11 Fascinating Gaming Moments That Almost Happened

7. The Dark Knight Movie Tie-In Would Have Meant No Arkham Asylum

the bstman dark knight game
Warner Bros

Although a world without Batman: Arkham is one all too many fans would hate to contemplate, it’s true, Rocksteady’s franchise nearly never made it to market.

The 2000s may be heralded as a ‘golden age’ of gaming, but it was also an age of half-baked movie tie-ins, most of which seemed to feature the Caped Crusader in a starring role. This first commenced with 2005’s Batman Begins, and with Christopher Nolan gearing up to release a follow up - The Dark Knight - in 2008, Warner Bros. were keen to cash in.

The task for making a Dark Knight movie video game fell to Pandemic, the studio who had previously helmed the once beloved Star Wars: Battlefront series for LucasArts. By all accounts, their vision for a Batman title actually seemed rather compelling too, with it having ditched the linear format of Begins and opting for an open world Gotham in the vein of Spider-Man 2.

However, the game was binned off several months into development, which led WB to reconsider their plans and give the franchise to Rocksteady, who set about making the best superhero video game of all time with Arkham Asylum. Snakes and ladders, really.

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Content Producer/Presenter

WhatCulture's very own resident movie guy, Ewan has been working in the content creation biz for over 10 years now, having started as a freelance contributor to WhatCulture Gaming all the way back in 2015. After graduating with a First-Class Honours in History from Northumbria University in 2017 (where he won a prize for a totally killer dissertation on the Watergate years), Ewan took on the role of Comics Editor at WhatCulture and quickly developed WhatCulture Comics into one of the biggest superhero-focused channels on YouTube. He followed this with a brief hiatus at Screen Rant in 2021, where he worked across the Gaming and Film sections as a writer and editor, before returning to WhatCulture as a Senior Content Producer / Presenter in 2023. He started his own podcast, We Love Dad Movies, in 2022, and has contributed several written pieces to the Eisner-nominated comics website Shelfdust as well. In his current role, Ewan incorporates his love of cinema, comic books, and history into written pieces and video essays for WhatCulture's Film & TV channel, as well as WhatCulture Gaming and WhatCulture Horror, with a particular focus on nineties-era Dad Movies, old school Westerns, and Golden Age Hollywood Noir. John Carpenter is his fave, and he thinks Batman Beyond should never have been cancelled. If that's your vibe, you'll probably like his stuff.

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Josh has over 11 years of experience as a published writer, having worked nine of those years as a full-time content producer at WhatCulture. In that period he has created hundreds of articles, videos and podcast episodes for multiple WhatCulture channels, specialising in gaming, horror and film & TV. He now primarily works as a senior content producer and presenter on WhatCulture Gaming where he co-hosts the WhatCulture Gaming Podcast, a top 3 UK most listened to gaming podcast that he co-created in 2018. Over the years he has reviewed several high-profile gaming releases, covered industry events with on-site reporting, opined on breaking news, and even kicked off his interviewing career by chatting to childhood hero, Tommy Wiseau.