Everything got better when I became a green-haired 2D girl. I do fun and unusual things with video games and pinball.

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Download: Batman (The Dark Knight) VPX by bord

What if you wanted to play Batman '66, but also have any idea what you're doing without having to be a pinball pro who has memorized an encyclopedia of rules? This slightly older and more approachable Batman (The Dark Knight) is here for you. As a bonus, the physics and realism of its VPX are better than what you'll find for Batman '66.

Trivia: this machine is officially just named “Batman”, just like two other Batman machines. There are four Batman machines in all, made by different incarnations of the same company: Batman (1991), Batman Forever (1996), Batman (2008), and Batman (2016). The subtitles really help to distinguish them: we can call them Data East Batman, Batman Forever, Batman: The Dark Knight (this one), and Batman '66 (the 2016 one). The one that is not named just Batman (Batman Forever) happens to be the bad one.

One thing is important about a Batman table: fun gadgets on the playfield. This one doesn’t have quite as many as the later table, but it's got them. Most importantly, it has the Scarecrow mode, a moving crane with a pinball on the end, which is so much fun that they brought it back as the Penguin's mode for Batman '66. I don't think the Penguin in the Adam West series even operates a crane, it just feels like something he would do.


Samantha says that the rules of this table are bad, that to compete on it you just shoot the Joker repeatedly. I can't see how this would be true, because when I've encountered the table, every other shot to the Joker requires a very risky bounce off a drop target.

If you're playing it casually, it makes sense to aim for the mini-wizard "Bat Signal Mode", where you complete the three modes prominently highlighted on the playfield: Joker Multiball, Batmobile Hurry-Up, and Scarecrow Multiball.

In competition, you might just focus on a multiball, but there are many alternate plans, including a long shot payoff you can go for if you're very accurate. The value of a Batmobile Hurry-Up can be boosted and multiplied to become very large. Pinball Primer explains the strategy, including how to score a ridiculous billion points in "just" 35 shots.

Also, when it comes to fun gadgets, the Batmobile Hurry-Up involves your pinball drag-racing a Batmobile model down the left side of the table.

There are main modes, I guess. They always have the same rules (shoot all five shots). I appreciate not having to keep track of separate rules for each mode, and I wonder if they're relevant to the scoring.

Bord, as usual, is a virtuoso at recreating pinball machines in VPX, and brings us a realistic and good-looking simulation.


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