Eidos’ Batman : Arkham Asylum is without doubt one of the best games released this year. It’s the best Batman game, and arguably the best superhero game ever made. Be glad it turned out the way it did, because it could have turned out really, really different.
Game informer has a list of tidbits, where Rocksteady have shared a few nuggets of behind the scenes knowledge. One of them is about the combat system, where an earlier revision had it – instead of the smooth timing and flow based combat that makes the game so imminently playable – being a rhythm action minigame! Aren’t we all glad THAT didn’t happen?
Here are my favourite of the tidbits :
- For some of the motion-capture scenes of Harley Quinn, we actually use one of the male producers!
- Three cans of whipped cream are used to create the sound effects of spraying the explosive gel.
- When you first enter the penitentiary and are confronted with the wall of sound from the room full of lunatics, this is a recording of the entire development team!
- The word ‘Joker’ is said 384 times in the game.
- Combat went through three distinct revisions – the first one being a full rhythm action game! The second one was prototyped in 2D, which popped up whenever you got into a fight, and involved colored circles bashing into each other. This actually formed the basis of the final system.
- The pictures you can find scattered around the floor of the asylum are of different members of the development team mostly from various team jollies!
- There are 314 breakable TVs on Arkham Island.
Be sure to read the rest of them over at Game Informer
Last Updated: October 6, 2009
