Proto:Batman (NES)

The early prototype of the NES Batman has very different cutscenes and even a different ending.

Final Boss Battle
At this point, Firebug is the final boss, and Batman merely punches the Joker out in a cutscene. Someone evidently thought this was pretty lame, and the final has a proper climactic boss fight with the Joker.

Ending Music
The tracks below are played during the ending scene in the prototype: the first when Batman meets the Joker, the second when the Joker has been punched and everything goes black and white.



Debugging Features
Both are done on Controller 2, and are also present in the later prototype.
 * Press A to skip to the next stage.
 * Pressing Down will freeze the screen; pressing it again will unfreeze the action. This was likely to allow pictures to be taken easily for magazines.

1-up


A 1-up is only present in the first area in Level 1. The graphics remain in the final, though.

Pause Screen Differences
Unlike the final, the prototype only shows your remaining lives when you enter a new area or lose a life. Also, the pause screen's font was changed from plain white to yellow with a gradient.

Graphics
The final version, unlike the prototype, flickers between a text and background screen creating an interesting transparency effect. In the prototype, the background is positioned higher up to make room for the text. In addition, there is also a fog effect that goes over the moon.

The Joker's portrait was made smaller, has a different palette, and appears to be a different picture altogether.

Vicki's portrait was also made smaller and had a palette change.



This scene is only in the final and introduces the murder of Batman's parents to the story.

Text
Each piece of dialogue was changed so it starts with a unique graphic in orange of what's being described. Some line breaks were changed as well as entire sentences to get rid of awkward wording.

The final didn't change anything too major, just some rewording.

The reference of "DDID" gas was removed, and some major Engrish was fixed.

The final no longer has Vicki kidnapped, and she no longer has key information. In addition, the final adds text to lead up to the next scene with Batman.

Level 1 Cutscene
At this point, the cutscene is Batman stopping a street thug to learn the whereabouts of Vicki. In the final, this was removed in favor of a short cutscene of Batman in his Batmobile.

Level 2 Cutscene
The final version actually retains some of the early cutscenes!


 * Prototype Only

These are only in the prototype. The third scene with the Batmobile appears to have identical graphics to the one in the final, but has subtle differences.


 * Scene Similarities


 * Found in Both

These two scenes are the only scenes both versions share.

Level 3 Cutscene
In contrast to the final, which contains only one scene here, the prototype uses four.

Final Boss
The prototype's cutscene is shown when the player enters the boss room. Once the boss is beaten, the ending is shown. Since the Joker was added as a boss in the final, a further cutscene was added after the Level 5 boss.

Endings
Drastic changes were made to the ending, which was completely redone for the final.