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

7. It Was Almost A Rhythm Game

batman arkham asylum
Rocksteady

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.

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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.