Today’s Game: Batman Game.
Copyright Date: 1966.
Manufacturer: Milton Bradley.
Recommended Ages: 8 to 15.
Game Box: Bold primary colors predominate, with Batman front and center. He’s looking ripped and, based on his body posture, feeling a bit cocky. Below the big red title, we see Batman and Robin in action against a Gotham City skyline. (I like the Joker-faced jack-in-the-box jumping out at Robin.) Above the title, we see spaceships, Saturn, and other cosmic orbs. I’m sure space-age imagery appealed to boys, but is space really in Batman’s purview?
Game Board: The central portrait shows Batman and Robin, um…leaping off a building into the path of the Joker’s car? That seems risky, but I’m sure they have a reasonable plan. Except for the Batman lettering, the colors seem washed-out on the board compared to the box lid. In the four corners of the playing grid, we see some Gotham City locales.
Game Pieces: Each player gets a Bat Control Board, which shows the six villains who need to be captured. My husband is something of a comic book expert (at least based on the square footage that his collection takes up in our house), so I ran these villains by him to double-check my sense that they seemed strange. Besides commenting that “they look like they were drawn by a fifth grader,” he said The Blockbuster and The Calendar Man never appeared on the 1966-68 TV series, and the Penguin and the Riddler look very different from their TV counterparts. That’s not surprising, I suppose, because this game was probably in the works before the show debuted. But he didn’t think any of the characters looked much like their 1960s comic-book counterparts, either.
Game Play: Players move a plastic “pedestrian” around the board’s outside track. Their goal is to land on a corner space that contains a Batmobile piece. If they do so, they roll again and move into the board’s circular track. On their next turn, they can finally move into the 36-square grid, onto which villain tiles have been placed. (These match the pictures on the Bat Control Board.) Players capture the villain tiles they land on. There are also Super Crime Lab tiles that act as wild cards, substituting for any villain on a player’s Bat Control Board.
Winning the Game: The first player to capture all six different villain tiles wins.
My Thoughts: Game play is simple and some of the art work is questionable, but I think target-age superhero fans would have enjoyed this one.
Other Spin Again Sunday posts you might enjoy:
Embarrassing Treasures 
You know, this is how I prefer to view Batman generally – as a one-dimensional cartoon character in primary colours. I don’t care about the current Hollywood stylizing of Batman with its angst and big effects, etc. But, I’m a lone voice.
I like the thought of catching villains this way. I think I would have enjoyed this game as a kid.