the few games that regularly suffered from game-breaking glitches on my Retro-Duo system. If I pressed the buttons that triggered the "toss against the back wall" action when there was no back wall, Batman would be stuck half-way off the bottom of the screen, unable to reach the enemies ever again, and I'd have to reset. Almost every time I played, I ended up doing this.

It made the beat-em-up mistake of having key elements of the game take place with a completely different play control system. Various "platformer/shoot batterangs" levels and boss-fights...though arguably the several Catwoman boss fights were pretty grating as well, despite being in the normal multi-plane beat-em-up engine: she had quite a few invulnerable sequences and uninterruptible attacks, which didn't seem to have any reliable counter-strategy.

But the Batman Returns video game releases were legion: in addition to the SNES (and Gameboy, Genesis, Sega-CD, etc) versions, the NES got in on the fun as well:

At last...The Batman has returned to the NES.

Ok, so the cutscenes were pretty snappy, and the game itself is very similar (unlike other NES/SNES ports I could mention), but of course the graphics are a lot less dramatic:

On the NES, Batman's ~~codpiece~~ sprite is less impressive,

The NES clowns are less menacing,

Skull-Bikers less terrifying,

etc,

etc.

But despite all that...

...and after only about 20 minutes of playing it, I think I like the NES version better. Why, you may ask?

Well, so far I haven't run into the SNES's 2 biggest stumbling blocks, but more importantly, let's look at their respective "game over" screens:

(ignoring Digitized Michelle Pfeiffer for the moment)

Yes, the NES version has PASSWORDS!

I'm not that great at playing video games, and I'm not someone who regards every game as an immense challenge onto itself, an electronic whetstone that requires me to hone my button-pushing and memorization skills to a razor's edge in order to reap the maximum enjoyment.

For the most part, I mainly see video games as an occasional amusing diversion, plus a source of funny pictures to make jokes about. (and for a higher joke-to-picture ratio, feel free to visit my tumblr page)

So if a game demands that I play for 2-3 hours, only to run out of lives and continues on a very frustrating boss-fight, I'm not likely to try again any time soon. But if I never have to start over from the VERY beginning, and better yet, if I get Passwords every few levels so I can keep going later...well, I'll put up with a lot more guff than I might otherwise.

And oddly enough, this isn't even the first Superhero game where I've traded graphics for continue-ability...

You might remember the game on the left, but Spider-Man and Venom: Separation Anxiety came out on the SNES too.

Separation Anxiety's graphics (on the right) are shrunken and simplified -- basically a downgrade -- despite it coming out out AFTER Maximum Carnage.

But instead of a scant few lives and continues like Maximum Carnage, Separation Anxiety gives you a password every few levels.

And that makes it a better game in my book!