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.

Advertisement
Contributor

Writer. Mumbler. Only person on the internet who liked Spider-Man 3