12 Things You Didn't Know About Batman: Arkham Asylum

By Josh Brown / April 16, 2021

7. It Was Almost A Rhythm Game

As you can probably guess, Rocksteady didn't exactly fart out Arkham Asylum on a first draft, but took their time, revised concepts, and threw out ideas entirely that weren't working.

One of these was an entirely different approach to combat. Asylum famously pioneered a new 'freeflow' combat style, focusing on simplicity and style over long-winded combos, but originally the developers were thinking of turning fights into an expanded mini-game.

Early ideas thrown around were to mimic rhythm games of the time, with the action switching to a 2D perspective, and fights playing out depending on how well you could match the incoming button prompts with your own input.

Think Guitar Hero, but with way more broken bones.