Aza: Zend vs. The Dark End

Lego Batman is a joyful celebration of the entire history of Batman, but during the late '90s the Dark Knight's games had to contend with living up to the reputation of The Animated Series and working with the woeful Batman and Robin film. This is how Batman endured his darkest video game era.

There's something that really stood out for me as someone in the UK who collected American comics at the end of the 1980s. It's that each new comic you got was a doorway to a world of absolute chaos and gimmickry. I'm not talking about the comic stories themselves, but about the American ads that were suddenly blaring out of the alternate spreads. Topps bubble gum cards. Garbage Pail whatevers. Endless enticements to buy Bayou Billy on the Nintendo Entertainment System. You'd be reading about Batman, knocking gloomily around some Gotham spire, and then you'd turn the page and, WHAMMO, somethin

"Young and old, gather round / Everybody hail the new king in town."

A strong open-world Gotham and trademark slapstick humour powers a fantastic plastic parody of the Caped Crusader's greatest hits. Our review of Lego Batman: Legacy of the Dark Knight.

Batman has starred in video games for 40 years, and his early years were much weirder than a Gotham made of Lego bricks. We take a closer look at the strange origins of Batman games.