I'm looking for information (possibly the names of its creators? the
exact name and company? reviews? and some screenshots?) on the Batman
computer game which was available on the Schneider PC.

The game was in green on black monochrome colors, somewhere around the
1980s, no real 3D. You were a little Batman in cartoon style,
wandering through rooms trying to collect items to assemble the
Batmobile to save Robin. You could move objects around, and step on
what was called the invisible thread, which would let you step off of
object a bit without falling. Sometimes you would get an underdog
bonus and live again. The game had nothing to do with the world of
Batman as we know him from the comic book. The game was quite magical
and I played it for endless hours with my friends when I was a kid. I
played hundreds of other computer games later on but this must have
been one of the most fascinating and interesting to play.

Can you help me out?

Hi j_philipp-ga,

The game you're describing was the first ever batman game. It was
created by Jon Ritman and released by Ocean in 1986 for ZX Spectrum.
The game was later ported to Amstrad and Einstein. You can read an
article on the game and it's designer here:

http://www.crashonline.org.uk/33/ritman.htm

The page also contains a screenshot of the green-black version at the bottom.

In this 3d-isometric game are caped crusader indeed needed to search
for 7 parts of his Batmobile. I found several review on the game, as
well as some more screenshots:

http://www.crashonline.org.uk/28/batman.htm
http://www.ysrnry.co.uk/articles/batman.htm

Even cooler is the fact that you can actually play an emulated version
from within your browser. You simple need to have the Java virtual
machine plugin installed (http://www.java.com) and you can play the
game from within an applet on this url:

http://www.worldofspectrum.org/infoseekplay.cgi?title=Batman&pub=Ocean+Software+Ltd&year=-1986&id=0000438&joy=kemp&game=/games/b/Batman.tap.zip&emu=1

You can also play the game off-line through an emulator. It is
perfectly legal to emulate a Spectrum, because Amstrad, who own the
ROMs, have made them freeware. Simply download the Spectatular
emulator (30-day trial) here:

http://www.spectaculator.com/

And use it with TZX images of the original tapes. You can find them on
the following urls:

http://tzxvault.retrogames.com/Spectrum/TZX/Batman.zip
http://tzxvault.retrogames.com/Spectrum/TZX/Batman-AlternativeLoader.zip
http://www.worldofspectrum.org/infoseek.cgi?regexp=Batman

This last page also contains more information, such as articles and
scans of the orignial game instructions and maps.

Detailed information on how to play these emulated games can be found here:

http://www.aldridge98.fsnet.co.uk/howtoemulate.html

Sincerely,

rhansenne-ga.

Search terms used: "batman" "amstrad" "schneider" "game"

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Clarification of Answer by rhansenne-ga on 14 Aug 2004 15:51 PDT

It seems direct linking to the tape images is not allowed. You can
manually find them on this page:

http://tzxvault.retrogames.com/b.htm

Sincerely,

rhansenne-ga.

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Request for Answer Clarification by j_philipp-ga on 15 Aug 2004 07:11 PDT

You might want to follow-up on this question, I post a new one: how
can I use my arrow keys on the keyboard with the Spectacular?
http://answers.google.com/answers/threadview?id=388106

---

Clarification of Answer by rhansenne-ga on 15 Aug 2004 09:15 PDT

Hi j_philipp-ga,

Thanks for the rating and the tip! I'll do my best to help you with
your other question as well.

Sincerely,

rhansenne-ga.

Sigh, this brings back memories. While I go through all the great
links you provide  let me say wonderful job!