Tim Burton’s Batman gets reimagined as a stunning modern-day video game

Everyone has a favourite Batman movie, due to any number of reasons. Maybe you like seeing a certain actor under the cowl, maybe you’re a sucker for films that feature U2 on its official soundtrack, or maybe you’re in the mood for a caped crusader adventure set in a version of Gotham City that oozes character.

On that level, Tim Burton’s Batman films easily stand apart from the pack. Gotham is a beast, neo-gothic in design, and looking like an artistic city in which super-crime can flourish. On the video game side of the entertainment equation, Gotham has also been a depressing concrete jungle, most notably in developer Rocksteady’s Batman: Arkham Knight that allowed players to wreak untold levels of property damage in the Batmobile.

What if the Batman from 1989 got a second chance at video game glory though? Under a modern lens, it might looks something like this:

Created by technical and VFX artist Osmany Gomez, the demo reel above is a pitch perfect recreation of Tim Burton’s first Batman movie. All the architectural anarchy of that film’s Gotham City is on full display, while Michael Keaton’s incarnation of the dark knight is so accurate that he can’t even turn his head inside of his costume. Now that’s authentic! If you can’t watch the video above, Gomez uploaded a number of screenshots onto his ArtStation account, showing off a ton of incredibly detailed work:

I covered a bunch of Batman 1989 a trivia a few years back, but I still can’t get over this one fun fact of trivia: The Bat-boots, which were part of a Nike crossover at the time. Jon Peters came to me one day and said ‘Warner have this thing going with Nike, can you use any of their sportswear?’, Assistant Costume Designer Graham Churchyard said.

And I talked to Bob and he said “80s sportswear is not going to fit in with our 1940s look.” And then it just came to us: Why don’t they make the bat boots? They made the bat boots from scratch, based on one of their cross trainers at the time. Michael and the stunt guys absolutely loved them, they were a really comfortable and supportive boot.

Anyway, while the game above is purely a passion project, and I know that there are Batman 1989 costumes and a Batmobile to play with in Batman: Arkham Knight, I won’t be happy until I get a proper game set in that universe and powered by new technology. No, I’m not going to go hunt for a Sunsoft-produced cartridge for the NES.

Last Updated: May 7, 2021