Behind the scenes details on the making of Sunsoft's Batman video game for the NES

https://comicbookvideogames.com/2022/05/30/exclusive-an-excerpt-from-the-upcoming-100-greatest-console-video-games-1988-1998/

Batman: The Video Game was supposed to ship in 1989 in time for the holidays, but it was pushed back to early 1990.

In Memoirs of a Virtual Caveman (2014, SCAR Productions), Rob Strangman interviewed Jay Moon, former Software Development Manager at Sunsoft America, about some of the difficulties of working on the game. It was the first title Moon worked on for Sunsoft. Here’s the relevant part of that conversation:

Rob: I’ve heard that Jack Nicholson was the reason Batman was delayed originally, because the in-game Joker looked nothing like him. Any truth to this?

Jay: That is not the way I recalled how it happened. Jack Nicholson and Michael Keaton were pretty easy to deal with. Now, Kim Basinger was another story. The development team for Batman were a talented group of guys, but they had a very difficult time staying within the parameters of the Batman movie license. So, yes, we missed our Christmas shipping date; however, we did ship in late January and still sold over a million copies.

Rob: There is a prototype of Batman that surfaced with entirely different cutscenes than the game that was released. Any memories of that?

Jay. Well, yes, I do remember that. Sunsoft Japan were always sending me different prototypes. I know the one you are referring to, and I believe Warner Bros. didn’t like the cutscenes. Those ROMs are floating around on the web.