A Fake Batman Game Is Taking Over Gaming Fandom
The best Batman game never made also might be the most popular one ever, if you pay attention to the Internet.
This article is more than 2 years old
The Batman Arkham gaming series is by far the best gaming series the fandom of the Caped Crusader has ever got, and fans have been clamoring for the continuation of the series, despite the protagonist’s apparent death in 2015’s Arkham Knight. And while the news of the continuation of the franchise didn’t take the world by surprise, the celebration of the first anniversary of Batman: Arkham World, the latest Arkham game did — admittedly, we were all thoroughly surprised.
The surprising factor actually stems from the fact that the game doesn’t exist since Rocksteady publicly stated that the Arkham trilogy has officially ended with Batman’s apparent death as the result of the Knightfall protocol in the final game. However, as Kotaku stated, the news about the fake Batman game originated on the Batman Arkham subreddit, which, despite being dedicated to a decade-old single-player series, still has a pretty active community, with over 150,000 members. If that doesn’t show how masterfully done these games were, Arkham Knight’s port to Switch does.
Batman: Arkham World isn’t a real game, but that didn’t stop the subreddit members from celebrating its fictional one-year release on August 2 — a ruse inspired by the Titanfall community, which pretended that Titanfall 3 had already been released. However, what started as a mere thrashpost (let’s keep it polite), grew into a more majestic trashpost as other members of the subreddit added their critical take on the game, along with their favorite missions, some of which actually include the most amazing crossovers ever.
Apparently, the imaginary Batman: Arkham World, part of the Arkhamverse, had several crossover appearances from other prominent franchises, like Spider-Man from Spider-Man, or Darth Vader from Star Wars. There’s also a special mission that puts gamers in control of Alfred Pennyworth, though the specifics of that mission were never elaborated on entirely. What’s more interesting is that, while Reddit is filled with trashposts, it’s rare to see one maintained so aggressively and for so long by the series fandom.
Batman: Arkham World might be a fake game, but the name actually stems directly from Rocksteady, who developed the trilogy. Fans used the name that was teased by The Joker in a cutscene created by Rocksteady for his acceptance speech at the 2011 Video Game Awards, in which he waves the “Batman: Arkham World” Script in his hands.The game that was released after that video was the massively popular 2015’s Batman: Arkham Knight, which ended the trilogy, but not the series.
The imaginary Batman: Arkham World is supposedly a part of the Arkham series, comprised of 2009’s Batman: Arkham Asylum, 2011’s Batman: Arkham City, 2013’s Batman: Arkham Origins, and 2015’s Batman: Arkham Knight — though the 2013 game isn’t a part of the trilogy, but a prequel to the series. Rocksteady’s upcoming Suicide Squad game is said to be part of Arkhamverse, though we don’t know at which point in the timeline, and the upcoming Gotham Knights, follows the ending of Batman: Arkham Knight but isn’t set in the same universe as Batman: Arkham series.
Batman: Arkham World isn’t and won’t be available on PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5, Xbox One, Xbox Series X/S, and PC, and we have it on good authority that it will never release on Nintendo Switch.
