Glitches: Batman Returns (USA)

[cacophony1]

Summary: There are four separate reports of sound and stability glitches that seem to affect all versions of Batman Begins (OG cart, SD2SNES, and rom) and running on top of both official 4.4, and JB 6.5.

Initially Boos wrote in the Discord chat:

Batman Returns off SD card and the sound effects were cutting in and out. Music played fine but punches and impact sounds would come and go.

I then attempted to reproduce tonight using the Batman Begins rom (from recent Smokemonster pack), running on JB6.5, and hit various glitches:

I completed level 1-1 with no sound issues, but as soon as level 1-2 started there was no sound at all (no music or sound effects, it was completely silent). On Kevtris' suggestion I tried switching to fully buffered mode (instead of zero lag), and after a couple attempts at 1-1 and 1-2 I didn't notice any issues. So then I switched back to zero delay and loaded the rom again, but this time it froze before I was able to start the game. So I did a reset and then it seemed fine. I played through the 1-1 with no issues, and 1-2 seemed fine as well. But I lost my last life at the boss, and it asked me if I wanted to continue. I said yes and it immediately froze at a black screen.

At this point I tried switching back to fully buffered and after restarting the game I hit the freeze on start issue. I restarted again and it was fine and played a bit with no issues.

[cacophony1]

On Discord, SegaSnatcher wrote:

Yikes, JB doesn't like Batman Returns. Got a black screen first load. Second load it booted, but Part 2 of Level 1 had no sound and it froze right at the boss.

I'm gonna try my official cart again, but now on JB firmware. See if JB screws up Batman regardless of source.

OK, its the JB firmware itself. Even my real Cart froze and dropped audio. And yes it was Zero Delay mode.

SegaSnatcher then reverted to the 4.4 official firmware to retest:

I'm glad I retried OG Firmware. I actually got an audio drop out at the end of the first boss and it blacked out after is displayed the Scene 2 title. This was on the SD2SNES [with Game Hook on]. Very curious. It seems JB was more problematic, but I guess even OF can cause issues. After multiple tests the Original Cart only dropped audio and froze on JB firmware. That is not to say it can't happen on original FW with the actual cart. Again, I am only testing until the 2nd level after the first Boss battle

And then later after SegaSnatcher tested with an original cart, this was this summary:

OG Cart + OF = Didn't experience any problems. SD2SNES + OF = Sometimes it runs fine, other times it will freeze or drop audio. Running on JB firmware all sources of Batman Returns failed.

SegaSnatcher then tested the SD2SNES on official 4.4 with Game Hook turned off this time:

Rats even with the in game hook feature disabled I did encounter a freeze to black screen right after ACT 1 title.

[frederic-mahe]

This is a valid ROM:

Batman Returns (SNS-BJ-USA, revision: SNS-BJ-0)
    SHA256: f8d5c51f74df33edc827fbf8df7aab70160770ab0a896db6e59438ad9208cc6e
    SHA1: 087f414d51c999e25ced561fe21503c559d8050f
    MD5: 5ef8e1f3e88c86f149838c569a0c0328
    CRC32: e87dfdf6

[SegaSnatcher]

I can confirm after about 12 attempts I was able to get the actual cart of Batman Returns to freeze on Official Firmware. It froze to black right after the Scene 1 intro title.

[scotthammack]

For what it's worth, I just played through the first few levels with no issues during that time, but then I ran out of lives and had to use a continue, and after that, I have no audio. I was at the boss fight with the Strongman (level 2-3) when this happened. (Also, because I'm bad at the game, I set the difficulty to easy and number of lives to 7 in the game options, if that for some reason makes a difference.)

UPDATE: Even more interesting behavior! After continuing and having no audio, I played through level 2-3 again. I got to the Strongman, and he did his animation of throwing away the newspaper, but then froze. The game is still running and I can move Batman around, but the Strongman is just standing there and I can't hit him or do anything to progress past this point. (Also, I can't pause, for some reason. But all the other controls are working.)

JB6.5 firmware, loading from the SD card, same ROM as above.

[SmokeMonsterPacks]

Kev has a fix for Batman Returns coming in the next official firmware update.

[SmokeMonsterPacks]

This has been fixed in v4.5