BGE Investigates: Do Cartridges Blow? at 10:08 AM

I've played Knight Rider. It's not that good.

Sometimes, decisions are made, which change the course of history. But oftentimes this decisions are intrinsically tied to the time they where taken, and must be reevaluated as time moves on.


For example, when the American Constitution wa written, the possibility of a foreign country invading was real, and the possibility of "somebody shooting up a school 6 times a year" was not.  So they put in the constitution that people had a right to bear arms. Even now people wrestle with the idea of how to apply this to a modern world where America is the largest superpower in the world, and outbursts of randomly directed violence need to be treated.


But anyway, videogames made one of those changes years ago. It's kind of legend, now, really. For years, the primary format for home console games where cartridges. You know, these things?

Hardy plastic shells holding within them a microchip within it. During those early days of console gaming, cartridges where really the most practical format for games, but  not without their limitations. Specifically, size. The higher echelons of space an N64 cart could hold was 64 Megabites.  That sucks. That's a couple of MP3s low quality MP3s.


So, as gaming systems wanted even more specs to compete with the PC's fancy CD Roms, they began chasing the compact disc dragon, to mostly their own demise.  Sega's Sega CD, the Turbo Graphx CD, Jaguar CD all went nowhere, but they belonged to consoles and companies destined for nowhere.


Where they failed, Nintendo would succeed. They partnerered with Sony, who knew somethings about the subject. But for whatever reason, Nintendo left  Sony to try and work a CD deal with Phillips.


The rest is history. Sony went on to make the Playstation, which would go unchallenged for over a decade, Phillips would go on to make godawful games based on Nintendo stuff that fuel Youtube Poops to this day, and Nintendo had one more cartridge console before caving in with the Gamecube and finally doing disc type games.

You just missed out on this, Nintendo.

Everywhere else, CDs, and later DVDs and Blu-rays would go on to dominate gaming. It was clear that cartridges where out, and Shiny, spin-ey things where in. It didn't hurt that they where dirt cheap to make.


But whereas in the old days the advantage of Discs over cartidges where more obvious, I think it's worth a second look.


Disc's key advantage in the olden days, that of playing what was known as "Full motin video" and "High Quality pre-recorded audio" is practically all but gone, as AAA titles are rapidly embracing installs and other such things. There is little reason to believe now that only a disc could give you quick and crisp images, as you can put a full movie in a USB drive in any half hearted PC rig and it'll run like gangbusters.


Not that Full motion video carries all that much importance, anymore. The graphics in-engine have outgrown the need for a pre-rendered video that the machine itself would not be able to run. Unless you are using cell animation or live action bits in your game, you mostly aren't gonna be using that.


Space is another area where gaming has outgrown what discs could do.Well, discs have outgrown what gaming needs, anyway. Most games out there do not fill up their Blu Rays and DVDs, so the idea that developers are being constrained by that is hilarious, even more so when while USB drive storage capacity has increased while maintaining compatibility, they aren't making any larger sized BluRays in the middle of the PS4's existance. It's as big as it'll ever be.


One advantage that Carts have over Disc technology is that it's a little harder to pirate. They aren't making  a machine out there that burns cartridges, you know?


And another one would be the ability to update the game. DLC is a big deal, now, so the ability to take your downloaded goods to someone else's machine seems like a pretty advantageous affair. In game saves, and other such neatness.



Durability is another factor. As anyone who's seen their MVC2 GD turn into one of those translucent discs from a recordable CD tower will tell you, discs aren't as hardy as you'd hope


One need only look at the portable console marked, where the complete incapacity to make smaller discs has allowed cartridges to live on, to see the results. Despite these carts being smaller than  any during the cartridge heyday, they still produce images and sound quality that  surpasses the last great cartridge home consoles, and still give the PSX and Saturn a run for their money.

Build-A-Bear Workshop is no Knight Rider.

I am not so naive to think console makers are willing to go back, as they are currently chasing  a new dragon, one of digital streaming. Invariably, there will be positive elements (uh...near impiracibility?) and negative ones (always having to be connected to the Internet). The console makers of today aren't really console makers, but corporate entities who see consoles  as chess pieces to their overall endgame(though it is hilarious to see Microsoft's plans to own the living room be whisked away by cellphones and tablets.). Sony may or may not consider Blu Ray the superior physical media, but it sure would come in handy to them, the MAKERS of Blu Ray, if their new console sold this format to the public.


That's alright. But I think they ought to, if only for a bit. This article was mostly written before the rumor that Nintendo is going back to carts cropped up, but if it's true...it's a good sign.

BGE investigates: Do we have too MUCH Batman? at 7:49 PM

2batty4me

In my nerd commandments article I commented that, while Batman movies have been recycling a lot of it's villains and  snubbing others for over 2 decades, I have no desire for Batman to go away.

 But that got me to thinking, maybe Batman COULD go away for a bit.

You see, since he was created that silly 60's TV show, Batman has become overall the most popular super hero in the world. This has various reasons. Unlike Green Lantern and Flash, or even X-Men, bringing the the concept to the screen isn't filled with technical obstacles. And trust me, if it was by the comics alone, Batman would be stuck in the same level of recognition as Rotor the Walrus. No, I'm not giving you a hyperlink.  Batman, and overall most of his enemies, are mostly humans, and don't have require a lot of complicated effects to be realized with a modicum of acceptability.

Just like vampires, and zombies Batman's ease of presentation has allowed other sides of the character to flourish. But it's not just that. Even as many heroes' run ups with the grim and grittiness of the 80's and 90's has  become a mocking point for them, Batman's has endured as the POSITIVE point in the character's history, despite the fact that it could get about as silly as anything else.

When's the last time you saw DLC based 50 year old TV show outside of Call of Duty: Modern Warfare's Bewitched Costume pack?

But maybe it's a generational thing. I'm 30 and Batman has been  the most popular character in several mediums for the better part of most of my life. But even growning up during a phenomena called Batmania, I've never seen Batman be this prevalent. Batman's 3rd  official live action movie continuity starts with Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice next year. It itself is a prequel to 2 Justice League movies which, if you think they're gonna put aside the most popular character in the world being played by  Holywood's beloved Ben Affleck to focus on anyone else, you are sorely mistaken.

Ben Affleck  as Bruce Wayne looks like Ben Affleck a whole lot.

There's a Batman Solo movie already planned with Affleck set to direct and obviously star.  Suicide Squad will feature a cameo with him, and also spotlight on the ever popular Joker villain, with additional Batman villains like Harley Queen, Killer Croc, and Deadshot(played by Hollywood's beloved Will Smith, and you know what a scene hog he can be) making  significant percentage of the titular team.

But if that's all too grim for you, there's also Lego Batman, but like for cinema, not like the handful that exist out of cinema. And not like the Lego Batman GAME series. And speaking of games, Batman also has a game series to him now: The Arkham Series. That one has been a big success so far, so count on more coming. For the record, during my day we never had a Batman game series, especially not one hailed as worthy of magazine cover importance. In fact, we had a running joke about how the assortment of unconnected Batman games could never be any good.

And let's not forget the Batman car game! Remember, Batman doesn't use guns!

And let's not forget Gotham, a Smallville-esque attempt of filling the years between Batman's parents being murdered and Batman becoming Batman with a long running soap a dope. Oh, and animated movies coming out about pretty much most important Batman comics arcs.

For a long time, I wanted DC to finally give us heroes that wern't Batman. And while that call is seemingly being answered, It seems to me that they wouldn't take "the risk" unless they could pillow any potential  losses with EVEN MORE BATMAN.



It seems to me at some point we could be reaching Peak Batman, a point of Bat Exhaustion when Batman is become so common place, so ever present, that really he becomes boring. This is even more dangerous than Batman becoming ridiculous. Batman has bounced back from ridiculous a few times.  But once the people become bored with the character, nothing but leaving it alone can help.

The 7 years between this and Batman Begins where spent, yes, trying to make more Batman.

Remember, there was a time where Archie outsold Batman. Yes, that Archie. He had cartoons and stuff. He didn't need Predator or death and gay stunts. It was just a simple funny book, in every sense.  But over time, Archie's brand of humor became a bit bland for American audiences. Archie became boring.  Where are Archie's movie and cartoon deals? Where are Archie's games? They aren't.

It is my opinion that WB should put a leash on the Bat, but nevertheless I suspect they won't.  If the Batman brand crashes it may take a few decades before it can bounce back. This would be bad for fans, since it wouldn't just cut short exploitations of the Batverse, but much further DEVELOPMENT of it in it's source material. It would also be bad for WB, since "a few decades" is what it HAS left until Batman enters the public domain. But I guess we'll see.

I can still remember how worn out those gloves where...

 

BGE investigates: Where the licensed games at? at 8:39 AM

So, as another nerdy year of movies draws to a close, there's a lingering thought on my mind: Where the hell where all the licensed games at?

It's not that there weren't games based on preexisting franchises out there. There was plenty of that. But, you see, as an old, not as directly in touch with current mainstream gaming veteran, I remember a time where "The Tie In game" was a necessary part of any big summer movie.

Looking back through my Rom cartridge collection in the Sega Genesis is like a mirror held to the big budget summer movies of the time. The Lion King and Predator 2 are there. Terminator makes an appearance. Every Batman movie had a game.

Now, back to the present, was is the Frozen game? Where was the Dark Knight Rises game? Where was the Avengers game? These are the big movies of the decade, and their presence in the game scene is basically nil!

Obviously there is a market. A...really fucked up market.

Where the hell is the Star Wars Episode 7 game? (#BoycottStarWars7) Every single prequel game had a game following the movie's backstory. And now, with the biggest Star Wars release in years, they can't muster up a game bout it?

Well, let's start with the beginning.  Back when gaming was a niche and graphics had less resolution than a lamppost, during the heyday of Atari, there weren't as many games based on Blockbuster movies, in part, because The concept of the Blockbuster was fairly new, and in part because no one knew exactly how to translate a big budget movie into a Pacman clone.

So we got weird things like China Syndrome(Based on a movie about trying to avoid a powerplant disaster) and E.T. (which is legendary in it's badness.).

After the industry fell, and rose up again thanks to Nintendo, the licensed  genre was reborn stronger. Now that the random experimentation and lack of graphics of the Atari days gave way to actual game genre's and distinguishable clothes and faces on characters , it made making games based on movies easier, and more profitable. What's a game based on Jurassic Park gonna be? A Top down shooter. What's a game based on Terminator gonna be? A light gun shooter. What's game based on Total Recall gonna be? Ehh....

Eeeeh...

Games became a part of the marketer's repertoire. Judge Dredd the movie  wasn't just there to sell you the movie, it wanted to sell you the toys, the soft drink, and yes, the videogames of Judge Dredd. There where multiple different videogames based on one of the licensed comic book failures of the 90's.

Over time, tie in games gained notoriety for being bad, rushed out products made on the cheap and incompetent compared to the standards of the time. They where not all bad all the time, but Tie in games didn't completely blow, everyone just stood around wondering why Golden Eye didn't make them fall over in pain.

James, stop masturbating and look behind you!

But critical reception did not deterr licenced games, since the ingenuity of them was the people who where buying them where operating under the influence of  what I call "The Batman Seal of Approval". Here's how it works. I walked into the toy store. I was checking out the games. I see this.

Jim Carrey doing the universal "Well, WHAT DID YA EXPECT" pose should have been a dead giveaway.

I don't even know what the game in this looks like. I'm 12. It's got Batman on the cover. Bruno Diaz wouldn't lie to me, would he?

So basically when the licensed tie in game was one of the worst things to happen to the player and the character and the genre, it could still skate on by on the promise of cool Batman action.

So what happened? Well, several things happened, I think. For one, gaming grew up, in a lot of the ways you might get by that. While in the past a ok action adventure  with a coat of Bram Stalker's Dracula on it might have been at least on par with all the other ok action adventures of the day, after 3D kicked in  and games started becoming more, well, cinematic, this games started meeting less and less of the expectations of people. Why would you play Alien Resurrection and 5th Element when you have perfectly playable Resident Evil and Tomb Raider on your plate?

Milla  Jovovich naked, videogames, lasers. They knew about that.

But so what, right? People who play this things don't read any magazines? Except they more did, now. As a core generation of older life long gamer started becoming the main demographic to be catered to, and these started becoming more and more informed thanks to the internet, it became harder to slip an unplayable piece of shit in there and coast on brand recognition.

And if all that hit the tie in game in the face, the rising cost of developing games managed to knock it down. With games costing as much as a movie, and being far less likely to make their profits back, it eventually shook the Tie In Game's "Sure Thing" status and threw it to the ground. NOTHING is a sure thing now in mainstream games. Even worst, the development cycle for games grew up longer than a movie's as well, meaning that the idea of "we'll just kick up a game, tie it in to our movie" went straight out the window.

Star Wars 7 doesn't have Star Wars 7: The Game. It has Star Wars: BattleFront, a preexisting series of Star Wars games(based themselves on the non Star Wars Battlefront games) that where fast tracked to meet the release of the movie with as Much DLC as possible. Man of Steel didn't have a full game of it. It had a mobile game.  Pacific Rim didn't have a full AAA game for it on stores. It had a XBLA type game. The Dark Knight movies didn't have games, but those Arkham games sure are about Batman, too!

Total Recall had...Ehhh

Could Tie Ins come back in full force? Well, if there was a reliable "Netflix of Gaming" type service that could be accessed by more people than can now afford (and are willing to have) expensive cutting edge consoles, it would make sense to put licensed games in there. In the same way Marvel/Disney can launch a TV series on Netflix knowing it will have an audience, it could launch  a beat em up that follows the plot of Avengers: Age of Ultron if it knew that there is no high bar to entry.

In fact, the one part where Tie in Games still thrive is portable consoles, where development costs aren't company killing high and the audience can be relied on to be more than life long male gamer, and where even the fruitiest  of Disney Channel TV shows can still have a shot at brand recognition.

You Aren't Gonna catch ME playing this on my Xbox One! (Flexes)

I don't know how I feel about licensed games. On the one hand Mission:Impossible was some of the worst shit I ever played. On the other hand, when they where good, you really COULD feel like you where James Bond, or a T-Rex, or a Robocop. I think there's a lot of potential now that games are growing into more fleshed out narratives, for the immersion to fully kick in, for licensed games to truly be like playing the movie's story. It's just that this potential isn't being met by games trying to be arm candy to movies.

BGE investigates. The Special Move Problem at 1:17 PM

Yeah, good luck pulling this shit off in an Xbox 360 controller.

I like fighting games.  For a long, long time I've loved them. My first experience with them was walking into a shop with my dad, and out in the corner, was Street Fighter 2.
After the obligatory parental beggary, I convinced my old man to  lend me of his money to try out this strange machine of wonder, which promised  the excitement of battle.

I lost, of course. I picked Guile because he looked cool, and when you're  7 and playing a random game that's all you need.  I did not know how to play Street Fighter. Guile is a charge character. You're expected to hold back for a few seconds, hold forward, and, not letting go forward push on your choice of 3 out of 6 overall buttons to show a projectile. Which is fair and lovely, once you know it, but as a newbie picking up a game blindly trying to achieve "fun" it's a bit over your head.

He also had a move where you hold down, and then up and a button in a similar fashion. But of course, if you do it wrong, you'll wind up jumping, which is not what you want to be doing in the early 90's because air blocking hasn't been invented yet.


Special Moves as we know them where invented with the first Street Fighter machine, which had pads that you punched and, depending of how much strenght you put into it, would do either regular moves or the now famed Hadouken. But as these pads proved not sturdy enough to withstand the blows of player all over the world, they where replaced with the 6 button layout we all know and love. The Special moves where performed with twirls meant to emulate the movement of Ryu's hands to perform the actual move. And that solved the only problem Street Fighter had and everybody loved it forever.

Diamond in the rough.

Nah, just kidding. A couple years more later Capcom made a sequel to Street Fighter. Now you could play as any of the characters in the game, all of which had different  special moves from Ryu. Well, except Ken. Besides the twirls, we where introduced to the fast tap for characters like Chun Li and Honda, charge attack for characters like Guile, and...I'm told Zangief has Special Moves, too, I'm gonna check back on that.

As you may know, Street Fighter 2 was a huge hit, sucking up money in Arcades, Consoles, and on merchandise. Imitators quickly pulled up on the scene, trying to emulate Capcom's success by emulating Capcom's gameplay and characters. Now, don't get me wrong, imitators doesn't mean that they didn't innovate or that they whern't any good. But basically every fighting game under the sun that was released after SF2 started with a solid Street Fighter base, including the idea and, for the most part, execution of special moves. It just became a thing that fighting games do because that's what a fighting game is.

But I don't think "that's just the way it's always been" is a satisfying answer to why fighting games continue to include special moves. 


I still remember the uproar when Capcom announced MVC3 would have a Simple Mode. The  VS series had always been a simpler take on Capcom's increasingly convoluted Street FIghter series, which continued to pile on technicallities to the allienation of casual fans. But even in that, the concept of being able to pull of special moves without applying rote memorization seemed like giving in to the devil itself.

"Simple"? NEVER!

Rote memorization is so expected, that Netherrealm actually went ahead and added a pay-for-easy-Fatalities option to Mortal Kombat X, to the chagrin of many. But they're not angry they're still expected to learn a secret little jig to perform a key feature in a game, but that someone might bypass it and perform the move without knowing and executing the secret handshake.

When you see what is known as "high level gameplay", rote memorization trumps all.  Once someone figures out the one combo that just  can't be escaped, high level matches start deevolving into a game of who lets their guard down first.

It's either bragging rights in a videogame or keeping those carpals going.

So, do we need Special Moves? There's  no univeral answer, but I'd argue that, no, we don't need them. The 3D side of fighting games that draws more from Virtua Fighter and Tekken, such as Soul Calibur, Dead or Alive has mostly done away with them. The availability of different attacks in there is mostly tied to no more than holding in a direction and pressing one of the attack buttons, or combining two attack buttons. I never had to sit down and read a guide to know the very basic of Tina Armstrong moves.  Soul Calibur  has scores of moves for each character, and most of those aren't tied to twirls and spins.

Now, yes, these games don't have "special moves" as much as "just moves". It's no coincidence that Street Fighter and Mortal Kombat are back to being stuck in a 2D plane. They just couldn't mesh "sidestepping 3D" and "Shooting Fireballs" in a way that makes sense. After all the EX and Armageddon nonsense they're back just pretending that third dimension never existed. But there is another game that does have directional input: Nintendo's Smash Bros.

Some are reluctant to call Smash a fighting game. But why wouldn't it be?  It's got strategy, focuses on combat, and has special moves. It's specials, of course, are tied to pushing a Special button and the direction you push. Like the original Street Fighter, the context it tied to the direction you press: Press Special + Down on the air and if your character has a dive attack that's probably where you'll find it. Press Special + Up to dash upward. It's super simple. You can leave out the memory crap and focus on core fighting strategy.

Now, take out the Party fighter stuff. Imagine you had a traditional, Angry Japanese Guy 2d type fighter. You have a special button. You have a special move for Special + nothing, SP + forward, SP + forward + up, SP + forward + down, SP + down, SP + down + back, SP + back, SP + up + back, SP + up and SP + up + forward. That's 8 Special moves, more than you have for most character in SF 2. You could always have 2 special buttons. You could have 2 variations of each move, just like how in SF you can get different kinds of Fireballs according to which punch button you press. Or you could just have 16 specials, if you're so inclined. And you'd still have 4 core buttons left for those punches and kicks everybody loves.






Sure, you and I know how to pull of a Hadoken. We went through it. But out there, there's a younger us, who sees Scorpion and Sub Zero shooting ice and spears at each other, and he thinks it's the coolest thing he's ever seen. He wants to do that. And if we tie up all the cool stuff behind button combinations no one could figure naturally on their own, he might very justifiably take his buisness elswhere, to another game that DOESN'T Require working knoweledge of a 20 + year game genre to have fun.

Want it or not, casuals ARE the future of fighting games, because every one of us started by casually playing a game for fun. And whether you wound up  winning EVO or just tricking people into thinking Megaman X was in Marvel vs Capcom 3, it all depended on whether you had fun during those first times to see if you stuck with it. If we can put aside our pride for a bit, we could grow the community beyond the people we already have. We could grow fighting games as a genre. And that's good for everyone.

BGE investigates: Is Batman a huge hippocrite? at 12:39 PM

The Bats are gonna fly toniiiiight! They're wearing Hockey pads, toniiiight!

Batman. Who is this man, and what drives him to do the things he does?

This might be the kinds of nerdy questions that mostly should be answered by "he's not real, jerk," but for 70 years a multitude of artists and writers have  made their livelihood by essaying  into comics, movies, and tv shows  carefully  crafted answers to that question.


While the Bat's personality is a reflection on the artists, the society at the time, and mercenary creative need, most Bat-fans would probably  know the following.

1)Batman is Bruce Wayne, Millionaire Playboy , whose parent's murder as a child drove him to become a vigilante/super hero.
2)Batman does not kill.
3)Batman does not use guns.

You can see fan outrage for those times when Batman kills, or for those rarer still moments when he can be found clutching a handgun. Batman Beyond, an official cartoon depicting  the future of the Animated Series, depicts the moment Bruce decides  to stop being Batman as being one time illness FORCED him to use a gun to scare off a criminal.

So Batman does not use guns. This is an integral part of the character, now.  All he has is his wits and his fists and his gadgets and vehicles. Otherwise his just an ordinary billionaire who engages in regular exercise. You don't see Batman shoot up a place. Except in, like this scene.

In this scene, The Joker is gassing the city, and it's up to Batman to stop him. He does, and then he takes aim from his airship towards the Joker.

The intention is pretty clear, here. Batman is trying to shoot this single man from the sky with the guns in his warplane. While it is pretty dramatically convenient that Batman's aim is so lousy,  Batman's idea here isn't for Joker to do a stint on prison. He's trying to shoot him dead.

Now, being fair, Batman DOESN'T have an established code against killing in that movie, nor an established code against guns, perse. Many fans have gone on to believe that THIS particular Batman is acting severely out of character. REAL Batman wouldn't bomb a building, or burn a man alive with his car's afterburner or throw the Joker off a cathedral to his own death, they'll say.

"Real Batman" might more closely ressemble The Dark Knight Trilogy VERSION, to many of those fans. That one DOES establish Batman has  a reason for not wanting to kill, and a specific aversion to guns. He rejects  killing after his initiation on the league of Shadows involves murdering an accused criminal, and rejects guns after his love interest scolds him for his intention to shoot the man who murdered his parents.

After that, it's nothing but  his wits and his fists and his gadgets and vehicles. And my what vehicles these are! There's the Tumbler, a tank-like military offroad vehicle equiped with jumping action, fiery turbines, missile launchers,  and what appears to be a periscope style overhead machine gun.

Of course, Batman didn't order that made custom. He doesn't need military grade weapons. He's not a killer, guys! He only ever uses the Tumbler's missile capacity to take down  a train.  Further movies, though, establish his continually upgraded fleet includes a motorcycle that detaches itself from the Tumbler. Pretty useful for chasing after the Joker, but as we see here, not as useful for apprehending him.

This scene echoes the earlier scene where  Batman blasted away at the Joker from his high tech plane, except in this scene Batman doesn't blast at the Joker. I mean, with the enormous guns in the Batbike, he'd tear him to pieces. But he can't even manage to run him over, which he seems he kind of wanted to do but doesn't. You know there's a couple of things between running over a man with your motorcycle and just sort of letting him go, right, Batty?

"Okay, lemme explain. This doesn't shoot bullets, it shoots plastic explosives. Totally non-lethal stuff."

And if you're wondering if those are guns, flip over to the ending of Dark Knight Rises, where Catwoman, riding the same model,  explodes a barricade and eventually Bane, the movie's villain. The Batpod isn't just armed with peashooters, it's a fucking war machine.

He's also got "The Bat", a hovering...thing, also armed with  machine guns and explosives.

So what gives, anyway? Am I the only one who has noticed?

The Bathorse is also armed!

Batman's "No GUNS" thing is kind of weirdly structured. On the one hand, Batman outright refuses to even WORK with somebody who's carrying, but sees no objection to having a 50 cal mounted on his Bat Huey.

Most of the same reasons for using firearms are the same kind of reasons for putting them on vehicles. "Guns are for killing, and I don't kill" Well, Batman doesn't have to use guns to straight up murder. He an debilitate  an opponent, scatter a crowd of unarmed thugs.  In the same way he can have machine guns mounted on the hood of his car and not necessarily use that shoot Poison Ivy dead, he can have a handgun in case the situation calls for it.

"Guns are what criminals use!" First of all, YOU'RE a criminal. You're embezzling money from your company, engaging in acts of aggression, driving unsanctioned vehicles and  Second of all, let's be adults here, Batman.  All sorts of people carry guns. Police. Military personnel. Security guards. Civilians who want to defend themselves. I'm not pro-guns  or anything, but it is what it is. It's especially weird to say that in the world of DC when it involves metabeings.  Some of these people can fly and throw blasts out of their hands. I'm sure if you look hard enough in the DC universe, there's a guy whose powers is shooting bullets out of his eyes.

"Guns killed my parents." Yes, the classic trauma. Batman is AVERSE to firearms, and somehow this mental avertion goes away if it's the vehicle he's riding doing the shooting.

But wouldn't the SOUND of the machine guns on the Batmobile trigger back memories of that fateful day?

For such a presumed "important" part of the character, this discrepancy has not yet been tackled. In fact, Arcades all over the continent are filling up with Batman: The Arcade Game, a game that lets you choose from MOST of the popular Batmobiles, and allows you to shoot up the streets as you try to stop Bane, Mr Freeze and The Joker.  While some of this vehicles never actually shot anything on their original version, this game allows it like it's the most natural thing in the world.



So pick one, Bats. Either never guns, or sometimes guns.