Batman (PC Engine)

So, this game is obviously based on the 1989 live action Batman movie (ie, the good one that isn't from the 60s). Although judging by what I've played of it, it's based on an alternate interpretation where batman is a grim, avenging janitor of the night. For example, the first set of stages has you walking around the streets of Gotham City picking up litter (though a more sensible person might suggest that this litter is the ingredients of Joker Venom. Of course, they'd be fools, since why would they all just be strewn around the streets at random? ) while beating up.avoiding mimes, and the second set has you in the museum, being up goons in puffa jackets and cleaning graffiti off of paintings. I haven't got to the third set of stages yet (don't laugh! There's 12 stages in each set, and they're pretty hard!), but I assume it has Batman going round to Comissioner Gordon's house to do the dishes or something.
It might sound like I don't like this game, but I really do! In fact, of all the Batman games I've played, it's probably my favourite! It's not very Batman-like (though maybe you could stretch your imagination and say that picking up all the Joker Venom ingredients in the first area is a game-substitute for detective work), but it is very fun to play. It also does a couple of things that are unusual for the maze game genre. For example, you aren't limited in your ability to get rid of enemies. In most maze games, you can only take out enemies with a temporary power-up, while in Batman, you just throw a batarang to stun them, them walk into them to make them fly off in an amusing manner. And the power-ups you do get, that do things like increase your walking speed or the range of your batarangs are permanent, even when you lose a life or finish a stage!
The music is good, too. But not very atmospheric, except in the very short (and very nice looking) cutscenes you get between areas.

Final Fantasy X: Fantasy War (Game Boy Color)

Firstly, this game doesn't have anything to do with Squaresoft's PS2 game Final Fantasy X, so I guess it can be assumed that the X in the title is the letter X and not the roman numeral. What does the letter X signify in this case? Nothing, it's a chinese pirate game, they aren't supposed to make sense.
In this case, it's a beat em up, and to be fair to those crazy pirates, it does keep to a general Final Fantasy theme pretty well: the player characters look like they could be sprites from the battle screens of the pre-32-bit era FF games, and some of the enemies are very recognisable as coming from the series too, such as the goblins and the tonberries (The first appearance of the tonberry, shortly after the second boss is the furthest I've managed to get, as it basically turns up and make short work of stabbing you to death in just a couple of hits!). The plot (as far as i can tell from the textless intro) is also in the vein of the old FF games, having 4 big elemental crystals being stolen or destroyed or something.
There's four playable characters in this: a sword-weilding knight-type guy, a rubbish wizard, an androgynous archer and a chocobo. Unfortunately, only the knight is worth playing as, since he's significantly stronger and faster and just all-round better than the other three. The wizard is the worst, he's slow and weak and crap looking. The archer is almost good, if they were just a little bit faster at moving and attacking, they'd be a lot more fun to play as. The chocobo is obviously just there for novelty value, and though it's fast, it's also weak and its attacks have a very short range.
The game is really nicely presented, other than the rubbish cheap-looking title screen. The character sprites and backgrounds are excellent, and as I said earlier, the player characters would look right at home in the older FF's battle screens (though I must admit, my knowledge of the series isn't deep enough to know whether the sprites are original work by the developers, or just rips from one of the official games. Same goes for the backgrounds, which are very nicely drawn, probably some of the best I've seen on the GBC.) The music is pretty good too, but I know for sure that it's stolen, as it's been ripped from the (surprisingly playable) Game Boy port of King of Fighters 95.
As for the game itself, if you play as the knight, it's a lot of fun! You go from left to right beating up monsters, and even getting experience points that increase the length of your health bar as you level up. Every character has the usual combo attacks, plus a running attack and a special attack that's done with a quarter circle forward plus the attack button, which reduces some of the red bar that appears below your health, and is replenshed bit by bit as you use normal atacks on enemies. If you play as the other characters, it's not so fun, and it's really difficult to get past even the first stage. But it is a really fun game when you play as the knight.